My God.
What a hellish nightmare!
Published on Sunday, June 3, 2007 by the Philadelphia Inquirer
What If Our Mercenaries Turn On Us?
by Chris Hedges
Armed units from the private security firm Blackwater USA opened fire in Baghdad streets twice in two days last week. It triggered a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, a reminder that the war in Iraq may be remembered mostly in our history books for empowering and building America’s first modern mercenary army.There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 armed security contractors working in Iraq, although there are no official figures and some estimates run much higher. Security contractors are not counted as part of the coalition forces. When the number of private mercenary fighters is added to other civilian military “contractors” who carry out logistical support activities such as food preparation, the number rises to about 126,000.
“We got 126,000 contractors over there, some of them making more than the secretary of defense,” said House defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman John Murtha (D., Pa.).
“How in the hell do you justify that?”
The privatization of war hands an incentive to American corporations, many with tremendous political clout, to keep us mired down in Iraq. But even more disturbing is the steady rise of this modern Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome was a paramilitary force that defied legal constraints, made violence part of the political discourse, and eventually plunged the Roman Republic into tyranny and despotism. Despotic movements need paramilitary forces that operate outside the law, forces that sow fear among potential opponents, and are capable of physically silencing those branded by their leaders as traitors. And in the wrong hands, a Blackwater could well become that force.
American taxpayers have so far handed a staggering $4 billion to “armed security” companies in Iraq such as Blackwater, according to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.). Tens of billions more have been paid to companies that provide logistical support. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) of the House Intelligence Committee estimates that 40 cents of every dollar spent on the occupation has gone to war contractors. It is unlikely that any of these corporations will push for an early withdrawal. The profits are too lucrative.
Mercenary forces like Blackwater operate beyond civilian and military law. They are covered by a 2004 edict passed by American occupation authorities in Iraq that immunizes all civilian contractors in Iraq from prosecution.
Blackwater, barely a decade old, has migrated from Iraq to set up operations in the United States and nine other countries. It trains Afghan security forces and has established a base a few miles from the Iranian border. The huge contracts from the war - including $750 million from the State Department since 2004 - have allowed Blackwater to amass a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including helicopter gunships. Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, points out that Blackwater has also constructed “the world’s largest private military facility - a 7,000-acre compound near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina.” Blackwater also recently opened a facility in Illinois (”Blackwater North”) and, despite local opposition, is moving ahead with plans to build another huge training base near San Diego. The company recently announced it was creating a private intelligence branch called “Total Intelligence.”
Erik Prince, who founded and runs Blackwater, is a man who appears to have little time for the niceties of democracy. He has close ties with the radical Christian Right and the Bush White House. He champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. His employees, in an act as cynical as it is dishonest, take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. But what he and his allies have built is a mercenary army, paid for with government money, which operates outside the law and without constitutional constraint.
Mercenary units are a vital instrument in the hands of despotic movements. Communist and fascist movements during the last century each built rogue paramilitary forces. And the appearance of Blackwater fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, may be a grim taste of the future. In New Orleans Blackwater charged the government $240,000 a day.
"It cannot happen here’ is always wrong,” the philosopher Karl Popper wrote. “A dictatorship can happen anywhere.”
The word contractor helps launder the fear and threat out of a more accurate term: “paramilitary force.” We’re not supposed to have such forces in the United States, but we now do. And if we have them, we have a potential threat to democracy. On U.S. soil, Blackwater so far has shown few signs of being an out-and-out rogue retainer army, though they looked the part in New Orleans. But were this country to become even a little less stable, outfits like Blackwater might see a heyday.
If the United States falls into a period of instability caused by another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown that triggers social unrest, or a series of environmental disasters, such paramilitary forces, protected and assisted by fellow ideologues in the police and military, could ruthlessly abolish what is left of our eroding democracy. War, with the huge profits it hands to corporations, and to right-wing interests such as the Christian Right, could become a permanent condition.
And the thugs with automatic weapons, black uniforms and wraparound sunglasses who appeared on the streets in New Orleans could appear on our streets.
(Excuse me, a moment, but NOLA's streets are our streets. How could it be otherwise? Not only are New Orleanians Americans, but many, many Americans have, at one time or anouther, visited the Big Easy. New Orleans, as the unique city it was, belonged to all of us. Still does, what's left of it.)
