[Mb-civic] There is Such a Thing as "Too Late" and "Democratic Police State"

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Reading the following two articles may take you 10 minutes or so and 
will make you a more informed and alert "citizen of the empire"......


http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0819-33.htm

Published on Friday, August 19, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
There is Such a Thing as “Too Late”
by Ray McGovern
 

President Bush still refuses to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the Rosa 
Parks of Crawford, Texas, but there is some good news. While 
Crawford’s Camp Casey (named after Cindy’s son killed in Iraq on 
April 4, 2004) continues to be short on amenities, a sympathetic 
neighbor has given the hundred or so friends I left there on 
Wednesday a field in which they can pitch their tents. No longer will 
they have to try to sleep in the seven-foot wide ditch alongside the 
road, with local pick-up trucks and Secret Service SUVs whizzing by 
honking reveille at 5:00 AM. In addition, newly donated tarps are 
providing some protection from fire ants by night and the 105-degree 
sun by day.

A rumor ran through the camp that Karl Rove set loose the fire ants 
into the ditches in the same way he has loosed the rabid talk-show-
dogs that have been barking at Cindy. But it turns out the ants are 
indigenous—like other local pests.

While at Camp Casey I had a daydream. I visualized turning Crawford 
into Selma. Think of it: 40 years later, thousands of us crossing a new 
Edmund Pettus Bridge—this time over Tonk Creek en route to the 
Texas White House. There is legal precedent. In 1965, Federal District 
Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. weighed the right of mobility 
against the right to march and ruled in favor of those marching from 
Selma to Montgomery. Judge Johnson ruled:

    “The law is clear that the right to petition one’s government for the 
redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...and these 
rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways.”

Folks ask me what I think Cindy Sheehan and her devoted supporters 
need most at Camp Casey. In my view, the answer is simple: They 
have built it; will you come? Your bodies are needed on site to help 
petition our government for redress of the grievance of reckless 
endangerment of the bodies and the souls of the young men and 
women sent off to wage an unnecessary war.

Can We Do Something Else to Help?

Two years after the march from Selma to Montgomery Dr. Martin 
Luther King, Jr. took the pulpit at Riverside Church in New York City 
and gave a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” 
Today we can substitute “Iraq” for “Vietnam.” Dr. King spoke clearly:

    “Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any 
concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the 
present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the 
autopsy must read Vietnam.”

Ignore. That’s what the vast majority of Germans did in the 1930s as 
Hitler curtailed civil liberties and launched aggressive wars. I was born 
in August 1939, a week before Hitler sent German tanks into Poland to 
start World War II. I have studied that crucial time in some detail. And 
during the five years I served in Germany I had occasion to ask all 
manner of people how it could possibly be that, highly educated and 
cultured as they were, the Germans for the most part could simply 
ignore. Why was it that the institutional churches, Catholic and 
Evangelical Lutheran, could not find their voice? Why was it that so few 
spoke out?

A few did...and they provide good example for us today. Lutheran 
Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out, plotted against Hitler, and was 
executed. Also executed was a more obscure but equally courageous 
professor from the University of Berlin, Albrecht Haushofer.

Like Bonhoeffer, Haushofer was arrested for speaking out. The SS 
prison guards were required to extract a confession from prisoners 
before they were hanged or shot, but Haushofer refused. When they 
removed his body, though, a paper fell out of his pocket. It was his 
admission of guilt written in the form of a sonnet:

Schuld
...schuldig bin ich Anders als Ihr denkt.
Ich musste früher meine Pflicht erkennen;
Ich musste schärfer Unheil Unheil nennen;
Mein Urteil habe ich zu lang gelenkt...
Ich habe gewarnt,
Aber nicht genug, und klar;
Und heute weiß ich, was ich schuldig war.

Guilt
I am guilty,
But not in the way you think.
I should have earlier recognized my duty;
I should have more sharply called evil evil;
I reined in my judgment too long.
I did warn,
But not enough, and clear;
And today I know what I was guilty of.

