The Hits Just Keep on Comin'
The Bush maladministration, the misgovernment of the United States, continues to plunge from outrage to catastrophe. Poll numbers sink to the point that if this were some Eastern European state, millions of citizens would be surrounding the White House and Capital, filling the National Mall day after day in some sort of People’s Democratic Revolution named after a color. A lot of the good colors are already taken. Perhaps we could have a Chartreuse or a Mauve Revolution.
But no matter how bad things get, most Americans sit cocooned at home, restless and irritated perhaps but not yet moved to stir from the Laz-y-Boys, i-Pods, or Game Boys. They may intend to vote the bastards out next Election Day, if it doesn’t rain or something.
They are unaware, as the Resident sails serenely onward as if clueless of his dire circumstance, that the levers of repression are in place, the new paperless electronic voting machines stand at the ready, and “October surprises" are being oiled up to render that election judgment day moot.
Still, we must not give up-on the nation, the election, or-if all else fails-the authority of the People to stand up and re-assert their sovereignty.
Historian Howard Zinn, interviewed in TIKKUN by Shelly R. Fredman for an article posted on AlterNet put it this way:
People very often think that there must be some magical tactic, beyond the traditional ones -- protests, demonstrations, vigils, civil disobedience -- but there is no magical panacea, only persistence in continuing and escalating the usual tactics of protest and resistance. The end of the Vietnam War did not come because the Left suddenly did something new and dramatic, but because all of the actions built up over time.
Meanwhile, let's review just two of the recent depredations by the Cabal in power and their front man George W. Along the way we’ll sample some pithy quotes from some smart folks.
YOU AREN’T PARANOID, BIG BROTHER REALLY IS WATCHING!
Like the proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, we have become inured to what goes on in the name of national security. Recent disclosures about increased government surveillance and illegal activities would be shocking, were it not for the prevailing outrage-fatigue brought on by a long train of abuses. From “Bowing to the Police State” by former CIA agent Ray McGovern in TomPain.com.
More revelations of domestic spying occur daily. First USA TODAY, of all papers, broke the story that most major national telephone companies were sharing phone data on millions of Americans with a secret National Security Agency (NSA) program. While not listening into the content of calls, the records reveal each call to or from any phones in the companies’ data bases. Supposedly the Feds just want to look for “patterns” that might reveal terrorist links and communications channels. In point of fact the very same pattern analysis can be used to reveal “clusters” of dissident Quakers, vegetarians, animal rights activists, and other dangerous threats to society (all of the aforementioned have been acknowledged targets of investigation by Federal snoops.)
The same is undoubtedly being done, or attempted, around internet communications. We know that the Justice Department has publicly requested records of major search engines in an effort to track “sexual predators and pedophiles” --who could possibly defend degenerates out to prey upon children! We know that some of these same search engines cooperated with requests from the Chinese government to locate dissident, who were later sentenced to long jail terms. How sanguine can we be that they would not similarly cooperate with the NSA on “matters of national security?”
Polling shows that while there is growing alarm over this, and spreading outrage among the knowledgeable, nearly half of all Americans remain untroubled by it. You can here them repeating the mantra “If you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about” all over the right of the radio dial.
Meanwhile the brand new White House spokesperson had to spend his first day on the job covering up on his boss’s inept half admission that there was indeed such a domestic surveillance program and the telecom giants, with the exception of ATT, reversed field (under how much pressure?) and denied any cooperation in providing the data.
On another front, two ABC correspondents revealed that they had been tipped off that their phone contacts were being monitored as they try to establish sources within the government. The Feds just shrugged their shoulders at this, claiming that most of the monitoring was “back tracing” from the records of government employees as they searched for “leaks of classified information.” Sources reported that such searches of phone records of reporters “used to be hard,” but had become simple and common under the Bush administration. Evidently “National Security Letters,” a kind of warrant un-reviewed by a judge created by the Patriot Act, are used to obtain the records. Under the Patriot Act it is a crime for party issued the letter (in this case supposedly the phone companies) ever to reveal that it was asked for, by whom and about whom. But, hey, these guys are just reporters, and every one hates those liberal scumbags anyway.
IMMIGRATION-GO-ROUND
The real mission of the 6,000 National Guard troops he has called out is to quell the rebellion on the president's right flank, the flaring mutiny of his own conservative base. Indeed, if the president were being honest, the mobilized troops would be taken off the federal payroll and moved onto the books of the 2006 national Republican campaign. From “Bush's Immigration Speech Is Bad Policy, Bad Politics” by Marc Cooper in Truthout.org.
Well, the President went on television from the oval office-the first time ever on a mere domestic policy issue-to talk about immigration. In an unusual pose, he tried to position himself as a moderate between to extremes, then tried to pander to both the right and left.
The National Guard-to-the-boarder ploy received the most attention in the press, largely because it was such an unbelievably stupid idea. Every one knows that the National Guard has been bled white in Iraq. One third of all of its forces are still committed there, in Afghanistan, or in the regions in support of “The War on Terrorism.” Many guard members have already served two, even three tours of duty. Almost all of their trucks and heavy equipment has been left behind and many units have returned with little but the desert camouflage uniforms on their backs. Yet George figures that more can be spent on the border in hopes that his right will imagine that he has militarized it and is preparing to machine gun felonious aliens in the desert.
Unfortunately for him the right saw through the ruse immediately. The Guard, barred by law from being used in a law enforcement roll, will only be doing “support” work for the understaffed Border Patrol-paper work, transportation, perhaps surveillance. Units will be rotated in and out in two and three week stints during their annual training activations. But that means that Guard units will never be on the ground long enough to become truly effective on one hand and their training regime will be disrupted on the other.
Bush continues to push for some sort of “pathway to citizenship” for most undocumented workers now in the country, and for a “guest worker” program to fill the needs of agribusiness and others for cheap, exploitable labor. For this the rank and file right despises him (while his corporate bosses quietly applaud) and the left shifts uncomfortably, suspicious of any time the President seems to be on their side.
It is a sad commentary that even most immigration activists are willing to follow the President’s policy on this and support the relatively more liberal Senate immigration bill-unlike the House version it would not actually allow the public drawing and quartering of illegal aliens and the flaying alive of their supporters and enablers.
The “Path to Citizenship” would be a narrow, twisting thing fraught with drop off on both sides. Demanding five years of “continuous” employment, it creates a new class of neo-serfs. Its system of fines and “proof of tax payment,” which in many cases will compel immigrants to pay taxes a second time if they cannot document their earlier payments, represents a kind of strong arm extortion.
The Guest Worker program would go further. It would create a class of true serfs with no rights at all.
No one seriously envisions widespread penalizing of employers for using undocumented workers
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