Democracy 101 -January 2009 A Clarion Call for America’s Velvet Revolution For some time I have been advocating bringing Bush, Cheney and members of their administrations to justice for what has been perceived as unlawful activity. What began as a call for impeachment has now become a call for prosecution. My vociferousness can be witnessed in many of the essays and comments posted at this blog and at other sites to which I am a contributor. That many others are of a like mind is evidenced by the many links offered here in the left-hand column (fittingly) which also promote impeaching, investigating and prosecuting Bush & Co for crimes against the Constitution of the United States and humanity at large. What is being proposed and promoted is swimming against a very strong under-tow of other concerns; the economy, the conflicts in Asia, health care, etc. The idea of prosecuting Bush, Cheney, et al. makes most people wince, cringe or shudder with trepidation and some explode with indignation. The notion for many – at least as measured by the entries at various sites where such opinions can be freely voiced – is that the any action to bring Bush et al. to account in a court of law for their malfeasance is one that is without hope. The cause of this hopelessness is varied, ranging from an ineffective and complicit Congress refusing to take appropriate action to the unassailable power of international banking cabals and the Illuminati. What we, the people, must come to understand, despite all of the horror stories about international conspiracies, world-shaping deals done at Bilderberger meetings and WTO conferences, is a very simple truth: there are many more of us than there are of them. This is the essence of Democracy 101; we out-number them. That is our power. We have the power to change things. We have the power to demand that our leaders be held accountable for their actions while in office. It is a simple elemental truth and the basis of democratic government. Why, then, do so many Americans – the majority as it seems – fail to embrace and internalize this vital truth? Why are so many Americans prone to thinking ‘What’s the use?’ regarding politics and political activism? Why have so many Americans failed Democracy 101? One answer is that we Americans have been educated to feel powerless. We have been inculcated with the idea that our only avenue of democratic activity is the polling booth where we are called on to choose which corporate financed and anointed candidate we’d prefer.  This is an extremely harmful delusion; one that is foisted upon us by very highly paid public relations corporations and their mouth-pieces in the corporate media. The 'powers-that-be' spend millions each business quarter on ads, reports, findings, articles, pamphlets, books, TV programs, radio shows, movies and other means of propaganda in an attempt to keep the public docile and would-be activists dispirited with smothering messages of hopelessness and powerlessness. They do this because 'they' fear 'Us'. We have the power and they know it. Otherwise they wouldn’t feel the need to pour millions into their PR campaigns aimed at keeping us apathetic, compliant and submissive. To illustrate this, Noam Chomsky often cites this anecdote: whenever he speaks in Third World Countries with limited democratic outlet and where opinion and political action are restricted if not actively or violently suppressed, no one ever asks him 'What should we do?' They know what to do and often tell Professor Chomsky what they are doing to redress their grievances, often in the face of brutal repression. On the other hand, whenever he speaks in the USA, ‘Land of the Free and Home of the Brave’ he is invariably asked, 'What can we do?’  Americans, who pride themselves on living in the strongest Democracy on earth and puff their chests about being ‘the Leader of the Free World’, ‘Beacon of Hope’ and ‘City on the Hill’, generally feel unempowered and ineffectual when it comes to social and political activism. This is very telling. It tells us that something is tragically amiss in the USA. It tells us that American democracy is faltering and in danger of becoming nothing more than a sham of staged, ritualized elections, devoid of real import. It needn’t be that way, of course. One need only look at Bolivia or Venezuela, countries without a democratic tradition. If the impoverished, indigenous People of those countries can overcome the combined machinations of the CIA, the US State Department, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the kleptocratic elite and the economic hit-men of international corporations, then we, the People of the United States of America should and must be able to do the same. Americans would do well to learn a lesson from the Bolivians and the Venezuelans - the first lesson of Democracy 101: Voting is not the sum total of democracy. It is an important albeit small part of the democratic process. The will of the people is not subject to election cycles. We must not be compliant, silent observers who patiently wait for ballots to be handed us at polling centers. We must continually inform and educate ourselves and our fellow citizens in a democratic republic for it to truly function.  