The Progressive Story of America

The Progressive Story of America

Bill Moyers was awarded the Lifetime Leadership Award at the Take Back America conference last week. His honey-worded acceptance speech won the hearts and minds of all privileged to hear him. The speech is destined to become a classic, and is coming to be known as the Progressive Story of America. It is our story.

Common Dreams
June 10, 2003

This is Your Story - The Progressive Story of America. Pass It On.
by Bill Moyers

Text of speech to the 'Take Back America' Conference
June 4, 2003
Washington, DC

The following is Moyers acceptance speech for the Lifetime Leadership Award given at the Take Back America conference last week.

Thank you for this award and for this occasion. I don't deserve either, but as George Burns said, I have arthritis and I don't deserve that, either.

Tomorrow is my 69th birthday and I cannot imagine a better present than this award or a better party than your company.

Fifty three years ago tomorrow, on my l6th birthday, I went to work for the daily newspaper in the small East Texas town where I grew up. It was a good place to be a cub reporter -- small enough to navigate but big enough to keep me busy and learning something every day. I soon had a stroke of luck. Some of the old timers were on vacation or out sick and I got assigned to cover what came to be known as the Housewives' Rebellion. Fifteen women in my home town decided not to pay the social security withholding tax for their domestic workers. They argued that social security was unconstitutional, that imposing it was taxation without representation, and that -- here's my favorite part -- "requiring us to collect (the tax) is no different from requiring us to collect the garbage." They hired themselves a lawyer -- none other than Martin Dies, the former congressman best known, or worst known, for his work as head of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 30s and 40s. He was no more effective at defending rebellious women than he had been protecting against communist subversives, and eventually the women wound up holding their noses and paying the tax.

The stories I wrote for my local paper were picked up and moved on the Associated Press wire. One day, the managing editor called me over and pointed to the AP ticker beside his desk. Moving across the wire was a notice citing one Bill Moyers and the paper for the reporting we had done on the "Rebellion."

That hooked me, and in one way or another -- after a detour through seminary and then into politics and government for a spell -- I've been covering the class war ever since. Those women in Marshall, Texas were its advance guard. They were not bad people. They were regulars at church, their children were my friends, many of them were active in community affairs, their husbands were pillars of the business and professional class in town. They were respectable and upstanding citizens all. So it took me awhile to figure out what had brought on that spasm of reactionary rebellion. It came to me one day, much later. They simply couldn't see beyond their own prerogatives. Fiercely loyal to their families, to their clubs, charities and congregations -- fiercely loyal, in other words, to their own kind -- they narrowly defined membership in democracy to include only people like them. The women who washed and ironed their laundry, wiped their children's bottoms, made their husband's beds, and cooked their family meals -- these women, too, would grow old and frail, sick and decrepit, lose their husbands and face the ravages of time alone, with nothing to show from their years of labor but the crease in their brow and the knots on their knuckles; so be it; even on the distaff side of laissez faire, security was personal, not social, and what injustice existed this side of heaven would no doubt be redeemed beyond the Pearly Gates. God would surely be just to the poor once they got past Judgment Day.

In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether "we, the people" is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality -- one nation, indivisible -- or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.

Let me make it clear that I don't harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy; I worked for Lyndon Johnson, remember? Nor do I romanticize "the people." You should read my mail -- or listen to the vitriol virtually spat at my answering machine. I understand what the politician meant who said of the Texas House of Representatives, "If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents."

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That difference can be the difference between democracy and oligarchy.

Look at our history. All of us know that the American Revolution ushered in what one historian called "The Age of Democratic Revolutions." For the Great Seal of the United States the new Congress went all the way back to the Roman poet Virgil: Novus Ordo Seclorum" -- "a new age now begins." Page Smith reminds us that "their ambition was not merely to free themselves from dependence and subordination to the Crown but to inspire people everywhere to create agencies of government and forms of common social life that would offer greater dignity and hope to the exploited and suppressed" -- to those, in other words, who had been the losers. Not surprisingly, the winners often resisted. In the early years of constitution-making in the states and emerging nation, aristocrats wanted a government of propertied "gentlemen" to keep the scales tilted in their favor. Battling on the other side were moderates and even those radicals harboring the extraordinary idea of letting all white males have the vote. Luckily, the weapons were words and ideas, not bullets. Through compromise and conciliation the draftsmen achieved a Constitution of checks and balances that is now the oldest in the world, even as the revolution of democracy that inspired it remains a tempestuous adolescent whose destiny is still up for grabs. For all the rhetoric about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it took a civil war to free the slaves and another hundred years to invest their freedom with meaning. Women only gained the right to vote in my mother's time. New ages don't arrive overnight, or without "blood, sweat, and tears."

You know this. You are the heirs of one of the country's great traditions -- the progressive movement that started late in the l9th century and remade the American experience piece by piece until it peaked in the last third of the 20th century. I call it the progressive movement for lack of a more precise term. Its aim was to keep blood pumping through the veins of democracy when others were ready to call in the mortician. Progressives exalted and extended the original American revolution. They spelled out new terms of partnership between the people and their rulers. And they kindled a flame that lit some of the most prosperous decades in modern history, not only here but in aspiring democracies everywhere, especially those of western Europe.

