Re: COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON

Come on, Gunder, can you not be more frank?  Seriously, a number of us will 
respond to this cogent piece from you.  Thanks, pl

Quoting Andre Gunder Frank <franka@fiu.edu>:

> final draft - so far
> for posting, forwarding and other use
> 
> 
> 
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>                ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK
> 
> Senior Fellow                                      Residence
> World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
> Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
> 270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
> Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
> Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
> Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu
> 
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> 
> June 17- 20, 2003
> 
>   COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON
>  and Silent Surrender in America and the World
>   
>                               by
> 
>                       Andre   Gunder   Frank
>                                       
> 
> Be wary of conspiracy theories, beware of real conspiracies, and be
> aware
> of a grab of power. It has happened in Washington and its instigators
> are
> pursuing a policy of faits accomplis that attracts ever more people to
> jump on the band wagon.Pat Buchanon howeve says that it has already
> offended much of the American public.  The Bush administration has made
> a
> real Coup d'Etat and achieved its apparently unknowing acceptance by
> America and the World. Even Hitler and Mussolini came to power by
> electoral routes and Stalin and Latin American dictators had to resort
> to
> violence to make their coups d'etat. Bush and his small coterie
> required
> none of these to get to the seat of power. Since then, he has
> repeatedly
> and grossly violated his oath of ofice to "preserve, protect and
> defend
> the Constitution of the United States."
> 
> THE COUP
> 
> To begin with, Bush's accession to the Presidency was in violation to
> the
> Constitution. It is not that he received a minority of the popular
> vote,
> because the Constitution provides for the President's election  by the
> Electoral College. But Bush received the Electoral College vote by
> fraud,
> for he lost the decisive popular and thereby electoral vote in
> Florida. His brother Jeb as Governor of Florida with the help of Mrs
> Harris as Secretary of State [ who it has been alleged  without
> evidence
> was his lover, but who certainly herself declared that she expected
> high
> political favors for her actions]  first deprived hundreds of thousands
> of
> black and presumably Democratic voters of the vote through
> incarceration,
> intimidation, and other means. The Republican Cuban Mafia sent its
> goon
> squads physically to prevent a recount in Broward County. Mrs. Harris
> did
> all she could, which was plenty, to interfere with recounts in other
> counties in Florida. The alleged recounts that  were made were a
> sham. They only recounted votes that were NOT counted in the first
> count
> by voters who had been unable to punch holes all the way through the
> voting cards without leaving the infamous hanging chads. Yet much more
> importantly one either before the decision or afterwards when the
> newspapers did it again, NO one   ever recounted the votes that HAD
> been
> for the Democrats but were discounted because  voter mistakenly also
> punched a second hole on a confusing ballot. Yet even the third and
> most
> conservative candidate Pat Buchanon declared publicly that these
> duplicate
> votes in heavily Jewish and Democratic counties were surely not for
> him
> but for the  Democratic Party candidate. These votes [or even  half of
> them if they had been allotted also to other candidates]  would have
> given
> a decisive majority of the popular vote and therefore of the Electoral
> College votes in Florida to the Democrats.  Yet they were never counted
> or
> recounted for the Democrats.
> 
> In the end Bush was not elected, but was SElected in the Supreme Court
> by
> the decisive political swing vote of Justice Kennedy. Justice Scalia's
> vote was already in the bag and he bad two sons working for the Bush
> campaign.The Supreme Court's appealed to the 14th amendment, which
> guarantees due process of Law to all, was ironically biased. For it
> was
> selectively applied without due process to squash the popular vote in
> Florida, but the same due process procedures were not applied to
> challenged votes in any other State. That in itself was already a
> defacto
> coup d' etat.
> 
> Then, several members of the House of Representatives called for a
> challenge of  the Electoral College under Constitutional provisions
> that
> permit the Congress to do so if the challenge has the support of  at
> least
> one member  of both houses. Yet they were  not joined by even a single
> Senator, who would have made  the challenge legally effective. In
> other
> words, the Congress simply acquiessed to this power grab by the Bush
> administration through a Coup d'eat with the help of the Supreme Court
> but in clear violation to the Constitution. 
> 
> That was the beginning of the violation of the Constitutional
> separation
> of powers and checks and balances. Since then,  the Bush
> administration
> has carried  these violations farther than any previous one in the
> history
> of the United States. Not even President Lincoln in the Civil War, nor
> President Roosevelt in the Second World War nor his previous attempt
> to
> stack the Supreme Court, ever grabbed and concentrated as much power
> for
> the executive branch while marginalizing the Legislative branch and
> the
> Judiciary. 