Additionally, it is of vital importance that our representatives in government top the list of those fellow-citizens we need to continually and aggressively inform and educate. We do not ask permission to be heard by our government and our representatives. We demand it as our lawful right and duty. We must not be wistful by-standers to the democratic process. To do so euthanizes democracy and hands the power to oligarchs and autocrats who do not believe as we, the People must believe, that all of us are equal under the Constitution.  We must be vocal, active and engaged for we, the People, are the government. We are the power.  Take heart! Take action! Take back our Republic from false-flag conservatives without consciences and neo-con con-men. The first step to the recovery of our Republic is to prosecute George W, Bush, Richard Cheney and all other incriminated members of their administrations for the crimes they have committed in the name of the American People. Do not give credence to the Big Lie that they acted ‘in the interest of national security’. They acted in their own interests and their actions have endangered us all. Dismiss the spin about ‘national reconciliation’ and ‘forgiveness’. It is folderol foisted on us by those who fear being implicated in the Bush/Cheney crimes. We, the American People must demand that justice be done or Justice will be done with us. We are the power.  Use it. Thus endeth the lesson. Your lab assignment is this: Go to the President-elect Obama’s site and make your voice heard; insist that he establish a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of the George W. Bush administrations: http://change.gov/page/content/openforquestions20081229/    CNY - December 2008   The Chinese, like most of the rest of the peoples of the world, have a mid-winter celebration. Such festivals undoubtedly pre-date the Neolithic. There’s substantial evidence that most social groups or cultures went into a panic every winter over whether the sun would return to its summer intensity. People feared that the nights would continue to grow longer and colder and life would end for their little group. (A reasonable concern when you’re dodging glaciers in the middle of an ice-age wrapped in tree bark.)   This dilemma was apparently attributed to the notion that the tribe or a tribal member had displeased one of the local deities thus incurring its wrath in the form of a nasty winter. In an attempt to stave off a frigid, starving fate or enslavement by some tribe who hadn’t been abandoned by their particular godling, the shamans (shamen?), whose job it was to get the locals ‘off the hook’, would do their shamanistic ‘thang’: a personal ritual typically involving a sacrificial offering of flesh to the offended deity.    Surprise, surprise! These rituals always worked and the cycle of spring to summer to fall resumed unabated. (Hooray!) As timing is everything, even in the shaman business, these rituals were normally conducted on or close to the winter solstice: the longest night of the year. The days grow longer and the nights shorter after this date each year. The worst was over. Call it coincidence. The god was placated, the people partied heartily in their finest tree-bark couture and the shaman was awarded his bonus.   He got to live.   (One may speculate on how much of the annual panic was exacerbated by the shaman in order to aggrandize him/herself, thus securing their place in the social milieu and obligating the group to toss an extra bit of gristle in their broth.)   According to the Julian/Gregorian calendar, based as it is on the orbit of the earth around the sun, (Thank you, Mr Kopernik.) the winter solstice is the night of December 20/21. Consequently, the winter celebrations of Christmas, Chanukah, the Saturnalia, Kwanzaa and after-Christmas sales are held towards the end of December. But not the Chinese New Year celebration. Not CNY.   Unlike most of the rest of the world, the Chinese still base their social calendar on the orbit of the moon around the earth and the cycle of the phases of the moon. (Some psychotic god-emperor probably had their own version of Mr Kopernik drowned for insubordination in a vat of soy sauce. Don’t quote me on that.) As a result, the Chinese mid-winter festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, a five-day period of celebration  -and a rather manic attempt at relaxation - takes place sometime between the end of January and beginning of March depending on all manner of convoluted calendrical finagling by the current shaman-esque types.   