At Riverside Church 22 years later, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began 
by quoting a statement by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About 
Vietnam: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Dr. King added, 
“That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”

And that time has come for us in relation to Iraq. But where are the 
Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Iraq? Where are the successors 
to Dr. King, to Bonhoeffer, to Professor Haushofer? “There is only us,” 
says Annie Dillard, and she is right of course. We are the ones we’ve 
been waiting for.

Dr. King was typically direct: “We must speak with all the humility that 
is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak....there is such a 
thing as being too late....Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and 
dejected with lost opportunity....Over the bleached bones of numerous 
civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.”

An Example to Follow

I believe Cindy Sheehan provides prophetic example for us all. She let 
herself be guided by the spirit within. President George W. Bush had 
said that the sacrifice of our dead soldiers, including Casey, was “worth 
it.” And earlier this month he added that it was all in a “noble cause.” 
Cindy, while giving a talk at a conference in Dallas, spontaneously 
asked if someone would come with her to Crawford, because she 
needed to ask the president what it was that he was describing as a 
“noble cause.” You know the first chapter of the rest of the story. The 
point I would make here is simply that she was open to the spirit within, 
decided to follow its prompting, and did not hesitate to claim the help 
she needed. Cindy used her conference speech to speak out clearly, 
as she has been doing for these past several months, and then she 
acted.

Is it not time for us—each of us—to be open to such prompting. Is it 
not time for us, amid the carnage in Iraq, amid a presidentially 
promulgated policy permitting torture “consistent with military 
necessity,” amid growing signs of an attack by Israel and/or the U.S. 
on Iran—is it not high time for us to speak...and to act. How, in God’s 
name, can we not act?

Creative Protest

Dr. King enjoined his listeners at Riverside Church to “seek out every 
creative means of protest possible,” in matching actions with our 
words.

Not all of us can join the march to Selma...I mean Crawford. So let’s 
be creative.

I wear a t-shirt with a representation of Arlington West on the front. At 
7:30 AM every Sunday, Veterans for Peace in the area of Los Angeles 
bring white crosses, stars of David, and crescents, down to Santa 
Monica beach as a poignant reminder of those troops killed in Iraq. 
The crosses, stars, and crescents are arrayed respectfully in lines as 
hauntingly straight as those here in our own Arlington Cemetery.

When a few months ago I had the privilege of helping my veteran 
colleagues set up Arlington West, there were 1,600 crosses, stars, 
crescents, and it took three hours to set them in place. We are fast 
approaching 1,900; I don’t know how long it takes to emplace them 
now. When the veterans of Arlington West heard of Cindy Sheehan’s 
courageous witness in Crawford, they packed up 800 and drove all 
night to ensure that a large slice of Arlington West could be emplaced 
in newly created Arlington Crawford at Camp Casey.

That’s creative, no? Here we already have “Arlington East” to honor 
the dead. But what about the thousands and thousands of wounded? 
Can we be imaginative enough to discern visually creative ways to 
witness to and honor our wounded? And what about all the Iraqi 
civilians—“collateral damage,” in military parlance—who, absent the 
war, would be alive today? The number of civilian dead was put as 
high as 100,000 a year ago. Our government does not consider Iraqi 
casualties worth counting. Is this a way of saying that, in our country’s 
view, Iraqis don’t count? Have we become so callous as to ignore, and 
thus acquiesce in that?

These are some spontaneous thoughts...the only suggestions that 
occur to me this evening regarding things we might consider doing to 
walk the talk. No doubt, you will have more imaginative, more creative 
ideas. Don’t wait. Remember: there is such a thing as being too late.

The fire ants were not the only pests in Crawford. There were a few 
unfriendly folks who kept telling us to go to hell. That brought to mind 
the dictum of the 18th century English statesman and philosopher 
Edmund Burke: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, 
in times of crisis, remain neutral.”