> 
> Beware of Conspiracy Theories.  But be aware  that it was really
> Vice-President elect Dick Cheney who then put together the   Bush
> Administration, selecting whom to place in which positions of power,
> especially in defense affairs. And beware of   PNAC, the Project for a
> New
> American Century, which was  already lobbying Washington  with their
> plans
> for a "Pax Americana" in 1992, 1997, and 2000 among other notable
> dates. PNAC issued a long report in  September of 2000  entitled
> "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a
> New
> Century."  Its statement of principles  calls for a massive increase
> in
> military power,  U.S. military domination of Eurasia to prevent the
> rise
> of hostile powers;  and pre-emptive [not just pre-ventive] military
> action
> against states suspected of developing weapons of mass
> destruction.  PNAC's prescriptions have been converted into official
> US
> policy and praxis by the Bush Administration. 
>  
> PNAC founding members and signatories of its statements include 
> - Cheyney himself, 
> - Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant and now
> the Vice-President's chief-of-staff 
> - Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member, now Secretary of Defense 
> - Paul Wolfowitz, now Deputy Defense Secretary and
> arguably the groups ideologue 
> - Elliot Abrams,  pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal
> and now member of the  National Security Council
> - John Bolton,  Undersecretary for Arms Control and International
> Security 
> - Richard Perle, the most outspoken hawk in the  Reagan
> administration who advocates dumping the United Nations,
> then  chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board, who was forced to
> resign one of his positions over a conflict of interest scandal, 
> - Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of
> Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an
> advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001
> - Bruce Jackson,  now  Chairman of PNAC and former  vice president
> of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin who headed the Republican
> Party
> Platform subcommittee for National Security where he called for - as
> had
> Wolfowitz for some years -  the removal of Saddam Hussein
> - William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly
> Standard, a magazine owned along with the most hawkish Fox News
> Network
> owned by Ruppert Murdoch
> - Norman Podhoretz, editor of the right wing Commentary
> -  and others, like Robert Kaplan and Douglas Feith . 
> 
> The core group of PNAC now hold the highest positions of policy making
> power in the Pentagon and much of it in the White House. They have
> also
> planted one of their group in the State Department to keep an eye and
> check on Colin Powell who is the only major foreign policy player who
> is
> not a member of this inner sanctum. An interesting sidelight is that
> Wolfowitz , Perle and Feith also went to Isralel to serve as advisors
> to
> Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's party, for whom they drew up a battle
> plan
> against the Palestinians.  Behind them lies the strange ideological
> bed-fellow political alliance of two of the most powerful lobbies in
> the
> United States:  Organized Zionism and Christian Fundamentalism.  For
> good
> measure , throw in the Cuban Mafia as well.
> 
> Another matter to consider  are some of the connections of these same
> people with the private sector. Two examples should suffice to give a
> general idea.  Cheney was chairman of Haliburton Inc., which in turn
> owns
> Brown & Root and other habitual contractors of the Defense Department
> for
> major construction and/or petroleum projects around the world. One of
> these companies was awarded a 1 Billion dollar contract to re-build
> the
> Iraqi oil fields in case they should be damaged in the war. Another,
> of
> which the now "Prime Minister" of Afghanistan was a director,  is first
> in
> line to build the proposed oil and gas pipeline across Afghanistan 
> from
> Central Asia to the Indian Ocean.  The Bush family and George W.  Bush
> himself have long standing business relations with the Carlyle Group,
> which also represents the Bin Laden family, including Osama, with whom
> they have also maintained direct relations.
> 
> The White House and the Executive Branch generally has made full use
> of
> its new power to serve its economic and  political allies.  Those who
> made
> the largest campaign contributions have been handsomely rewarded  with
> government hand-outs and regulations, or rather de-regulation.  The
> Bush
> administration has issued at least 200 separate executive orders to
> roll
> back regulations enacted by previous administrations, even Republican
> ones, to protect the environment and/or Public Health and
> Safety.  Executive Order has  received a whole new meaning: Special
> interests write an order that is passed to the President for his
> signature,  whereby mostly without knowing what he is doing he converts
> it
> into an Executive Order. 