It might come as a surprise that, as important as this holiday is in Chinese culture, no member of the general public seems to know when the CNY will be from year to year.  It’s as if when asked when Christmas will be next year, the average North American would shrug, grin and openly admit to ignorance of more than a vague approximation. (Even after 19 years, this sort of thing makes me want to tear what little hair I have left. It's the bloody Lunar New Year, fer chrissake! It's based on an astronomic cycle; 28 days. Sheesss! Paleolithic humans were more aware of their world. It's enough to break a lesser man.)   I won’t bore you with the myriad insipid, preposterous acts of superstition traditionally practiced by the Chinese and meant to lure good fortune their way. You can read about them in any two-bit guide book. It’s all malarkey anyway. No more credence can be given to the efficacy of eating tangerines to the prospects of prosperity, for example, than can be rationally lent to the proposition that those ancient shamans/men actually induced the return of spring and summer by carving on their own body parts under the full moon on an empty stomach. What I’d rather bore you with is what I have observed the Chinese do for a good time during this, their most important holiday period.   First and foremost, the Chinese Lunar New Year is a time when all the members of the immediate family reunite. (Think of it as a combination Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year’s without Jesus of Nazareth, the Pilgrims, Santa, football or Dick Clark.) Chinese all over the world are obliged by thousands of years of tradition and Confucian guilt to return to their hometowns. Over the river and through the woods and hell ‘n’ high water to grandma’s house they go. (That’s the paternal grandmother/father, of course. The wives must wait until the second day of the New Year to visit the distaff relatives.) Three, four, even five generations gather to eat, gamble, patch up disputes, eat, pay debts, take excursions, eat and generally function as a unit while eating or waiting to eat.   As every Chinese is making what amounts to a filial ‘hajj’ to the home of their parents and grandparents, it’s the worst possible time to travel. Every mode of conveyance is over-booked, over-priced and overwhelmed. Every year, folks queue up for days to purchase an SRO ticket for an hour’s train ride. Here in Taiwan, even with the best, most flexible scheduling, a 40-minute car trip might take hours due to a nearly nation-wide grid-lock in the run-up to the Eve of CNY. The effects of a staggering increase in vehicular traffic are compounded by the fact that all bets are off regarding traffic laws, especially at night and particularly on the eve of CNY. The sole reason for there not being traffic-related deaths in the thousands is that very little is traveling faster than a Tibetan penitent doing ring-a-round-the-lamasery.   The third year I was here, I accompanied a Chinese friend to his relatives’ gathering in southern Taiwan. It was ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ with two buses and a two-stroke scooter thrown in. We left on the eve of CNY eve. The worst possible time to embark on CNY associated travel. By the time we arrived at his grandmother’s rustic brick and tile farmstead set way-the-hell-and-gone up in the mountains, the blue-speckled Moldavian tern had been taken off the endangered species list. You know what they say about one good tern… (insert groan here).

A Myth of a Moral American Authority by dcr  Pulitzer Prize winner, Ron Suskind, has come out with a book entitled ‘The Way of the World’ that asserts convincingly that the Bush administration ordered the CIA to forge a letter covering their collective derriere about WMDs in Iraq and Saddam’s taking delivery of yellow cake uranium from Niger. As of August 24th, the title held the number three spot on the New York Times Best Seller List. Further, US Congressman, John Conyers, as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has undertaken an investigation of Mr Suskind’s assertions.( Mr Conyer’s  official announcement to review the allegations can be read here: http://judiciary.house.gov/news/080811.html ) As despicable as this recounted action is (one of so many the Bush administration has perpetrated that a whole new lexicon is presently being developed by the Oxford Dictionary) and as dismally unsurprising as this latest criminal subterfuge is (The Bushites, after all, have been preparing for the ‘End Time’. With ‘Owl-mighty Gawwd’ on your side, you can do whatever the Hell you want, apparently.) there is, regrettably, one ‘Revelation’ that Mr Suskind has not experienced; that regarding the prevailing myth of American moral authority. At least, not as evidenced by his interviews on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! there isn’t. http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=178981 With all due respect to Mr Suskind as an investigative reporter, he ended his pitch