Chris Hedges (hedgesscoop@aol.com) is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and won a Pulitzer Prize as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. He is author, mostly recently, of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democracy. Show all posts
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
The Last Days Of Democracy
The Last Days of Democracy is a compelling and alarming last call to awaken the slumbering promise of our Constitution - or to watch our freedom slither away forever.
Corporate media has enabled tyranny to prevail over the truth, because they value profits over patriotism. This book is a wake-up call to save us from the final descent into an Orwellian world from which we will not be able to return. --
MARK KARLIN, Editor and Publisher of BuzzFlash.com
Yes, we provided a quotation of praise on the back cover of the "Last Days of Democracy." How can you resist a book that has sections that include:"The High-Priced Hookers of Mediaville" "Dumbing Down America" "Who Terrorized Whom on 9/11?""The Godfathers of K Street"And the first chapter is "The New American Dictatorship."
To boot, Elliot D. Cohen -- one of the co-authors -- writes occasionaly for BuzzFlash. In fact, one of his commentaries won a first place Project Censored Award for Buzzflash and him.How much more succinctly can you put it than the sub-title to Cohen's book: "How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship"?
Read it and weep. Then take to the streets and take back democracy.
READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW >>>
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Corporate media has enabled tyranny to prevail over the truth, because they value profits over patriotism. This book is a wake-up call to save us from the final descent into an Orwellian world from which we will not be able to return. --
MARK KARLIN, Editor and Publisher of BuzzFlash.com
Yes, we provided a quotation of praise on the back cover of the "Last Days of Democracy." How can you resist a book that has sections that include:"The High-Priced Hookers of Mediaville" "Dumbing Down America" "Who Terrorized Whom on 9/11?""The Godfathers of K Street"And the first chapter is "The New American Dictatorship."
To boot, Elliot D. Cohen -- one of the co-authors -- writes occasionaly for BuzzFlash. In fact, one of his commentaries won a first place Project Censored Award for Buzzflash and him.How much more succinctly can you put it than the sub-title to Cohen's book: "How Big Media and Power-Hungry Government Are Turning America into a Dictatorship"?
Read it and weep. Then take to the streets and take back democracy.
READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW >>>
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
"Voter Fraud" is Costing This Nation
Only our Democracy......
The Cost of a GOP Myth
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; A15
If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales clings to his job much longer, he may end up as the only remaining employee of the Justice Department. By resigning on Monday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty joined Gonzales's chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson; the department's White House liaison, Monica Goodling; and Justice official Michael Battle, who oversaw the dismissal of federal prosecutors, on the list of Gonzalesites who've left the building. At this point, the number of U.S. attorneys dismissed for political reasons still exceeds the number of Justice officials who've left because of their involvement in dismissing those attorneys or dissembling about it, but the ratio is tightening.
By now, it's abundantly clear that a number of the U.S. attorneys whom Gonzales's minions sent packing didn't live up to Karl Rove's expectations in one crucial particular: They had failed to ring up convictions, or even mount prosecutions, for voter fraud. As Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein reported in Monday's Post, five of the 12 federal prosecutors either sacked or considered for sacking last year had been singled out by Rove and other administration officials for nonperformance on voter fraud. Amazingly, all five came from states -- Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Wisconsin -- where Republicans were embroiled in tight election contests.
With the home office in Washington breathing down their necks, why did these experienced prosecutors fail to bring voter fraud indictments? The crime, after all, had become a major Justice Department concern. Starting in 2002, Justice required every U.S. attorney to designate a district election officer, whose job it would be to end this epidemic of electoral fraud. These officers' attendance was required at annual training seminars, where they were taught how to investigate, prosecute and convict fraudulent voters. The statutes were adequate; the investigators were primed, well funded and raring to go.
And nothing happened. For the simple reason that when it comes to voter fraud in America, there's no there there. Voter fraud is a myth -- not an urban or rural myth, as such, but a Republican one.
As a report authored this spring by Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, for the voter-rights program Project Vote makes unmistakably clear, the government's failure to prosecute or convict more than a handful of people for voter fraud isn't for lack of trying. Since 2002, the Justice Department's Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative has, as Gonzales put it, "made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority." And yet between October 2002 and September 2005, just 38 cases were brought nationally, and of those, 14 ended in dismissals or acquittals, 11 in guilty pleas, and 13 in convictions. Though a Justice Department manual on election crime states that these cases "may present an easier means of obtaining convictions than do other forms of public corruption," federal attorneys have failed to rack up those convictions, for the simple reason that incidents of fraud have been few and far between.