> 
> The Pentagon has petitioned the White House to exempt it from 
> existing
> environmental protection regulations that hamper their disposal of
> spent
> munitions and other hardware and thereby interfere with ''national
> security. "  The President deliberately appointed as Secretary of the
> Interior a person known for her ties to the timber and oil industries
> to
> whose exploitation she seeks to open thousands of acres of federally
> owned
> lands as well as  the Alaska Wilderness for the construction of a new
> pipe-line - all in the interest of course of ''national security."   
> 
> THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTION
> 
> More serious still, the Bush administration has shredded the Bill of
> Rights, abrogated the Constitution, and even violates the age - old
> common
> law of Habeus  Corpus,  which prohibits the detention  and holding of
> anybody against his will without due process of law.  Elsewhere in the
> Executive Branch, President Bush appointed and lent full support to
> Attorney General John Ashcroft  who was already known for his racist
> and
> authoritarian inclinations. Although many Senators had doubts about
> his
> appointment, the Senate ratified it anyway.  Since then, Attorney
> General
> Ashcroft and his staff have converted several arms of the Department
> of
> Justice into those of a police state. The Executive has encouraged and
> permitted the Attorney General and the Department of Justice Judiciary
> Branch to violate the Bill of Rights and the Constitution on multiple
> counts.  For instance,  the US Government already claims the right to
> monitor all e-mail and to bug telephone conversations without 
> specific
> judicial permission.
> 
> The Bush Administration brought Admiral Pointdexter back into
> government
> after his participation in the Iran-Contra Scandal and lyiung about it
> to
> Congress. His new mission is a  project,called Total Information
> Awareness
> (TIA): to develop computers to monitor "vast quantities of data
> generated
> by US civilians in their daily lives: Academic transcripts, ATM
> receipts,
> prescription drugs, telephone calls,  driving licences, airline
> tickets,
> parking permits, mortgage payments,  banking records, emails, website
> visits and credit card slips" [The Guardian   November 23, 2002]. 
> 
> In  critique of all this and the Patriot Act, only the lone voice in
> Congress of Representative Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio)  has asked  
>  "How can we justify in effect   canceling 
> - the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to
> peaceably
> assemble? 
> - the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against
> unreasonable search and seizure?
> - the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for
> indefinite
> incarceration without a trial?
> - the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial? 
> -  the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual
> punishment?"
> The fouteenth amendment guaratnteeing due process of law is being
> violated
> every day.
> 
>  AND JUSTICE  FOR ALL?                                                  
> 
> 
> The Constitution makes all the rights it guarantees extensive to
> anybody
> in the US, but the Attorney General has declared that non- citizens
> are
> not worthy of protection by the Constitution. We do not know yet how
> much
> of a loss that is because the Department of Justice and its
> Immigration
> and Naturalization Service[INS] have also proposed to divest
> naturalized
> and even native-born American Citizens of their citizenship, again in
> clear violation of the Constitution.  And even those who remain
> citizens
> are under constant threat to have their rights violated without due
> process under the fourteenth amendment, or to be detained in violation
> of
> Habeus Corpus. They are denied representation by legal counsel and
> trial
> in civil courts, as provided for by the Constitution. In particular,
> hundreds of thousands of American residents and Citizens of Arab
> descent
> or even of features that appear to individual agents of the Department
> of
> Justice or the police's racial profiling as perhaps being Arab, or
> Muslim,
> or who knows what else have been called in for questioning.  When they
> appeared in Los Angles, they were detained without charge.  They now
> live
> in constant fear of the infamous knock on the door at 3 AM that was
> made
> infamous by Hitler's Gestapo and Stalin's GPU. That is so if they are
> even
> favored by a knock on the door before a blast of gunfire of shooting
> first
> and asking questions later, which has also happened.
> 
> So far as we know of over 700 people who have remained in detention
> since
> September 2001; though there may be many more, since nobody knows or
> says
> where they are, or who they are, or what they are accused of. Indeed,
> only
> a dozen of these have ever been charged with anything. The others
> remain
> out of sight and out of mind except for their families who are not
> allowed
> even to secure legal representation for them.  So do the innocent
> Afghani
> prisoners brought in shackles to Guantanamo where it still keeps them
> without accounting to anybody, and the countless ones still detained
> under
> horrible conditions in Afghanistan. How come There is no public outcry
> about any of these? Instead,  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reports on June 18,
> 2003 that  Names of 9/11 Detainees Can Remain Secret,Court Rules," and
> "Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the ruling [in which] ...for the
> 
> first time in U.S. history, a court has approved secret
> arrests" [www..reuters.com/newsArticle]. 