on the Daily Show by reiterating his ‘book-tour blurb’, which Stewart had stifled half-way through the interview with a jibe about how crassly Suskind was touting his book. Suskind, in summation, stated with practiced melodrama that “The book’s all about how America’s moral authority has bled away and we need to restore it to fight the battles that we need to fight and, y’know, the way to do it’s with truth!” Can I get an ‘Ay-man’ for the rapturous delusion of American moral authority? Not to belittle or depreciate the authenticity of Mr Suskind’s journalistic efforts, or the nail-in-the-coffin effect this book may have on the already tarnished reputation of George W Bush’s presidency and its dubious legacy, but Mr Suskind is missing a most vital point; that is the unwholesome concept of ‘American Moral Authority’.  The fundamental precept upon which Mr Bush has based his policies – one regrettably shared by many previous administrations – is that the United States of America operates from an elevated moral position which serves to justify all of its actions no matter the legitimacy or the outcome. This vain, prideful fantasy that America possesses intrinsically superior moral authority is both a ludicrous and harmful one. It has been used to white-wash the ruinous, foul effects of American foreign and domestic policy for centuries. (It must be said, though, that the Bush/Cheney co-presidency has taken this doctrine to radical extremes, hence it should be gratifying to all who cherish democracy and the rule of law upon which it is based to know that some of the watch-dogs of the Fourth Estate, like Mr Suskind have not been muzzled. Barking up the wrong tree still serves to raise the alarm that all is not right in the barn-yard.) The American people, from the cradle to the grave, are inculcated with the precept that America can do no moral wrong; that America has a ‘lock’ on righteousness and so, ipso facto, any apparent wrong-doing is done by ‘loose cannons’ and ‘renegades’. The promulgation of this appealing, though unsubstantiated testament has resulted in its being piously accepted as a basic tenet of the secular pseudo-religion of ‘Americanism’. The roots of Americanism lie deep in the sub-soil of the European experience in the North American continent. It is a common notion that the Europeans who laid claim to the land were pursuing a destiny. This sense of predetermination stems from both the secular and religious arenas. Royal decrees, warrants and grants, cultural chauvinism, xenophobia and ethnocentricity, as well as religious prophesy and heavenly mandate lent credence to the idea that the Europeans had a duty and responsibility to tame the land and bring civilization to the continent. One example of this is the famous "City upon a Hill" sermon of 1630, given by Massachusetts Bay Colony governor, John Winthrop, in which he declared that the Puritan colonists immigrating to the ‘New World’ were part of a special pact with God to create a holy community. (That this sermon was cited and needlessly gilded 350 years later by Ronald Reagan should be noted as indicating the persistence of this contemptible principle.)This sense of divine (or regal) mission served to assuage any twinges of the collective guilt which the wholesale slaughter and displacement of the indigenous populations may have elicited in the Christian conscience of the colonists, the colonizers.  This same principle, furthermore, has served to mitigate any sense of shame, remorse or responsibility on the part of Americans for their role in more recent acts of savagery as a result of foreign and domestic policies. Much more could, should and will be said on the concept of ‘Americanism’ as a secular religion. A more concise definition of Americanism and further discussion of some of the other tenets of Americanism can be expected at this forum. This essay, however, shall remain focused on the under-lying precept of ‘Moral Authority’ and its nefarious and pernicious effect on American policy making. Supporting examples which demonstrate the veracity of the claim of American moral authority are rarely if ever offered. This is to be expected. Why should they be, after all? Like any belief system, ‘Americanism’ requires no proof. Notwithstanding one’s ‘faith’ in Americanism, the maxim has little relationship to fact and so creates a prejudicial cognitive dissonance amongst the citizens of the United States. The specious myth of American moral authority is worn by American leaders (and the American people) as a precious, reverential vestment to cover up the numerous, depraved, heinous acts of murderous violence and dehumanizing social injustice that comprise the history of the American Republic. Given America’s checkered, contemptible history (if one is brave and resolute enough to closely examine more than the ‘approved’ glosses used in American schools) Americans cannot rightly lay claim to moral authority or the