Step back with me to the curtain-raiser, the founding convention of the People's Party -- better known as the Populists -- in 1892. The members were mainly cotton and wheat farmers from the recently reconstructed South and the newly settled Great Plains, and they had come on hard, hard times, driven to the wall by falling prices for their crops on one hand and racking interest rates, freight charges and supply costs on the other. This in the midst of a booming and growing industrial America. They were angry, and their platform -- issued deliberately on the 4th of July -- pulled no punches. "We meet," it said, "in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin....Corruption dominates the ballot box, the [state] legislatures and the Congress and touches even the bench.....The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced....The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few."

Furious words from rural men and women who were traditionally conservative and whose memories of taming the frontier were fresh and personal. But in their fury they invoked an American tradition as powerful as frontier individualism--the war on inequality and especially on the role that government played in promoting and preserving inequality by favoring the rich. The Founding Fathers turned their backs on the idea of property qualifications for holding office under the Constitution because they wanted no part of a 'veneration for wealth" in the document. Thomas Jefferson, while claiming no interest in politics, built up a Republican Party -- no relation to the present one -- to take the government back from the speculators and "stock-jobbers," as he called them, who were in the saddle in 1800. Andrew Jackson slew the monster Second Bank of the United States, the 600-pound gorilla of the credit system in the 1830s, in the name of the people versus the aristocrats who sat on the bank's governing board.

All these leaders were on record in favor of small government--but their opposition wasn't simply to government as such. It was to government's power to confer privilege on insiders; on the rich who were democracy's equivalent of the royal favorites of monarchist days. (It's what the FCC does today.) The Populists knew it was the government that granted millions of acres of public land to the railroad builders. It was the government that gave the manufacturers of farm machinery a monopoly of the domestic market by a protective tariff that was no longer necessary to shelter "infant industries." It was the government that contracted the national currency and sparked a deflationary cycle that crushed debtors and fattened the wallets of creditors. And those who made the great fortunes used them to buy the legislative and judicial favors that kept them on top. So the Populists recognized one great principle: the job of preserving equality of opportunity and democracy demanded the end of any unholy alliance between government and wealth. It was, to quote that platform again, "from the same womb of governmental injustice" that tramps and millionaires were bred.

But how? How was the democratic revolution to be revived? The promise of the Declaration reclaimed? How were Americans to restore government to its job of promoting the general welfare? And here, the Populists made a breakthrough to another principle. In a modern, large-scale, industrial and nationalized economy it wasn't enough simply to curb the government's outreach. That would simply leave power in the hands of the great corporations whose existence was inseparable from growth and progress. The answer was to turn government into an active player in the economy at the very least enforcing fair play, and when necessary being the friend, the helper and the agent of the people at large in the contest against entrenched power. So the Populist platform called for government loans to farmers about to lose their mortgaged homesteads -- for government granaries to grade and store their crops fairly -- for governmental inflation of the currency, which was a classical plea of debtors -- and for some decidedly non-classical actions like government ownership of the railroad, telephone and telegraph systems and a graduated -- i.e., progressive tax on incomes and a flat ban on subsidies to "any private corporation." And to make sure the government stayed on the side of the people, the 'Pops' called for the initiative and referendum and the direct election of Senators.

Predictably, the Populists were denounced, feared and mocked as fanatical hayseeds ignorantly playing with socialist fire. They got twenty-two electoral votes for their candidate in '92, plus some Congressional seats and state houses, but it was downhill from there for many reasons. America wasn't -- and probably still isn't -- ready for a new major party. The People's Party was a spent rocket by 1904. But if political organizations perish, their key ideas don't - keep that in mind, because it give prospective to your cause today. Much of the Populist agenda would become law within a few years of the party's extinction. And that was because it was generally shared by a rising generation of young Republicans and Democrats who, justly or not, were seen as less outrageously outdated than the embattled farmers. These were the progressives, your intellectual forebears and mine.

One of my heroes in all of this is William Allen White, a Kansas country editor -- a Republican -- who was one of them. He described his fellow progressives this way:

"What the people felt about the vast injustice that had come with the settlement of a continent, we, their servants -- teachers, city councilors, legislators, governors, publishers, editors, writers, representatives in Congress and Senators -- all made a part of our creed. Some way, into the hearts of the dominant middle class of this country, had come a sense that their civilization needed recasting, that their government had fallen into the hands of self-seekers, that a new relationship should be established between the haves and the have-nots."

They were a diverse lot, held together by a common admiration of progress -- hence the name -- and a shared dismay at the paradox of poverty stubbornly persisting in the midst of progress like an unwanted guest at a wedding. Of course they welcomed, just as we do, the new marvels in the gift-bag of technology -- the telephones, the autos, the electrically-powered urban transport and lighting systems, the indoor heating and plumbing, the processed foods and home appliances and machine-made clothing that reduced the sweat and drudgery of home-making and were affordable to an ever-swelling number of people. But they saw the underside, too -- the slums lurking in the shadows of the glittering cities, the exploited and unprotected workers whose low-paid labor filled the horn of plenty for others, the misery of those whom age, sickness, accident or hard times condemned to servitude and poverty with no hope of comfort or security.

This is what's hard to believe -- hardly a century had passed since 1776 before the still-young revolution was being strangled in the hard grip of a merciless ruling class. The large corporations that were called into being by modern industrialism after 1865 -- the end of the Civil War -- had combined into trusts capable of making minions of both politics and government. What Henry George called "an immense wedge" was being forced through American society by "the maldistribution of wealth, status, and opportunity."