> 
> On the other hand, the same Executive Branch has divested the Judiciary
> of
> powers and the citizenry of judicial protection by illegally
> transferring
> powers of the Judiciary to itself. Perhaps only the most visible tip
> of
> the iceberg of this process is the Bush Administration and Pentagon
> declaration that it will bring normally civil suits before military
> tribunals that operate under rules of court marshal and other
> procedures
> of Military "Justice"  that can order death sentences without
> appeal. Moroever, the accused do not know whereof, cannot chose legal
> counsel, and  their conversation with whom can be overheard by the
> authorities. The prestigious very conservative publicist William
> Saffire
> refers to them as ''kangaroo courts" and observes that "no longer does
> the
> judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government
> and
> the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to
> our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now
> investigator,
> prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian
> twist,
> Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair
> trial'." 
> 
> THE LAND OF THE FREE
> 
> John Ashcroft has also issued instructions to the Department of Justice
> to
> resist as far as possible the delivery of documents under the Freedom
> of
> Information Act.  And the Executive itself has severely restricted the
> kind and number of documents of its own that it is prepared to make
> public.  In other words,  transparency  and therefore control or even
> critique of the ever widening powers and their use by the Executive
> Branch
> is itself being severely restricted. On the other hand, the Executive
> Branch has multiplied its own access to information. During the
> congressional debate on John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act, an American
> Civil
> Liberties Union fact sheet on the bill's assaults on the Bill of
> Rights
> revealed that Section 215 of the act "would grant FBI agents across
> the
> country breathtaking authority to obtain an order from the FISA
> [Foreign
> Intelligence Surveillance Act] court . . . requiring any
> person or business to produce any books, records, documents, or
> items."  That includes bookstores and public libraries being obliged
> to
> divulge who is reading what. This is now the law, 
> 
> Alas, the Congress has been intimidated into passive acceptance of
> virtually everything and anything the Executive proposes and demands. 
> It
> passed the Patriot Act  that severely restricts civil liberties
> virtually
> without reading it.  The proposed Patriot Act # 2 has not even bee
> submitted to the Congress for study and yet the version leaked by the
> Press suggests that it proposes even more of a police state than the
> first
> one.  When the Leader of the Democratic Majority in the Senate voiced
> only
> the mildest doubts about Bush's military moves, he was immediately
> reprimanded by his Republican Majority Leader counterpart Lott, for
> ''how
> dare he criticize the President in time of war!"  Both have been forced
> to
> resign since then, but for scandals unconnected to that one. 
> 
> Moreover, the Executive has been more than secretive about the events
> and
> circumstances of September 11, 2001; and the Congress has not launched
> any
> serious inquiry of its own. Neither have the Media. There has not even
> been any public inquiry or disclosure into the failure of the Air Force
> or
> National Guard to scramble fighter aircraft to investigate the
> airliners
> that had clearly gone off course.  That is every day routine standard
> operating procedure, but it was called off or at least not enacted
> during
> the 90 minutes that elapsed between the crash into the first World
> Trade
> Tower and the one into the Pentagon - that is IF the Pentagon was
> damaged
> by an aircraft which has been seriously questioned if only because no
> evidence has ever been made public that it was hit by an airplane and
> not,
> as some allege, by a missle.  Nor has the government given any account
> of
> its receipt and disregard of multiple forewarnings from intelligence
> agencies among its allies in Pakistan, Russia, Germany, France, Israel.
> In
> other words, the very circumstances that allegedly require all these
> domestic and foreign responses by the Bush Administration are
> themselves
> wrapped in a shroud of self-imposed secrecy.