moral high ground, yet, they do. For to reject the tenet of American moral authority is to renounce one’s faith in Americanism, declare oneself ‘unpatriotic’ and so suffer derision and ostracism from American society and the body politic. Although doctrines of faith, by definition, are held to be unassailable by logic, even so, examples of America’s moral failures might serve to contravene the indiscriminant, unthinking acceptance of the sacrosanct belief in America’s inherent moral ascendency. Let’s start with the unconscionable exclusion of indigenous Americans, African-Americans and women of all races from those who were granted ‘Liberty’ at the signing of America’s most hallowed documents and the effective denial of the rights of full citizenship to those citizens for the greater part of the life of the Republic. Not exactly brimming with righteousness and moral rectitude, one might say. Then again, such injustice was part and parcel of earlier, less civilized times and one might, if one were a true believer in the dogma of Americanism, facilely shoo away any guilt over these shameful inequities,. Moving on (too quickly) from social injustice to the atrocities of war, perhaps the ‘True Believer’ will consider the slaughter and subjugation of (fill-in-the-blank) by America ‘the Righteous’ as permissible evidence of moral turpitude. The indigenous people of the American continent, the Native Americans The indigenous people and citizens of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War The indigenous people of the Hawaiian archipelago   The civilian population of Viet Nam The people of Haiti The people of Guatemala The people of El Salvador The people of Nicaragua The people of Panama The people of Iraq All of the above and more Then, again, it could be argued that war is a monstrous aberration in which atrocities are an unfortunate, yet integral part. (Collateral damage is the modern, accepted terminology for the slaughter of civilians and while euphemisms such as this and ‘non-combatant’ are wide spread, they do not negate or excuse criminal, immoral acts.) Notwithstanding the parenthetical proviso, as General William Tecumseh Sherman correctly observed, “War is Hell!” Thus one might be disposed to dismiss the aberrant behavior of men on the field of battle fighting for their lives as admissible to this argument. The heat of battle, however, would not mitigate the murderous result of aerial bombardment, as the orders and the executions for such ruthless assaults are done at a cool, calculated distance. Since the Second World War, the people of China, Korea, Indonesia, Cuba, Peru, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Libya, Iran, Kuwait, Somalia, Sudan, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia have all suffered ‘death from above’ delivered by the United States  in undeclared ‘wars’. These horrific, cold-blooded incidences of mayhem might register as contravening evidence with those whose faith in American’s moral strength is less certain. Furthermore, if the many adherents of Americanism would stop even for a moment to meditate on the documented assassinations committed by CIA operatives as part of numerous coup d’états  when the brutal and corrupt dictatorships of Mobuto, Trujillo, Somoza, Marcos, the Duvaliers (pere et fil), Suharto, Noriega and Saddam Hussein were installed and maintained to suit American interests (a technical term meaning ‘corporate concerns over investments’) they would start to sense that not even the US State Department could be so naïvely bumbling in the matters of statecraft as to fail to recognize the glaring lack of moral fiber displayed, not only by these despots - certainly not by the murderers in the service to these men - but also by the US administration officials who befriended them and ordered and carried out extra-legal executions. (Visit the site of ‘Friendly Dictator Trading Cards’ for more fun facts about America’s propensity to support fascist autocrats when the money is right.) http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Dictators_Home.html Possibly, borderline apostates should more closely examine and consider the presidentially ordered, CIA directed and financed coups in Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Iran, etc. that violently and bloodily over-threw the democratically elected governments of those nations because their policies, which strove to place the needs of their own people above the greed of US-based multi-nationals in defiance of the long-standing dictum for subservience to American ‘interests’, were perceived and propagandized as committing the odious ‘crime’ of promoting ‘leftist/Marxist’ or ‘ultra-nationalist’ policies. Conceivably, the Faithful might note America’s determined, decades-long obstruction by veto of repeated UN resolutions calling for a Palestinian State and fair and equitable distribution of vital resources – resolutions supported by near