Let’s not oblige the pests; I understand that hell is even hotter than 
Crawford.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the 
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC, and is co-
founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. On 
Wednesday, he arrived home in Arlington, VA, after five days in 
Crawford, and shared these remarks with 300 neighbors at the close 
of a candlelight observance in honor of Cindy Sheehan.

###

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082305K.shtml

    The Rise of the Democratic Police State
    By John Pilger
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 23 August 2005

    Thomas Friedman is a famous columnist on the New York Times. 
He has been described as "a guard dog of US foreign policy". 
Whatever America's warlords have in mind for the rest of humanity, 
Friedman will bark it. He boasts that "the hidden hand of the market 
will never work without a hidden fist". He promotes bombing countries 
and says world war three has begun.

    Friedman's latest bark is about free speech, which his country's 
constitution is said to safeguard. He wants the State Department to 
draw up a blacklist of those who make "wrong" political statements. He 
is referring not only to those who advocate violence, but those who 
believe American actions are the root cause of the current terrorism. 
The latter group, which he describes as "just one notch less 
despicable than the terrorists", includes most Americans and Britons, 
according to the latest polls.

    Friedman wants a "War of Ideas report" that names those who try to 
understand and explain, for example, why London was bombed. These 
are "excuse makers" who "deserve to be exposed". He borrows the 
term "excuse makers" from James Rubin, who was Madeleine 
Albright's chief apologist at the State Department. Albright, who rose to 
secretary of state under President Clinton, said that the death of half a 
million Iraqi infants as a result of an American-driven blockade was a 
"price" that was "worth it". Of all the interviews I have filmed in official 
Washington, Rubin's defence of this mass killing is unforgettable.

    Farce is never far away in these matters. The "excuse makers" 
would also include the CIA, which has warned that "Iraq [since the 
invasion] has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next 
generation of 'professionalised' terrorists'." Onto the Friedman/Rubin 
blacklist go the spooks!

    Like so much else during the Blair era, this McCarthyite rubbish has 
floated across the Atlantic and is now being recycled by the prime 
minister as proposed police-state legislation, little different from the 
fascist yearnings of Friedman and other extremists. For Friedman's 
blacklist, read Tony Blair's proposed database of proscribed opinions, 
bookshops, websites.

    The British human rights lawyer Linda Christian asks: "Are those 
who feel a huge sense of injustice about the same causes as the 
terrorists - Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, Guantanamo Bay, 
Abu Ghraib - to be stopped from speaking forthrightly about their 
anger? Because terrorism is now defined in our law as actions abroad, 
will those who support liberation movements in, for example, Kashmir 
or Chechnya be denied freedom of expression?" Any definition of 
terrorism, she points out, should "encompass the actions of terrorist 
states engaged in unlawful wars."

    Of course, Blair is silent on western state terrorism in the Middle 
East and elsewhere; and for him to moralise about "our values" insults 
the fact of his blood-crime in Iraq. His budding police state will, he 
hopes, have the totalitarian powers he has longed for since 2001 when 
he suspended habeas corpus and introduced unlimited house arrest 
without trial. The Law Lords, Britain's highest judiciary, have tried to 
stop this. Last December, Lord Hoffmann said that Blair's attacks on 
human rights were a greater threat to freedom than terrorism. On 26 
July, Blair emoted that the entire British nation was under threat and 
abused the judiciary in terms, as Simon Jenkins noted, "that would do 
credit to his friend Vladimir Putin".

    Should you be tempted to dismiss all this as esoteric or merely mad, 
travel to any Muslim community in Britain, especially in the northwest, 
and sense the state of siege and fear. On 15 July, Blair's Britain of the 
future was glimpsed when the police raided the Iqra Learning Centre 
and book store near Leeds. The Iqra Trust is a well-known charity that 
promotes Islam worldwide as "a peaceful religion which covers every 
walk of life." The police smashed down the door, wrecked the shop 
and took away anti-war literature which they described as "anti-
western".