>  
> The violation of the Constitutional provisions for the separation of
> powers is particularly flagrant regarding the powers reserved to the
> Legislative Branch of the Congress and the Constitutional prohibition
> against military action in domestic civil affairs.  Bush also
> disregards
> the Constitutional provision that only Congress may declare war, and
> it
> violates the 1976 War Powers act that Congress passed to regulate that
> Constitutional provision after it had been grossly violated in the
> Vietnam
> War. The Bush administration has de facto-also abrogated the 1878
> Posse
> Comitatus Act that prohibits military participation in the enforcement
> of
> civil law, and it violates the general Constitutional provision
> against
> the military action in domestic affairs.  Instead, the Bush
> Administration
> has visibly mobilized the Armed Forces and National Guard around all
> US
> airports and elsewhere, and the Pentagon is drawing up plans for its
> intervention in endless domestic affairs. It stands to reason that the
> machine gun toting military presence in the passenger areas of
> airports
> has not added one iota to security but serves only to terrorize the
> public
> into blind and passive acceptance of the violation of their civil
> rights
> there and elsewhere. Even the government has stated repeatedly that
> any
> other terrorist attack on the US is not likely to copy that of
> September
> 11, 2001 but to take totally different forms against which this
> military
> presence would offer no defense. Indeed, it would not have prevented
> that
> of September 11 either.  The pretext that the country is at war is
> being
> used as cover for US government terror of its own at home and abroad;
> and
> the country is being militarized as never before, not even in war
> time.
> 
> The Pentagon is extending its actions in American Civil Affairs ever
> more,
> also by establishing a new office of Under Secretary of Defense for
> Homeland Security, which then created a northern command to coordinate
> military response to domestic threats. The Pentagon also has a new
> Under
> Secretary for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who said the existing
> agencies will continue with their work but that his unit will ensure
> that
> they are meeting the intelligence needs and priorities laid out by the
> Pentagon, also at home [Boston Globe June 8, 2003].
> 
> PAX AMERICANA
> 
> The Pentagon is also expanding into previously unimagined places and
> roles
> overseas.  There are now well over 100 US military bases around the
> world.  
> and current US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of
> Africa, Colombia, the former Yugoslavia, South Korea, the Philippines,
> and
> former Soviet states such as Georgia. The latest details, disclosed by
> the
> Wall Street Journal on June 10th, include plans to increase U.S. forces
> in
> Djibouti on the Horn of Africa across the Red Sea from Yemen, setting
> up
> semi-permanent "forward bases" in Algeria, Morocco, and possibly
> Tunisia,
> and smaller facilities in Senegal, Ghana, and Mali that could be used
> to
> intervene in oil-rich West African countries, particularly Nigeria.
> Similar bases--or what some call lily pads--are now being sought or
> expanded in northern Australia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines,
> Kenya, Georgia, Azerbaijan, throughout Central Asia, Poland, Romania,
> Bulgaria, Qatar, even Vietnam, and Iraq. The new republics in former
> Soviet Central Asia and the former Soviet satellite states in Eastern
> Europe are a particularly strong magnets for U.S. military presence, and
> a
> glance at the map will show that the US is systematically encircling
> China. Moreover, the Pentagon military missions are marginalizing the
> State Department diplomatic ones, with the senior military officer
> having
> more resources and greater influence than the US ambassador [Boston
> Globe,
> June 8 2003].
> 
> Even so, the Associated Press reports on February 24 that " senior
> U.S.
> officials have been quietly dispatched in recent days to the capitals
> of
> key Security Council countries where they are warning leaders to vote
> with
> the United States on Iraq or risk "paying a heavy price."  Although
> this
> kind of blackmail has been SOP in all American administrations, the
> Bush
> Administration has carried the threat and practice to previously
> unheard
> of new heights. President Bush declared in his State of the Union
> address
> referring to the battle against terrorism,  as John Foster
> Dulles  had during th Cold War, essentially that those who are
> not with us, are against us - and will pay a heavy price.
> 
> "We are in the process of taking a fundamental look at our military
> posture worldwide, including in the United States," said Deputy
> Defense
> Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on a recent visit to Singapore, where he met
> with
> military chiefs and defense ministers from throughout East Asia about
> U.S. plans there. "We're facing a very different threat than any one
> we've
> faced historically."  But recall that this is the same Wolfowitz of
> Arabia
> talking who drew up his and PNAC's plans to face this ''different
> threat''
> already in his  memos of 1992, 1997 and 2000.
> 
> THE LAW OF THE WEST
> 
> The Busch administration has also set aside centuries of International
> law.  It wages illegal  war, prohibited by numerous international
> treaties
> and by the United Nations Charter.   Indeed it makes war without even
> declaring it, which even Hitler took the trouble to do. The US armed
> forces wantonly violate Geneva conventions of crimes against humanity,
> genocide, weapons of mass destruction such as  depleted uranium,
> cluster
> bombs,  massive ''Daisy Cutter" bombs,  destruction of civilian
> facilities
> to  provide as power, water, and sanitation, and even neutral
> international waterways as when it deliberately blocked shipping on
> the
> Danube. 