As the Republican Myth has it, nothing is more fraught with fraud than voter-registration campaigns waged in working-class and poor neighborhoods that are largely black or Hispanic. According to the 2004 Census, 15 percent of blacks and Hispanics were registered during such campaigns; the figure for whites is just 9 percent. But of those 38 prosecutions that the Justice Department brought between 2002 and 2005, a grand total of two were for fabricating or falsifying voter registration applications. This qualifies as one of our smaller crime waves.
From Rove's perspective, however, a crackdown on voter registration campaigns in minority communities made cold electoral sense. Shortly after George W. Bush became president, Rove began to impress upon leading Republicans the importance of the nation's changing demographics -- that with the nation becoming steadily less white, Republican survival depended on winning a greater share of black and Hispanic voters. That, of course, was just one way to address the party's electoral problem. The other, in close races, was to suppress black and Hispanic turnout -- a task that would become far easier if the airwaves were buzzing with news of voter-fraud indictments. It was a task that required federal prosecutors who would indict first and ask questions later.
And thus, as has so often been the case in the Bush presidency, a government department was instructed to negate its raison d'etre. Just as consumer protection and environmental protection agencies were transformed into agencies protecting manufacturers and despoilers, so Justice -- whose imperishable glory was its role in extending the franchise to African Americans during the civil rights years -- was told that its new mission was to suppress the franchise. When you think of it, it's surprising that anyone still works there at all.
meyersonh@washpost.com
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
The Cost of a GOP Myth
By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; A15
If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales clings to his job much longer, he may end up as the only remaining employee of the Justice Department. By resigning on Monday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty joined Gonzales's chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson; the department's White House liaison, Monica Goodling; and Justice official Michael Battle, who oversaw the dismissal of federal prosecutors, on the list of Gonzalesites who've left the building. At this point, the number of U.S. attorneys dismissed for political reasons still exceeds the number of Justice officials who've left because of their involvement in dismissing those attorneys or dissembling about it, but the ratio is tightening.
By now, it's abundantly clear that a number of the U.S. attorneys whom Gonzales's minions sent packing didn't live up to Karl Rove's expectations in one crucial particular: They had failed to ring up convictions, or even mount prosecutions, for voter fraud. As Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein reported in Monday's Post, five of the 12 federal prosecutors either sacked or considered for sacking last year had been singled out by Rove and other administration officials for nonperformance on voter fraud. Amazingly, all five came from states -- Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Washington and Wisconsin -- where Republicans were embroiled in tight election contests.
With the home office in Washington breathing down their necks, why did these experienced prosecutors fail to bring voter fraud indictments? The crime, after all, had become a major Justice Department concern. Starting in 2002, Justice required every U.S. attorney to designate a district election officer, whose job it would be to end this epidemic of electoral fraud. These officers' attendance was required at annual training seminars, where they were taught how to investigate, prosecute and convict fraudulent voters. The statutes were adequate; the investigators were primed, well funded and raring to go.
And nothing happened. For the simple reason that when it comes to voter fraud in America, there's no there there. Voter fraud is a myth -- not an urban or rural myth, as such, but a Republican one.
As a report authored this spring by Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Barnard College of Columbia University, for the voter-rights program Project Vote makes unmistakably clear, the government's failure to prosecute or convict more than a handful of people for voter fraud isn't for lack of trying. Since 2002, the Justice Department's Ballot Access and Voting Integrity Initiative has, as Gonzales put it, "made enforcement of election fraud and corruption offenses a top priority." And yet between October 2002 and September 2005, just 38 cases were brought nationally, and of those, 14 ended in dismissals or acquittals, 11 in guilty pleas, and 13 in convictions. Though a Justice Department manual on election crime states that these cases "may present an easier means of obtaining convictions than do other forms of public corruption," federal attorneys have failed to rack up those convictions, for the simple reason that incidents of fraud have been few and far between.