world-wide unanimity which in all likelihood would end most of the animus and violence in the region - while at the same time successive American administrations have been politically, materially and financially supporting the continued dehumanization of the Palestinian people in gruesome, slow-motion genocide by the State of Israel. How might 30 years of America stone-walling the basic human rights of the people of Palestine be viewed as just and righteous? Should the adherents to the creed think the above examples reference events too remote in the past to be conveniently pondered, then consider the recent spate of bi-partisan windging and grousing over the astronomical costs of rebuilding Iraq and the accompanying morally bankrupt proposal that the Iraqis pony up and pay for reparations themselves for the diabolical mess the Bush administrations have made of their country? Such a base, execrable retreat from accountability can hardly be seen as a manifestation of charity, fair-mindedness or moral superiority. Indeed, if the Faithful were simply to focus on the holy ‘War on Terror’ as decreed by Bush the Second in his infamous State of the Union speech in January, 2002, there is a virtually endless list of atrociously immoral actions committed, codified and condoned that coldly testify to a deplorable absence of virtuousness, moral strength, honor and honesty. To Wit: The suspension of habeas corpus, the keystone of the British and American legal systems The denial of due process, The kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of suspects, The torture and dehumanizing abuse of those illegally detained, The lying, dissembling and prevaricating about torture, kidnapping, extraordinary rendition, etc. The murder of thousands upon thousands of Afghani men, women and children, The slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, The criminal, forced displacement of 5 millions Iraqis, The slaughterous assaults on the people inhabiting the tribal areas of Pakistan, The effective revocation of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of:  freedom of speech freedom of assembly redress of grievances freedom from self-incrimination freedom of privacy The forging of documents indemnifying and exonerating Bush apparatchiks of wrong-doing The perjurious and evasive testimonies given before Congress by Bush operatives The blatant, contemptuous refusal to answer Congressional subpoena to give testimony regarding the aforementioned points Etc Etc In light of the extremely long check list of recent atrocities, war crimes and institutionalized injustice, coupled with those committed over the course of the history of the American Republic and presented with rigorous brevity herein, what justification does anyone have to profess America’s moral authority? A chorus of indignation at the effrontery of the charge laid here that America’s traditional claim to the cherished tenet of its ‘moral authority’ is naught but vapid propaganda must surely have reached a fevered pitch of apoplexy, sending some to grope for needed cardiovascular medication and compelling others to furiously bang out flaming blogs of condemnation and setting still other devotees to shrieking vile epithets and accusations of un-Americanism. Heaven, forefend! “At least, Americans don’t strap C4 to the backs of women and children to blow up shopping malls.” one can hear the patriots piously clamor. “At least, Americans don’t suicidally fly airliners into buildings killing thousands of innocent people!” The response to this straw man’s retort should be obvious: When America has cruise missiles, smart bombs, cluster bombs, bunker busters approaching the destructive power of small nuclear devices, unmanned aircraft armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles, F-16’s and satellite surveillance, where is the need for such primitive methods of assault as suicide bombers or kamikaze flight plans? The disparity in the result of an attack by a flight of B-52s or B-2s or A-10s or AC-130s or even a single MQ-1 Predator ‘drone’ when compared to that of a young extremist liveried in a bandoleer of high explosives or that of the 9-11 hijackers need not be examined in detail except by those irredeemably blinded by their faith in Americanism or those simply depraved. All of the aforementioned methods of attack are horrific but, to belabor the obvious for the sake of completing the argument, one must admit that coordinated attacks by the US, using the most formidable military force in human history, leave tens or hundreds of thousands of casualties in their wake.  