> 
> The Bush Administration [ though Presidents Clinton and Bush Sr. also
> already earlier] have completely emasculated the United Nations
> instruments and procedures set up by the US and its allies after World
> War
> II to preserve the peace. Bush even had the gall to go to the UN and
> charge it with dereliction of duty and of its reputation by failing to
> give its stamp of approval for his War against Iraq - when the clear
> duty
> of the UN and especially of its Security Council is not to make war but
> to
> keep the peace.  His government and his lackey press mislead the
> public
> into believing that a Security Council resolution could legalize his
> war.
> The fact is that even with an SC resolution, his father's War against
> Iraq
> in 1991 was in clear violation of Articles 2, 27, 41, 42, 43 and 53 of
> the
> UN Charter, among others. The failure of the NATO states even to
> consult
> the UN before going to War against Yugoslavia and as did President
> Clinton
> and NATO, and then present President to wage War against Afghanistan
> without the slightest provocation from its government, and then to
> make
> War on Iraq in clear violation of the expressed desires of the UN
> membership only illustrate the total abandonment of the UN as an
> institution and instrument for peace.  On the contrary, after the US
> bombs
> a country into shambles, it then goes to the UN to ask it to pick up
> the
> pieces, or in plain English allegedly to legitimize the US military
> occupation of the country it had just destroyed. But not only that,
> violation of international law also constitutes ipso facto violation
> of
> national law, because Senate ratification of an international treaty
> converts it into US law as well.  Moreover, domestic democracy has
> been
> sacrificed to waging international war as well, as when NATO did so
> against Yugoslavia without even a single member country government
> troubling itself to ask its parliament or Congress for authorization to
> do
> so.
> 
> In a word,  the US has  replaced  existing International law by new Law
> IN
> the West on the model of  its own old Law OF  the West.  Then in the
> 19th
> century,  vigilante lynch mobs  formed ad hoc possees to go hang
> whomever
> they wanted;  and now the US is  imposing this  Vigilante "Law" on the
> rest of the world by force. And as the vigilantes  bought off or
> terrorized the sheriff and the judge to ''legitimize" themselves,  so
> is
> the US doing the same world wide in the real world as though in both
> instances following the scripts of fictitious Spaghetti Western films.
> 
>  
> THE MEDIA
> 
> And what of the Fourth Estate - the Media?  They are strictly the
> mouthpiece of the Administration.  Note their behavior at White House,
> State Department, or Pentagon news conferences. All their questions
> are
> limited to technicalities about the implementation of Administration
> policies that are themselves accepted carte blanche. Never ever has
> any
> representative of the media posed a question that challenges the basis
> of
> the official policy in even the most timid way.  Indeed, not only what
> the
> press says or does not say reflects the policy and press- releases of
> the
> Administration.  The very Media selection of what is or is not
> ''news,''
> e.g on the 630 Evening News of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and shame on
> PPS
> for carrying the just as bad Jim Lehrer News Hour,   is a simple
> reflection of what the White House or the State Department have
> declared
> to be ''news'' that morning. No matter how world shaking an event, if
> it
> has not shaken the piper, it does not merit mention by the media.  But
> whatever the White House or the State Department declares to be news
> IS
> news.   
> 
> Their pieces in the press are little better.  In a survey of op-eds in
> the
> Washington POST over four months, Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
> found twice as many columns for as against the war, and in February
> 2003
> the count was 24 in favor and 10 against, while the POST itself brought
> 9
> editorials of its own to support the war. And that was regarding a war
> that had the highest popular opposition ever.The TV and radio talk
> shows
> are even more dominated by defenders of Administration policy.  No
> matter
> that the Administration cooks, blends,  massages and even simply
> invents
> the news; as is finally emerging regarding the  non-existent weapons
> of
> mass destruction, which were the alleged reason for waging War against
> Iraq.
>  
> 
> THE HOME OF THE BRAVE FROM 1984 TO 2003
> 
> George Orwell would have to regard his dire predictions of Big Brother
> for
> 1984 as a benign Alice in  a  charming Wonderland version of Animal
> Farm
> compared to the 2003 Bush and Ashcroft reality of  double-think and
> new-speak in which  however some are no longer equal than others,
> either
> at home or abroad,  but still  WAR IS PEACE - really - the President
> said
> so.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
>