The Progressive Story of America

Bill Moyers was awarded the Lifetime Leadership Award at the Take Back America conference last week. His honey-worded acceptance speech won the hearts and minds of all privileged to hear him. The speech is destined to become a classic, and is coming to be known as the Progressive Story of America. It is our story.
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We should pause here to consider that this is Karl Rove's cherished period of American history; it was, as I read him, the seminal influence on the man who is said to be George W.'s brain. From his own public comments and my reading of the record, it is apparent that Karl Rove has modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion -- to serve corporate and imperial power. It was said that he believed "without compunction, that the state of Ohio existed for property. It had no other function...Great wealth was to be gained through monopoly, through using the State for private ends; it was axiomatic therefore that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit."

Mark Hanna -- Karl Rove's hero -- made William McKinley governor of Ohio by shaking down the corporate interests of the day. Fortunately, McKinley had the invaluable gift of emitting sonorous platitudes as though they were recently discovered truth. Behind his benign gaze the wily intrigues of Mark Hanna saw to it that first Ohio and then Washington were "ruled by business...by bankers, railroads and public utility corporations." Any who opposed the oligarchy were smeared as disturbers of the peace, socialists, anarchists, "or worse." Back then they didn't bother with hollow euphemisms like "compassionate conservatism" to disguise the raw reactionary politics that produced government "of, by, and for" the ruling corporate class. They just saw the loot and went for it.

The historian Clinton Rossiter describes this as the period of "the great train robbery of American intellectual history." Conservatives -- or better, pro-corporate apologists -- hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress", "opportunity", and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was hijacked, too, so that conservative politicians, judges, and publicists promoted, as if it were, the natural order of things, the notion that progress resulted from the elimination of the weak and the "survival of the fittest."

This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove -- the reputed brain of George W. Bush -- as the seminal age of inspiration for the politics and governance of America today.

No wonder that what troubled our progressive forebears was not only the miasma of poverty in their nostrils, but the sour stink of a political system for sale. The United States Senate was a "millionaire's club." Money given to the political machines that controlled nominations could buy controlling influence in city halls, state houses and even courtrooms. Reforms and improvements ran into the immovable resistance of the almighty dollar. What, progressives wondered, would this do to the principles of popular government? Because all of them, whatever party they subscribed to, were inspired by the gospel of democracy. Inevitably, this swept them into the currents of politics, whether as active officeholders or persistent advocates.

Here's a small, but representative sampling of their ranks. Jane Addams forsook the comforts of a middle-class college graduate's life to live in Hull House in the midst of a disease-ridden and crowded Chicago immigrant neighborhood, determined to make it an educational and social center that would bring pride, health and beauty into the lives of her poor neighbors.. She was inspired by "an almost passionate devotion to the ideals of democracy," to combating the prevailing notion "that the wellbeing of a privileged few might justly be built upon the ignorance and sacrifice of the many." Community and fellowship were the lessons she drew from her teachers, Jesus and Abraham Lincoln. But people simply helping one another couldn't move mountains of disadvantage. She came to see that "private beneficence" wasn't enough. But to bring justice to the poor would take more than soup kitchens and fundraising prayer meetings. "Social arrangements," she wrote, "can be transformed through man's conscious and deliberate effort." Take note -- not individual regeneration or the magic of the market, but conscious, cooperative effort.

Meet a couple of muckraking journalists. Jacob Riis lugged his heavy camera up and down the staircases of New York's disease-ridden, firetrap tenements to photograph the unspeakable crowding, the inadequate toilets, the starved and hollow-eyed children and the filth on the walls so thick that his crude flash equipment sometimes set it afire. Bound between hard covers, with Riis's commentary, they showed comfortable New Yorkers "How the Other Half Lives." They were powerful ammunition for reformers who eventually brought an end to tenement housing by state legislation. And Lincoln Steffens, college and graduate-school educated, left his books to learn life from the bottom up as a police-beat reporter on New York's streets. Then, as a magazine writer, he exposed the links between city bosses and businessmen that made it possible for builders and factory owners to ignore safety codes and get away with it. But the villain was neither the boodler nor the businessman. It was the indifference of a public that "deplore[d] our politics and laud[ed] our business; that transformed law, medicine, literature and religion into simply business. Steffens was out to slay the dragon of exalting "the commercial spirit" over the goals of patriotism and national prosperity. "I am not a scientist," he said. "I am a journalist. I did not gather the facts and arrange them patiently for permanent preservation and laboratory analysis....My purpose was. ...to see if the shameful facts, spread out in all their shame, would not burn through our civic shamelessness and set fire to American pride."

If corrupt politics bred diseases that could be fatal to democracy, then good politics was the antidote. That was the discovery of Ray Stannard Baker, another journalistic progressive who started out with a detest for election-time catchwords and slogans. But he came to see that "Politics could not be abolished or even adjourned...it was in its essence the method by which communities worked out their common problems. It was one of the principle arts of living peacefully in a crowded world," he said [Compare that to Grover Norquist's latest declaration of war on the body politic. "We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals - and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship." He went on to say that bi-partisanship is another name for date rape."]