Even the horrendous loss of life on September 11, 2001 pales in comparison to the probably casualties wrought during the opening night of the ignominiously christened ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. Note that these comparisons are in no respect meant to decriminalize the malevolent acts perpetrated on that bright, sunny day in September, 2001, nor does it mean to exonerate the perpetrators and their co-conspirators of culpability and legal retribution. They are provided so as to offer to the ‘Faithful’ what is hoped to be a fresh perspective from which to view the murderous immoral acts of the American government. Granted, the American people and American administrations have undertaken many noble, humanitarian projects. The premise being argued here is not that Americans and their government are wholly without merit or virtue. The contention is that Americans, demonstratively, do not have the right to claim intrinsic moral authority. There is no denying that the Marshall Plan was of true benefit to the people of Europe, for instance. (Never mind that the lion’s share of the funds went directly into the pockets of American corporations.) Charitable, humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, C.A.R.E. and others depend on the contributions of generous, compassionate Americans. Moreover, slavery was eventually abolished though its abolition in the USA took place long after all other industrialized nations had made slavery illegal and anathema. Suffrage was eventually won by American women after a prolonged struggle though glass ceilings and inequality in the work-place persist to this day. Therefore, no doubt, there are a few bright lights in American history which play a counterpoint to the many harsh, immoral discordances outlined previously. These contrapuntal incidences only obscure, as through a distorted lens, the sanguine, savage landscapes which have been the result of American foreign and domestic policy and serve as rationale for the reprehensible, megalomaniacal, holier-than-thou conceit expressed by the aphorism in question. We, as Americans, must ask ourselves if there has ever been any other nation on earth that has so brazenly used such a hypocritical, self-serving, self-deluding, propagandistic platitude to gloss over inveterate wrong-doing. Indeed, there are and there have been, but none of the possible comparisons are in the least bit complimentary. That this polemic has not made effort to differentiate the citizens of the United States from the policies of the government is not an oversight nor a tactful omission. As a republic, we, the people, are ultimately responsible for the actions of our elected representatives and their appointees. Claiming that the White House, the Houses of Congress, the State Department, the CIA or any other branch or agency of our government have taken actions for which the American electorate shares no responsibility or culpability is an untenable assertion if America is a truly functioning democracy. To excuse American citizens from the sins of its government is to confess that the United States is a ‘failed state’, one having only hollow, insubstantial rituals of democracy rather than viable democratic processes. Much more can and will be said on this matter at another time, as well. America’s supposed ‘moral authority’ is a sham; a fantasy that any bright adolescent could perceive as a charade if only the straight, unspun facts were presented honestly. It is regrettable that a journalist of Mr Suskind’s stature has not seen beneath the reverential cloak that disguises the bitter, sorry truth of America’s political character and as an apostate, publically renounced the false creed of America’s moral authority. By so doing, his investigative journalism would be under-scored and elevated to loftier heights and his service to Truth and the American public would have greater, lasting effect than does merely exposing the political iniquities, however heinous, of specific culprits.

Daily Dose of DCR! Defeating the Pentacratic Agenda  “The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world’s last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With a brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk. Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone; our foes are more subtle and implacable today. You may think I’m describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world. But their day, too, is almost past, and they cannot match the strength and size of this adversary. The adversary is closer to home: It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy.” “An average American family works an entire year to generate$6,000 in income taxes. Here we spill many times that amount every hour by duplication and by inattention.” “Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” “We must change for a simple reason – the world has – and we have not yet changed sufficiently. The clearest and most important transformation is from a bipolar Cold War world where threats were visible and predictable, to one in which they arise from multiple sources, most of which are difficult to anticipate, and many of which are impossible even to know today.” Spoken by Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, in an address that