As the Republican Myth has it, nothing is more fraught with fraud than voter-registration campaigns waged in working-class and poor neighborhoods that are largely black or Hispanic. According to the 2004 Census, 15 percent of blacks and Hispanics were registered during such campaigns; the figure for whites is just 9 percent. But of those 38 prosecutions that the Justice Department brought between 2002 and 2005, a grand total of two were for fabricating or falsifying voter registration applications. This qualifies as one of our smaller crime waves.
From Rove's perspective, however, a crackdown on voter registration campaigns in minority communities made cold electoral sense. Shortly after George W. Bush became president, Rove began to impress upon leading Republicans the importance of the nation's changing demographics -- that with the nation becoming steadily less white, Republican survival depended on winning a greater share of black and Hispanic voters. That, of course, was just one way to address the party's electoral problem. The other, in close races, was to suppress black and Hispanic turnout -- a task that would become far easier if the airwaves were buzzing with news of voter-fraud indictments. It was a task that required federal prosecutors who would indict first and ask questions later.
And thus, as has so often been the case in the Bush presidency, a government department was instructed to negate its raison d'etre. Just as consumer protection and environmental protection agencies were transformed into agencies protecting manufacturers and despoilers, so Justice -- whose imperishable glory was its role in extending the franchise to African Americans during the civil rights years -- was told that its new mission was to suppress the franchise. When you think of it, it's surprising that anyone still works there at all.
meyersonh@washpost.com
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
McCain, Bush; What Democracy?
Who would expect the Bushites to give a hoot about what the "democratically elected" parliament of Iraq thinks about anything?
They don't care what our congress thinks, nor do they care what the people who elected that congress think.
People who steal elections in a so-called Democracy are not great lovers of Democracy.
McCain and Bush: Making a Mockery of Democracy in Iraq
It's an odd thing to be running for president while simultaneously denigrating the very idea of democracy. But, then, the Republican Party's relationship to democracy has become, to put it charitably, very odd. Right now, they're barely on speaking terms, and if they could just have the whole relationship annulled, they probably would. Just like Rudy did with his first marriage (you know, the one to his cousin that lasted 14 years).
But wasn't democracy in the Middle East what the entire Iraq adventure was all about? Or, I should say, wasn't it the reason of last resort when the other 217 reasons turned out to be lies? Well, apparently, the idea of bringing the Iraqis democracy was about as real as Saddam's WMD.
Just listen to John McCain -- the biggest supporter of the war outside of Dick Cheney -- on this week's Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked him about the fact that 144 members of the 275 person Iraqi parliament signed a legislative petition last week calling on the U.S. to set a timetable to withdraw:
RUSSERT: The duly elected people's bodies, the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal. That's more than a poll. Isn't that the voice of the people?
McCAIN: ...There is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi, quote, "parliament" said.
You could almost see the contempt dripping off McCain's lips: "The Iraqi, quote, 'parliament.'"
So what, pray tell, is the difference between a "parliament" and a parliament? To McCain it's apparently whether the parliament agrees with him. And, by the way, Senator, there is another word for "domestic political calculations": democracy. But McCain, like Bush, is too arrogant to believe that real democracy could ever include disagreement with their wishes.
The syllogism goes something like this:
a) I'm right. b) Democracy is right. c) Whatever I agree with is therefore "democracy" and whatever I don't agree with, isn't.
At least McCain didn't attack the Iraqi legislators as being "un-American."
Bush's lack of respect for democracy runs even deeper than McCain's and is topped only by his cynical use -- and abandonment -- of the concept.
Throughout the Iraq debacle, Bush has insisted that Iraq is a sovereign country ("Let Freedom Reign!") and that if the Iraqis didn't want us there we would leave. Indeed, in January 2005, on the eve of the Iraqi election, the president was asked if America would pull out of Iraq if the new government asked him to do so. "Absolutely," he replied. "This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."
But now that a majority of that government is calling for a withdrawal date, what has been the president's response? Silence. Which is standard operating procedure for those in this administration.
Any time they fail on their stated goals, they just make up new ones.
Any time a fact comes out that belies their increasingly skewed view of reality, they just deny it.
And as the circle of war supporters gets smaller and smaller, the last dead-enders -- which, unfortunately, includes every serious GOP candidate for president -- grow more detached.
What's worse for the president is that the war isn't even a left/right issue anymore -- and hasn't been for a long time now.
John McCain may discount what the Iraqi parliament did last week, but George Will doesn't. "We may be watching the wrong legislature," he told George Stephanopoulos on This Week.