There are more, too many more to call to the witness stand here, but I want you to hear some of the things they had to say. There were educators like the economist John R. Commons or the sociologist Edward A. Ross who believed that the function of "social science" wasn't simply to dissect society for non-judgmental analysis and academic promotion, but to help in finding solutions to social problems. It was Ross who pointed out that morality in a modern world had a social dimension. In "Sin and Society," written in 1907, he told readers that the sins "blackening the face of our time" were of a new variety, and not yet recognized as such. "The man who picks pockets with a railway rebate, murders with an adulterant instead of a bludgeon, burglarizes with a 'rake-off' instead of a jimmy, cheats with a company instead of a deck of cards, or scuttles his town instead of his ship, does not feel on his brow the brand of a malefactor." In other words upstanding individuals could plot corporate crimes and sleep the sleep of the just without the sting of social stigma or the pangs of conscience. Like Kenneth Lay, they could even be invited into the White House to write their own regulations.

And here are just two final bits of testimony from actual politicians -- first, Brand Whitlock, Mayor of Toledo. He is one of my heroes because he first learned his politics as a beat reporter in Chicago, confirming my own experience that there's nothing better than journalism to turn life into a continuing course in adult education. One of his lessons was that "the alliance between the lobbyists and the lawyers of the great corporation interests on the one hand, and the managers of both the great political parties on the other, was a fact, the worst feature of which was that no one seemed to care."

And then there is Tom Johnson, the progressive mayor of Cleveland in the early nineteen hundreds -- a businessman converted to social activism. His major battles were to impose regulation, or even municipal takeover, on the private companies that were meant to provide affordable public transportation and utilities but in fact crushed competitors, overcharged customers, secured franchises and licenses for a song, and paid virtually nothing in taxes -- all through their pocketbook control of lawmakers and judges. Johnson's argument for public ownership was simple: "If you don't own them, they will own you. It's why advocates of Clean Elections today argue that if anybody's going to buy Congress, it should be the people." When advised that businessmen got their way in Washington because they had lobbies and consumers had none, Tom Johnson responded: "If Congress were true to the principles of democracy it would be the people's lobby." What a radical contrast to the House of Representatives today!

Our political, moral, and intellectual forbearance occupy a long and honorable roster. They include wonderful characters like Dr. Alice Hamilton, a pioneer in industrially-caused diseases, who spent long years clambering up and down ladders in factories and mineshafts -- in long skirts! -- tracking down the unsafe toxic substances that sickened the workers whom she would track right into their sickbeds to get leads and tip-offs on where to hunt. Or Harvey Wiley, the chemist from Indiana who, from a bureaucrat's desk in the Department of Agriculture, relentlessly warred on foods laden with risky preservatives and adulterants with the help of his "poison squad" of young assistants who volunteered as guinea pigs. Or lawyers like the brilliant Harvard graduate Louis Brandeis, who took on corporate attorneys defending child labor or long and harsh conditions for female workers. Brandeis argued that the state had a duty to protect the health of working women and children.

To be sure, these progressives weren't all saints. Their glory years coincided with the heyday of lynching and segregation, of empire and the Big Stick and the bold theft of the Panama Canal, of immigration restriction and ethnic stereotypes. Some were themselves businessmen only hoping to control an unruly marketplace by regulation. But by and large they were conservative reformers. They aimed to preserve the existing balance between wealth and commonwealth. Their common enemy was unchecked privilege, their common hope was a better democracy, and their common weapon was informed public opinion.

In a few short years the progressive spirit made possible the election not only of reform mayors and governors but of national figures like Senator George Norris of Nebraska, Senator Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin, and even that hard-to-classify political genius, Theodore Roosevelt. All three of them Republicans. Here is the simplest laundry-list of what was accomplished at state and Federal levels: Publicly regulated or owned transportation, sanitation and utilities systems. The partial restoration of competition in the marketplace through improved antitrust laws. Increased fairness in taxation. Expansion of the public education and juvenile justice systems. Safer workplaces and guarantees of compensation to workers injured on the job. Oversight of the purity of water, medicines and foods. Conservation of the national wilderness heritage against overdevelopment, and honest bidding on any public mining, lumbering and ranching. We take these for granted today -- or we did until recently. All were provided not by the automatic workings of free enterprise but by implementing the idea in the Declaration of Independence that the people had a right to governments that best promoted their "safety and happiness."

The mighty progressive wave peaked in 1912. But the ideas leashed by it forged the politics of the 20th century. Like his cousin Theodore, Franklin Roosevelt argued that the real enemy of enlightened capitalism was "the malefactors of great wealth" -- the "economic royalists" -- from whom capitalism would have to be saved by reform and regulation. Progressive government became an embedded tradition of Democrats -- the heart of FDR's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal, and honored even by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who didn't want to tear down the house progressive ideas had built -- only to put it under different managers. The progressive impulse had its final fling in the landslide of 1969 when LBJ, who was a son of the West Texas hill country, where the Populist rebellion had been nurtured in the 1890s, won the public endorsement for what he meant to be the capstone in the arch of the New Deal.

I had a modest role in that era. I shared in its exhilaration and its failures. We went too far too fast, overreached at home and in Vietnam, failed to examine some assumptions, and misjudged the rising discontents and fierce backlash engendered by war, race, civil disturbance, violence and crime. Democrats grew so proprietary in this town that a fat, complacent political establishment couldn't recognize its own intellectual bankruptcy or the beltway that was growing around it and beginning to separate it from the rest of the country. The failure of democratic politicians and public thinkers to respond to popular discontents -- to the daily lives of workers, consumers, parents, and ordinary taxpayers -- allowed a resurgent conservatism to convert public concern and hostility into a crusade to resurrect social Darwinism as a moral philosophy, multinational corporations as a governing class, and the theology of markets as a transcendental belief system.