announced an end to the S.O.P. of waste and fiscal mismanagement at the Pentagon, delivered on September 10, 2001; the day before the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What would have been an excellent, long-called-for policy shift (from a most unexpected quarter), tossed out with the ‘Ba’ath’ water, so to say. In the days immediately following, George W. Bush called for $20 Billion to fund the ‘War on Terror’. Since then, he has demanded and gotten a blank check for debacle after debacle, all sanctified by ‘them-or-us’, anti-terrorist bluster and approved by a spineless, bi-partisan, rubber-stamp Congress. (The cowards in Congress just approved another $257,000,000,000 (two-hundred-fifty-seven billion dollar) emergency supplement to fund the wars through the end of Bush’s term. ) (Any wonder there is no money for universal health care, education or infrastructure projects such as reinforced levees on the Mississippi River? That astronomical figure – more than a quarter of a trillion dollars - is only to help pay for the next 7 months of these hateful wars which so rapaciously destroy lives. Someone should check the Congress for drugs or implants. ) From being on the verge of tightening federal purse-strings to the current open-vault-door policy of hysteria-driven defense spending - financing the building of new nuclear submarines to counter the non-existent Al-Qaeda navy and new super-sonic jet fighters to combat the air force that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have – was a most fortuitous swing of events for the Pentagon and its contractors. This catastrophic bit of malevolent serendipity is what author and journalist, Robert Scheer refers to as the ‘gift of 911’ to the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex; since Eisenhower used that cumbersome phrase in his farewell speech, it has seen plenty of use. Though its initial axiomatic power still resonates, it’s a stock phrase, shop-worn. Moreover, from its inception it has been inadequate. Its failing, despite its power as an axiom of unalloyed truth, is that it hides the people who operate this complex and extremely profitable relationship between government bureaucracy and big business. It is time to put a face on these people in the Pentagon, in the Congress and in the Defense Department. It is long past time to strip the mask of anonymity from leaders of the arms industry, their lobbyists and their agents. What is needed is a more pertinent, personalizing epithet which exposes the active players of the military-industrial complex. Pentacrats (noun) 1. The autocrats and oligarchs of the Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress and the defense and arms industry who in concert advocate robbing the taxpayer to fund boondoggles, pork-barrel spending and bloated defense budgets for personal profit and political gain. 2. Their agents and functionaries. Pentacrats have usurped the power of the citizenry to influence policy and thus the course taken by the ship of state, in order to enrich themselves at the direct expense of the citizens of the United States; deeply effecting, most deleteriously, nearly every aspect of the daily lives of the American people. Furthermore, the effect of Pentacratic policies on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and every other country around the world where armament and weaponry contracted and manufactured by Pentacrats, furnished and financed by the Pentacrats in Washington are used to violently suppress democratic movements, insurgencies and up-risings, is even more dire. A maleficent mélange of death, terror and suffering is what those people get on a daily basis. Pentacrats. What the precepts of Pentacracy boil down to is the super-rich getting richer by many other, much poorer men, women and children dying bloody, horrible deaths. To paraphrase the old song, ‘the rich get richer and the poor get murdered.’ The American citizenry must demand that this complex be dismantled, boondoggle by boondoggle, pork barrel by pork barrel, until the Department of Defense and Congress answer once again to the voice of the true, absolute, constitutionally recognized and affirmed rulers of our republic: the people of the United States of America. This demand must be constant and unrelenting, not solely reliant on participation in general elections, but rather with consistent, perennial involvement from the grass-roots to the Belt-way and the National Mall. Defeating the agenda of the Pentacrats - and in so doing, returning control of the nation to its rightful rulers - is the gift we can bequeath, not only to the children of America but to the children of the world. It is the right thing to do. http://www.opensecrets.org/ http://www.militaryindustrialcomplex.com/contracts-leaderboard.asp The Center for Responsive Politics 1101 14th St., NW • Suite 1030, Washington, DC 20005-5635 (202) 857-0044 • fax (202) 857-7809 info@crp.org July 08