"We're watching Congress on Capitol Hill. There are 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament -- 138 of them are occupied by people -- that's one more than a majority -- who signed a petition..."
But to McCain, Bush, Cheney and their dwindling allies, that doesn't matter. And if it means turning up their noses at democracy in action, so be it.
The danger for them, of course, is that it's a lot easier to discount democracy in Iraq than democracy back here at home. Americans made a "domestic political calculation" in November; they're going to make another in 2008. And "Making a Mockery of Democracy" isn't likely to be a winning campaign slogan for McCain or the GOP.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
They don't care what our congress thinks, nor do they care what the people who elected that congress think.
People who steal elections in a so-called Democracy are not great lovers of Democracy.
McCain and Bush: Making a Mockery of Democracy in Iraq
It's an odd thing to be running for president while simultaneously denigrating the very idea of democracy. But, then, the Republican Party's relationship to democracy has become, to put it charitably, very odd. Right now, they're barely on speaking terms, and if they could just have the whole relationship annulled, they probably would. Just like Rudy did with his first marriage (you know, the one to his cousin that lasted 14 years).
But wasn't democracy in the Middle East what the entire Iraq adventure was all about? Or, I should say, wasn't it the reason of last resort when the other 217 reasons turned out to be lies? Well, apparently, the idea of bringing the Iraqis democracy was about as real as Saddam's WMD.
Just listen to John McCain -- the biggest supporter of the war outside of Dick Cheney -- on this week's Meet the Press. Tim Russert asked him about the fact that 144 members of the 275 person Iraqi parliament signed a legislative petition last week calling on the U.S. to set a timetable to withdraw:
RUSSERT: The duly elected people's bodies, the U.S. Congress and the Iraqi parliament, say they want a troop withdrawal. That's more than a poll. Isn't that the voice of the people?
McCAIN: ...There is a certain amount of domestic political calculations involved there in what the Iraqi, quote, "parliament" said.
You could almost see the contempt dripping off McCain's lips: "The Iraqi, quote, 'parliament.'"
So what, pray tell, is the difference between a "parliament" and a parliament? To McCain it's apparently whether the parliament agrees with him. And, by the way, Senator, there is another word for "domestic political calculations": democracy. But McCain, like Bush, is too arrogant to believe that real democracy could ever include disagreement with their wishes.
The syllogism goes something like this:
a) I'm right. b) Democracy is right. c) Whatever I agree with is therefore "democracy" and whatever I don't agree with, isn't.
At least McCain didn't attack the Iraqi legislators as being "un-American."
Bush's lack of respect for democracy runs even deeper than McCain's and is topped only by his cynical use -- and abandonment -- of the concept.
Throughout the Iraq debacle, Bush has insisted that Iraq is a sovereign country ("Let Freedom Reign!") and that if the Iraqis didn't want us there we would leave. Indeed, in January 2005, on the eve of the Iraqi election, the president was asked if America would pull out of Iraq if the new government asked him to do so. "Absolutely," he replied. "This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."
But now that a majority of that government is calling for a withdrawal date, what has been the president's response? Silence. Which is standard operating procedure for those in this administration.
Any time they fail on their stated goals, they just make up new ones.
Any time a fact comes out that belies their increasingly skewed view of reality, they just deny it.
And as the circle of war supporters gets smaller and smaller, the last dead-enders -- which, unfortunately, includes every serious GOP candidate for president -- grow more detached.
What's worse for the president is that the war isn't even a left/right issue anymore -- and hasn't been for a long time now.
John McCain may discount what the Iraqi parliament did last week, but George Will doesn't. "We may be watching the wrong legislature," he told George Stephanopoulos on This Week.
"We're watching Congress on Capitol Hill. There are 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament -- 138 of them are occupied by people -- that's one more than a majority -- who signed a petition..."
But to McCain, Bush, Cheney and their dwindling allies, that doesn't matter. And if it means turning up their noses at democracy in action, so be it.
The danger for them, of course, is that it's a lot easier to discount democracy in Iraq than democracy back here at home. Americans made a "domestic political calculation" in November; they're going to make another in 2008. And "Making a Mockery of Democracy" isn't likely to be a winning campaign slogan for McCain or the GOP.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Lantern has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is The Lantern endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free
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