As a citizen I don't like the consequences of this crusade, but you have to respect the conservatives for their successful strategy in gaining control of the national agenda. Their stated and open aim is to change how America is governed - to strip from government all its functions except those that reward their rich and privileged benefactors. They are quite candid about it, even acknowledging their mean spirit in accomplishing it. Their leading strategist in Washington - the same Grover Norquist -- has famously said he wants to shrink the government down to the size that it could be drowned in a bathtub. More recently, in commenting on the fiscal crisis in the states and its affect on schools and poor people, Norquist said, "I hope one of them" -- one of the states -- "goes bankrupt." So much for compassionate conservatism. But at least Norquist says what he means and means what he says. The White House pursues the same homicidal dream without saying so. Instead of shrinking down the government, they're filling the bathtub with so much debt that it floods the house, water-logs the economy, and washes away services for decades that have lifted millions of Americans out of destitution and into the middle-class. And what happens once the public's property has been flooded? Privatize it. Sell it at a discounted rate to the corporations.

It is the most radical assault on the notion of one nation, indivisible, that has occurred in our lifetime. I'll be frank with you: I simply don't understand it -- or the malice in which it is steeped. Many people are nostalgic for a golden age. These people seem to long for the Gilded Age. That I can grasp. They measure America only by their place on the material spectrum and they bask in the company of the new corporate aristocracy, as privileged a class as we have seen since the plantation owners of antebellum America and the court of Louis IV. What I can't explain is the rage of the counter-revolutionaries to dismantle every last brick of the social contract. At this advanced age I simply have to accept the fact that the tension between haves and have-nots is built into human psychology and society itself -- it's ever with us. However, I'm just as puzzled as to why, with right wing wrecking crews blasting away at social benefits once considered invulnerable, Democrats are fearful of being branded "class warriors" in a war the other side started and is determined to win. I don't get why conceding your opponent's premises and fighting on his turf isn't the sure-fire prescription for irrelevance and ultimately obsolescence. But I confess as well that I don't know how to resolve the social issues that have driven wedges into your ranks. And I don't know how to reconfigure democratic politics to fit into an age of soundbites and polling dominated by a media oligarchy whose corporate journalists are neutered and whose right-wing publicists have no shame.

What I do know is this: While the social dislocations and meanness that galvanized progressives in the 19th century are resurgent so is the vision of justice, fairness, and equality. That's a powerful combination if only there are people around to fight for it. The battle to renew democracy has enormous resources to call upon - and great precedents for inspiration. Consider the experience of James Bryce, who published "The Great Commonwealth" back in 1895 at the height of the First Gilded Age. Americans, Bryce said, "were hopeful and philanthropic." He saw first-hand the ills of that "dark and unlovely age," but he went on to say: " A hundred times I have been disheartened by the facts I was stating: a hundred times has the recollection of the abounding strength and vitality of the nation chased away those tremors."

What will it take to get back in the fight? Understanding the real interests and deep opinions of the American people is the first thing. And what are those? That a Social Security card is not a private portfolio statement but a membership ticket in a society where we all contribute to a common treasury so that none need face the indignities of poverty in old age without that help. That tax evasion is not a form of conserving investment capital but a brazen abandonment of responsibility to the country. That income inequality is not a sign of freedom-of-opportunity at work, because if it persists and grows, then unless you believe that some people are naturally born to ride and some to wear saddles, it's a sign that opportunity is less than equal. That self-interest is a great motivator for production and progress, but is amoral unless contained within the framework of community. That the rich have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more homes, vacations, gadgets and gizmos, but they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else. That public services, when privatized, serve only those who can afford them and weaken the sense that we all rise and fall together as "one nation, indivisible." That concentration in the production of goods may sometimes be useful and efficient, but monopoly over the dissemination of ideas is evil. That prosperity requires good wages and benefits for workers. And that our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive "half slave and half free" -- and that keeping it from becoming all oligarchy is steady work -- our work.

Ideas have power -- as long as they are not frozen in doctrine. But ideas need legs. The eight-hour day, the minimum wage, the conservation of natural resources and the protection of our air, water, and land, women's rights and civil rights, free trade unions, Social Security and a civil service based on merit -- all these were launched as citizen's movements and won the endorsement of the political class only after long struggles and in the face of bitter opposition and sneering attacks. It's just a fact: Democracy doesn't work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn't work much better than trickle down economics. It's also a fact that civilization happens because we don't leave things to other people. What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it -- as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there's one candle in your hand.

So go for it. Never mind the odds. Remember what the progressives faced. Karl Rove isn't tougher than Mark Hanna was in his time and a hundred years from now some historian will be wondering how it was that Norquist and Company got away with it as long as they did -- how they waged war almost unopposed on the infrastructure of social justice, on the arrangements that make life fair, on the mutual rights and responsibilities that offer opportunity, civil liberties, and a decent standard of living to the least among us.