    Among this was, reportedly, a DVD of the Respect Party MP George 
Galloway addressing the US Senate and a New Statesman article of 
mine illustrated by a much-published photograph of a Palestinian man 
in Gaza attempting to shield his son from Israeli bullets before the boy 
was shot to death. The photograph was said to be "working people 
up", meaning Muslim people. Clearly, David Gibbons, this journal's 
esteemed art director, who chose this illustration, will be called before 
the Blair Incitement Tribunal. One of my books, The New Rulers of the 
World, was also apparently confiscated. It is not known whether the 
police have yet read the chapter that documents how the Americans, 
with help from MI6 and the SAS, created, armed and bankrolled the 
terrorists of the Islamic Mujahideen, not least Osama bin Laden.

    The raid was deliberately theatrical, with the media tipped off. Two 
of the alleged 7 July bombers had been volunteers in the shop almost 
four years ago. "When they became hardliners", said a community 
youth worker. "They left and have never been back and they've had 
nothing to do with the shop." The raid was watched by horrified local 
people, who are now scared, angry and bitter. I spoke to Muserat 
Sujawal, who has lived in the area for 31 years and is respected widely 
for her management of the nearby Hamara Community Centre. She 
told me, "There was no justification for the raid. The whole point of the 
shop is to teach how Islam is a community-based religion. My family 
has used the shop for years, buying, for example, the Arabic 
equivalent of Sesame Street. They did it to put fear in our hearts." 
James Dean, a Bradford secondary school teacher, said, "I am 
teaching myself Urdu because I have multi-ethnic classes, and the 
shop has been very helpful with tapes."

    The police have the right to pursue every lead in their hunt for 
bombers, but scaremongering is not their right. Sir Ian Blair, the 
Metropolitan Police Commissioner who understands how the media 
can be used and spends a lot of time in television studios, has yet to 
explain why he announced that the killing in the London Underground 
of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was "directly linked" to 
terrorism, when he must have known the truth. Muslim people all over 
Britain report the presence of police "video vans" cruising their streets, 
filming everyone. "We have become like ghettoes under siege," said 
one man too frightened to be named. "Do they know what this is doing 
to our young people?"

    The other day Blair said, "We are not having any of this nonsense 
about [the bombings having anything] to do with what the British are 
doing in Iraq or Afghanistan, or support for Israel, or support for 
America, or any of the rest of it. It is nonsense and we have to confront 
it as that." This "raving", as the American writer Mike Whitney 
observed, "is part of a broader strategy to dismiss the obvious facts 
about terror and blame the victims of American-British aggression. It's 
a tactic that was minted in Tel Aviv and perfected over 37 years of 
occupation. It is predicated on the assumption that terrorism emerges 
from an amorphous, religious-based ideology that transforms its 
adherents into ruthless butchers."

    Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has examined 
every act of suicide terrorism over the past 25 years. He refutes the 
assumption that suicide bombers are mainly driven by "an evil ideology 
independent of other circumstances." He said, "The facts are that 
since 1980, half the attacks have been secular. Few of the terrorists fit 
the standard stereotype ... Half of them are not religious fanatics at all. 
In fact, over 95 per cent of suicide attacks around the world [are not 
about] religion, but a specific strategic purpose - to compel the United 
States and other western countries to abandon military commitments 
on the Arabian Peninsula and in countries they view as their homeland 
or prize greatly ... The link between anger over American, British and 
western military [action] and al-Qaeda's ability to recruit suicide 
terrorists to kill us could not be tighter."

    So we have been warned, yet again. Terrorism is the logical 
consquence of American and British "foreign policy" whose infinitely 
greater terrorism we need to recognise, and debate, as a matter of 
urgency.

    --------

    Originally published by The New Statesman UK.

 

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