[Mb-civic] Big Brother Bush + Belafonte on who's the biggest terrorist

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Big Brother Bush

By Molly Ivins
AlterNet
Posted December 29, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/30175

I don't mean to scare you silly -- but there's a reason we have never
given our government this kind of power.

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years
ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar
Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had
unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on
its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like
Crazy Richard Milhous.

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon
was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his
political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain
Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of
notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this
president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and
Constitution of our country.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it
because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient
justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo,
who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after
all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld,
the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a
stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special
White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be
killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap. Of
course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they
can catch the terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they
nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free
breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the
Quakers. We are not safer.

We would be safer, as the 9-11 commission has so recently reminded us, if
some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and
chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries
contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their
contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to
protect public safety. They wiretap, instead. You will be unsurprised to
learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it,
but not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that.
OK, millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all
medical and financial records.

You may recall in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a
giant data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA),
intended to search through vast databases "to increase information
coverage by an order of magnitude."

>From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This
dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of
five felonies during Iran-Contra, all overturned on a technicality. This
administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring
back Brownie.

Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was
theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it
turned out they just changed the name and made the program less visible.
Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was
obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which
the National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without
warrants.

As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary,
since the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually
no possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a
FISA warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a
handful.

I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night,
telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never
given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church
said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American
people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity
to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't
matter. There would be no place to hide."

And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total
tyranny." Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response,
"Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to
worry about, do you?"

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it 
from
the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted
vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and, boy, if
those aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States
is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong,
or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the
institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the
Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again?
Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?

Molly Ivins writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

***

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13580421.htm

San Jose Mercury News   January 08, 2006

Belafonte calls Bush 'greatest terrorist'

By Ian James

Caracas, Venezuela - The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte
called President Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world" on Sunday and
said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan
leader Hugo Chavez.

Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover
and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan
president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group
attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday.

"No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist
in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds,
not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your
revolution," Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast.

The 78-year-old Belafonte, famous for his calypso-inspired music,
including the "Day-O" song, was a close collaborator of the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. He also has been
outspoken in criticizing the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

Chavez said he believes deeply in the struggle for justice by blacks, both
in the U.S. and Venezuela.

"Although we may not believe it, there continues to be great
discrimination here against black people," Chavez said, urging his
government to redouble its efforts to prevent discrimination.

Belafonte accused U.S. news media of falsely painting Chavez as a
"dictator," when in fact, he said, there is democracy and citizens are
"optimistic about their future."

Dolores Huerta, a pioneer of the United Farm Workers labor union also in
the delegation, called the visit a "very deep experience."

Chavez accuses Bush of trying to overthrow him, pointing to intelligence
documents released by the U.S. indicating that the CIA knew beforehand
that dissident officers planned a short-lived 2002 coup. The U.S. denies
involvement, but Chavez says Venezuela must be on guard.

Belafonte suggested setting up a youth exchange for Venezuelans and
Americans. He finished by shouting in Spanish: "Viva la revolucion!"

Associated Press


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