"Democracy is not a lie" -- I first learned that from Henry Demarest Lloyd, the progressive journalist whose book, "Wealth against Commonwealth," laid open the Standard trust a century ago. Lloyd came to the conclusion to "Regenerate the individual is a half truth. The reorganization of the society which he makes and which makes him is the other part. The love of liberty became liberty in America by clothing itself in the complicated group of strengths known as the government of the United States." And it was then he said: "Democracy is not a lie. There live(s) in the body of the commonality unexhausted virtue and the ever-refreshed strength which can rise equal to any problems of progress. In the hope of tapping some reserve of their power of self-help," he said, "this story is told to the people."

This is your story -- the progressive story of America.

Pass it on.

Common Dreams NewsCenter
© Copyrighted 1997-2003

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Is Activism Dead?

In the 60's and 70's, there was a saying, "Don't trust anyone over 30." In a recent interview with Mark Rudd, former member of the Weathermen and the Students for a Democratic Society, he commented that perhaps now we shouldn't trust anyone under 40.

What he meant, of course, is that in the US today there is sense of complacency and lack of activism. People claim to be too busy, or that they don't have time to read and discuss informative articles, or they don't want to get bogged down in a quagmire of negativity. However, if we do not live our lives in accordance with what is true, what can we say about our lives?

The search for truth and validity is not something we do in addition to our lives, but should be the guiding force of our lives. Witnessing in depth, and often experiencing the underbelly of the beast, is not dwelling upon negativity or carping. It is the state of being in the world, but not of it. It is an objective acknowledgment of the truth, and the willingness to take action in response. Such action must always be appropriate to who we are and our own philosophical beliefs. The key point is that we witness, we acknowledge, and we take action of some kind.

Newsweek reporter Dalton Conley suggests protest marches and demonstrations may be the peace movement's equivalent of heavy armor and lots of infantry--which has now been replaced by high-tech weaponry that supposedly requires fewer troops. Perhaps rather than taking to the streets, those seeking change should take to the Internet.
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Newsweek Web Exclusive
June 5, 2003

Is Activism Dead?
Protests as we know them seem to have lost their urgency. But guess where it's gaining steam
by Dalton Conley

June 5--The build-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq triggered the largest antiwar rallies since the Vietnam era, both in America and abroad. Yet the chants of millions of protestors--including "Regime change starts at home" and "Support our troops, bring them home" seemed to fall on deaf ears in Washington.

The decision to invade had apparently been set in stone long before grass-roots opposition had really gotten rolling. Of course, had the military conflict dragged on, then street rallies might have mattered. But the word "quagmire" never did rise to the headlines, and in the end, the peace rallies didn't stop the war.

One way of interpreting the failure of the peace movement to affect U.S. foreign policy is that it failed strategically. While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld planned (and perhaps executed) a 21st-century war plan in Iraq, antiwar protestors largely relied on 20th-century tactics. Street marches may be the peace movement's equivalent of heavy armor and lots of infantry--which has been supplanted by high-tech weaponry that supposedly requires fewer troops. Maybe rather than taking to the public square, protestors should have taken to the new commons: the Internet.

Recent online social movements range from relatively straightforward petitioning drives (many of which can be found at the clearinghouse thepetitionsite.com) to the innovative (like voteswap.com, which allowed people in hotly contested states who wanted to vote for Nader in the 2000 elections but did not want to tip the state into Bush's column to trade their vote with Gore supporters in states where the outcome was pretty much already determined). Straightforward approaches, like e-mail and Web-based petition drives, generally adapt a classical political strategy and apply it to the relatively new medium of the Internet. The upside of the ease by which letters can be e-mailed to senators and petitions can be drawn up and circulated is also their downside: they get more easily ignored by public officials who know that e-mail is cheap, so to speak. Voteswap.com, by contrast, does something through the Internet that would not have been possible in the early 1990s. Likewise, underdog Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean has used the Internet site meetup.com to organize local volunteer campaign groups. So far, there are 25,000 people who have signed up and about 225 monthly meetings across the country.

The most interesting uses of Net technology for political protest are even more innovative and radical than Voteswap and Meetup. One interesting example is Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT): a New York-based group that organizes virtual sit-ins (www.thing.net/%7Erdom/ecd/ecd.html ). How EDT works is this: they publicly distribute an applet called FloodNet that, when activated, sends automatic browser "reload" requests to the targeted Web site every few seconds. EDT then organizes specific times where certain Web sites will be hit by thousands of protestors. The hope is to bring down the site. For example, in 1998, in support of the Zapatista autonomy movement in Chiapas, Mexico, EDT targeted the servers of the Pentagon and Mexico's president Ernesto Zedillo. In January 2002, 160,000 people downloaded FloodNet from the EDT Web site and deluged the World Economic Forum site; the server failed after a few hours and stayed down for the rest of the week. Ricardo Dominguez, EDT's cofounder, claims that the official goal of such sit-ins is not necessarily to disable Web servers but merely to disturb them; in fact, EDT calls the actions "performances." Of course, the distinction between disturbing and hacking is a fine line that is walked with a wink and a nod.

