the best article I've read so far

[Eric Van Hove]

You must had recieved a lot of things on US admins for now, but this is the best article I've read so far. It's up to you.
 
 
> What Is Happening in America?  
> By Eliot Weinberger
>
http://www.icujp.org/cgi-bin/datacgi/database.cgi?file=News&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0064
>  
> Released 08 June 2003
> 
> [This article, one of the best short analyses of the
> Bush administration's policies, was written for
> "Vorwarts," the official magazine of the German
> Social Democratic Party.]
> 
> 1 June 2003
> 
> In the Western democracies in the last fifty years,
> we have grown accustomed to governments whose
> policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but
> which essentially institute incremental changes to
> the status quo. The major exceptions have been
> Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of
> dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in
> retrospect, mild compared to what is happening in
> the United States under George Bush-- or more
> exactly, the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do
> and say.
> 
> It is unquestionably the most radical government in
> modern American history, one whose ideology and
> actions have become so pervasive, and are so
> unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that
> the population seems to have forgotten what "normal"
> is.
> 
> George Bush is the first unelected President of the
> United States, installed by a right-wing Supreme
> Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the
> first to actively subvert one of the pillars of
> American democracy: the separation of church and
> state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible
> study groups in every branch of the government, and
> religious organizations are being given funds to
> take over educational and welfare programs that have
> always been the domain of the state.
> 
> Bush is the first president to invoke the specific
> "Jesus Christ" rather than an ecumenical "God," and
> he has surrounded himself with evangelical
> Christians, including his Attorney General, who
> attends a church where he talks in tongues.
> 
> It is the first administration to openly declare a
> policy of unilateral aggression, a "Pax Americana"
> where the presence of allies (whether England or
> Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where
> international treaties no longer apply to the United
> States; and where-- for the first time in history--
> this country reserves the right to non-defensive,
> "pre-emptive" strikes against any nation on earth,
> for whatever reason it declares.
> 
> It is the first-- since the internment of
> Japanese-Americans in World War II-- to enact
> special laws for a specific ethnic group.
> Non-citizen young Muslim men are now required to
> register and subject themselves to interrogation.
> Many hundreds have been arrested and held without
> trial or access to legal assistance-- a violation of
> another pillar of American democracy: habeas corpus.
> Many have been taken from their families and
> deported on minor technical immigration violations;
> the whereabouts of many others are still unknown.
> And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they
> are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of
> foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old and a
> man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for almost
> two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the
> Geneva Convention.
> 
> Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration
> openly devoted to helping the rich and ignoring the
> poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton
> years into a massive deficit through its combination
> of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly
> those who earn more than a million dollars a year)
> and increases in defense spending. (And, although
> Republicans always campaign on "less government," it
> has created the largest new government bureaucracy
> in history: the Department of Homeland Security.)
> The Financial Times of England, hardly a hotbed of
> leftists, has categorized this economic policy as
> "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
> 
> But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to
> benefit the rich in general-- most of Bush's
> legislation specifically enriches those in his
> lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging,
> construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the
> middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be
> issued without Congressional approval, hundreds of
> regulations have been changed to lower standards of
> pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up
> wilderness areas for exploitation, or to eliminate
> the testing of drugs.
> 
> Billions in government contracts have been awarded,
> without competition, to corporations formerly run by
> administration officials. In a country where the
> most significant social changes are enacted by court
> rulings, rather than by legislation, the Bush
> administration has been filling every level of the
> complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues,
> especially those who have protected corporations
> from lawsuits by individuals or environmental
> groups, and those who are opposed to women's
> reproductive rights. It remains to be seen how far
> they can push their antipathy to contraception and
> abortion. They have already banned a rare form of
> late-term abortion that is only given when the
> health of the mother is endangered or the fetus is
> terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's
> heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be
> devoted to so-called "abstinence" education.
> 
> Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any
> more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar to
> any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush
> is the first American president in memory to swagger
> around in a military uniform, though he himself--
> like all of his most militant advisers-- evaded the
> Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war
> hero, never wore his uniform while he was
> president).
> 
> In the airports of provincial cities, there are
> frequent announcements in that assuring, disembodied
> voice of science-fiction films: "The Department of
> Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is
> now . . . Code Orange." Every few weeks there is an
> announcement that another terrorist attack is
> imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous
> measures, like sealing their windows, against
> biological and chemical attacks, and to report the
> suspicious activities of their neighbors.
> 
> The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information
> Awareness" program to collect data on the ordinary
> activities of ordinary citizens (credit card
> charges, library book withdrawals, university course
> enrollments) and when this is perceived as going too
> far, they change the name to "Terrorist Information
> Awareness" and continue to do the same things.
> Millions are listed in airport security computers as
> potential terrorists, including antiwar
> demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are warned to
> "watch what they say" and lists of "traitors" are
> posted on the internet.
> 
> The war in Iraq has been the most extreme
> manifestation of this new America, and almost a
> casebook study in totalitarian techniques.
> 
> First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are
> endlessly repeated until the population believes it:
> in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on
> the World Trade Center, and that it possesses vast
> "weapons of mass destruction" that threaten the
> world.
> 
> Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the
> mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops, with
> little or no imagery of casualties and devastation,
> and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes--
> such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the
> heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- worthy of Soviet
> cinema.
> 
> Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very
> little news of the chaos that has followed the Great
> Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to
> a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.
> 
> It is very difficult to speak of what is happening
> in America without resorting to the hyperbolic
> cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their
> meaning after so many decades, but that have now
> finally come true.
> 
> Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have
> mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite
> simply, the most frightening American administration
> in modern times, one that is appalling both to the
> left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is
> unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; it is
> enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War; it is
> dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the
> most fundamental tenets of American democracy; it is
> acting without opposition within the government, and
> is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it
> has overwhelmed and exhausted any popular
> opposition.
> 
> Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step
> toward slowing it down is the recognition that this
> is an American government unlike any other in this
> country's history, and one for whom democracy is an
> obstacle.
> ........................


eyescratch <eyescratch at share.dj> wrote:

it seems that hollywood and elsewhere is going through a stage of fear 
for the nation. the union. conflict resolution on the pop stage. what 
IS the american psyche? sure-di-dur-di global. or is that everybody 
else in the conduit?

making a password a painless experience, the touch-pad yields.

So what I think is missing here is gang capitalism 101. Anyone want to 
enlighten the masses with a how to manual for bending the rules so that 
your culture will be heard?

aren't we opening a snoop hole with all these with spam filters?

I ain't gonna study war no more. - MLK

On Friday I saw Max. A quirky movie with the young Hitler, artist cum 
laude. In the last year or so we've seen many comparisons of political 
leaders to Hitler. Be it tactics or views, they seem to bubble up when 
politicians fail us and the world.

We witness the injection of race into the discourse on Iraq with the 
new class of detainees here in the United States of men who are of "the 
region".

Rhizome's fame for a price strategy has it's pitfalls.

let a sheik run the net on time, purported as the message by some.

grrr. bunk.


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-------------------------------

Eric Van Hove  - tempter - www.transcri.be

"The fact that I exist shows that this world have no meaning."
  - Cioran

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