Another fairly radical group is the Bureau of Inverse Technology (bureauit.org), or BIT. Like many of these groups, this is an anonymous organization that straddles the line between activism and art, billing itself as an "information agency serving the information age." One of the latest BIT projects is the antiterror line. This is a phone number--actually two, one in the United States and one in Britain--to monitor infringements on civil rights by government authorities in the wake of antiterror legislation. The principle is simple: you, the user, preprogram the number into your cell phone and if you are ever confronted by the police, press the number and the machine at the other end of the line will record the interaction as evidence. Marchers going off to a protest might gear their phones up; blacks who are likely to experience racial profiling might also want one-touch dialing, and of course other populations that are particularly vulnerable under the USA Patriot Acts and its possible successors--such as foreigners, particularly those from Islamic countries--might want to be on the ready. If you are not able to record the actual interaction (after all, it's pretty hard to get your cell phone to work if you are being bludgeoned by a policeman's billy club), then you can call to report the event to the phone number after the fact. In this way, the Web server will build an archive of information about the government that--in its public accessibility--stands in stark contrast to the way the Feds are increasingly collecting secreted information about the population.

A common thread in the online activist and arts community is the use of "kits" to enlist other activists. A kit can be as simple as EDT's FloodNet program or a complicated as BIT Radio: instructions on how to build a transmitter to jam local radio programming, overriding it with an activist message. BIT did this in New York City during the World Economic Forum, broadcasting environmental information over National Public Radio's frequency. The brevity of the illicit broadcasts prevents the transmitter stations from being found out. Anyone across the world can theoretically set up a BIT Radio station if they follow the instructions that are downloadable at the BIT site.

Another "hactivist" tradition is that of impersonation. While impersonation for political purposes has a long tradition--dating at least as far back as 1703, when Daniel Defoe was arrested for distributing his satire of Anglican Tories, which was taken to be serious at first--the Net opens up completely new possibilities. For example, the Yesmen (theyesmen.org ) have pretended to be the World Trade Organization, by registering the site of the organization that the WTO was meant to replace (gatt.org). They then issue press releases that fly in the face of official WTO policy; some unwitting journalists then publish stories based on them, all the while documenting the reaction. They also accept speaking invitations on behalf of the WTO through the Web site.

The Yesmen also registered the site dow-chemical.com. They used this platform to explain why Dow Chemical will not take responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal, India, chemical disaster nor offer more than $500 compensation per victim. The response was overwhelming. However, for added irony, when they registered the site they chose to list it under "James Parker," the son of the Dow's CEO, and used his real address. When the real Dow found out about what was going on, they immediately got James Parker to re-register the domain name as his own, deleting the misinformation. End of story--for now at least. No worries for the Yesmen--they had already achieved their purpose by getting plenty of media attention to the issue, which had been long forgotten by most Americans.

To varying degrees, what EDT, BIT and the Yesmen share in common is the ability to generate media attention for their actions and to draw together like-minded individuals across vast spaces, thereby reducing the need to generate a crowd in any particular locality. One BIT engineer calls this "scale." Beside unifying a geographically diverse protesting community, another benefit of this kind of networked activism that BIT points to is the fact that--for the most part--the police cannot shut you down with horses, water hoses, rubber bullets and mass lock-ups; they can merely reregister your domain name or take down your server.

Whereas Ricardo Dominguez claims that street protest is a relic of a bygone era, the Yesmen and BIT demure. "There is nothing that can replace the generative power, the connections that are made in face-to-face contact during protests," claims a BIT spokesperson. Says, "Andy," one of the Yesmen, in an e-mail interview: "It's clear that traditional forms of protest are still the most powerful. It's always hard to measure the effects of such things, but we know that people taking to the streets helped shut down the [WTO's] Seattle Ministerial [meeting], forced [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair to stop pretending he was representing the majority, etc.--lots of signs that it works."

The biggest payoffs may to be in the linkage of the Net to actual live protest marches. The peace marches of Feb. 15 represented the largest worldwide protests ever recorded. As it turns out, they were not completely 20th century. They had been coordinated by many Net activists, but they still required people to show up, shout, beat drums, get arrested and so on. They just happened to not work. But maybe they are just the beginning. If the Bush administration has more war plans lurking up its sleeve, the protestors will be ready--on line and off.

--Dalton Conley directs the Center for Advanced Social Science Research at New York University. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the author of Honky, a memoir, and The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why (due out in February).

© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

WMD Misrepresentation and Impeachable Offenses
We've yet to find those oft-mentioned weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bush and his administration have repeatedly insisted that these WMD did indeed exist, and used their purported existence a his basis for the savage bombing and invasion of Iraq.

John Dean, former Counsel to the President of the United States, discusses the possible repercussions if these WMD are not found in Iraq, and if it is proven that the President misrepresented the true state of intelligence with respect to WMD. If this is shown, the scandal could be as serious as Watergate.
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Findlaw's Writ
June 6, 2003

Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction:
Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?
by John W. Dean

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations Address
September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio Address
October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?

When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses - including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the President of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that - at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton - statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find - for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the President had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American Press Reaction to the Missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption --when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons--exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame - informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it - they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct - and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Senator Bob Graham - a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee - told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they find WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMDs Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

--John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President of the United States.

Copyright © 1994-2003 FindLaw

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Noam Chomsky Interview on the Amsterdam Forum

The following Amsterdam Forum interview with author and political activist Noam Chomsky addresses the question "Does the USA intend to dominate the whole world by force?" Professor Chomsky has been described by the New York Times as the most important intellectual alive today, and is an outspoken critic of US foreign policy.

The forum is Radio Netherlands' interactive discussion program.
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June 2, 2003

Does The USA Intend To Dominate The Whole World By Force?
Noam Chomsky Interview on the Amsterdam Forum

ANDY CLARK
Hello and welcome to Amsterdam Forum - Radio Netherlands' interactive discussion programme.

Today a special edition featuring the world-famous author and political activist Noam Chomsky.

Professor Chomsky, once described by the New York Times as arguably the most important intellectual alive, is an outspoken critic of US foreign policy. He says, following the war in Iraq, the US is seeking to dominate the world by force, a dimension in which it rules supreme. And he warns this policy will lead to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terror attacks based on a loathing of the US administration. He says the very survival of the species may be at stake.

Well professor Chomsky joins us to take questions from our listeners around the world. Welcome professor Chomsky.

The first e-mail is from Norberto Silva, from the Cape Verde islands, and he says: "Could the USA and president Bush lead the world into a nuclear war with their policy of pre-emptive attacks?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
They very definitely could. First of all we should be clear - it is not a policy of pre-emptive attacks. Pre-emption means something in international law. A pre-emptive attack is one that is taken in the case of an imminent, on-going threat. For example, if planes were flying across the Atlantic to bomb New York, it would be legitimate for the US Air Force to shoot them down. That's a pre-emptive attack. This is what is sometimes called preventive war. That's a new doctrine that was announced last September in the National Security Strategy. It declares the right to attack any potential challenge to the global dominance of the United States. The potential is in the eye of the observer, so that, in effect, gives the authorisation to attack essentially anyone. Could that lead to a nuclear war? Very definitely. We've come very close in the past. Just last October, for example, it was discovered, to the shock and horror of those who paid attention, that, during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the world was literally one word away from probably terminal nuclear war. Russian submarines with nuclear weapons were under attack by US destroyers. Several commanders thought a nuclear war was on, and gave the order to shoot nuclear missiles. It was countermanded by one officer. That's why we're around to talk. There have been plenty of such cases since.

ANDY CLARK
Are we in a more dangerous situation now, with this preventive doctrine in place?

NOAM CHOMSKY
Sure. The preventive war doctrine is virtually an invitation to potential targets to develop some kind of deterrent, and there are only two kinds of deterrent. One is weapons of mass destruction, the other is large-scale terror. That's been pointed out over and over again by strategic analysts, the intelligence agencies and so on, so sure, it raises the danger that something will get out of control.

ANDY CLARK
This email is from Don Rhodes, from Melbourne, in Australia, and he says: "I do not believe that the US wants to dominate the world. The Americans have been attacked on several fronts, 9/11 being only one of them. Someone has to bring into line rogue states and it is the USA alone that has the capability to do this. Without such a 'world policeman' the world would just disintegrate into warring factions. Look at history for examples of this." What do you make of that sort of statement?

NOAM CHOMSKY
The first sentence is simply factually incorrect. The National Security Strategy states fairly explicitly that the US intends to dominate the world by force, which is the dimension in which it rules supreme, and to ensure that there is never any potential challenge to this domination. That was not only stated explicitly, it has also been commented on repeatedly, right away in the main establishment - the Foreign Affairs journal in its next issue is pointing out that the United States is declaring the right to be what it calls a "revisionist state", which will use force to control the world in its own interests. The person who sent the email may believe that the US has some unique right to run the world by force. I don't believe that, and contrary to what was stated I don't think history supports that at all. In fact the US record, incidentally with the support of Australia, since the period of its global dominance in the 1940s, is one of instigating war and violence and terror on a very substantial scale. The Indochina War, just to take one example in which Australia participated, was basically a war of aggression. The United States attacked South Vietnam in 1962. The war then spread to the rest of Indochina. The end result was several million people killed, the countries devastated, and that's only one example. So history does not support the conclusion and the principle that one state should have a unique right to rule the world by force. That's an extremely hazardous principle, no matter who the country is.

ANDY CLARK
This is from Noel Collamer, from Bellingham, in Washington, in the USA, and he writes: "Noam says: 'The Bush administration intends to dominate the world by force, the one dimension in which it rules supreme, and to do so permanently.' To this I ask, if we, who can, do not act with force against tyrants, then what does he suggest be done? That the brutalized populace should use non-violent resistance against their tyrant even though this will result in their own genocide?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
First of all - I don't say that, the Bush administration says it. I'm simply repeating what is stated quite explicitly, and that's not particularly controversial. As I mentioned, it was commented on, essentially in those words, in the first issue of Foreign Affairs immediately afterwards. As for countries suffering under tyranny - yes, it would be very good if somebody would help and support them. Take for example the current administration in Washington. They themselves - remember, these are mostly re-cycled Reaganites - they supported a series of monstrous dictators, who subjected their populations to vicious tyranny, including Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier. It's quite a long list. The best way to deal with that would have been to stop supporting them. Incidentally, support for terror and violence continues. The best way to stop it is to stop supporting them. Often, in fact in every one of those cases, they were overthrown by their own populations, even though the US was supporting the dictator. Ceausescu, for example, was a tyrant perfectly comparable to Saddam Hussein. He was overthrown in 1989 by his own population, while he was being supported by the current incumbents in Washington, and that continues. If there are people resisting oppression and violence, we should find ways to support them, and the easiest way is to stop supporting the tyrants. After that, complicated issues arise. There is no record, that I know of, of the US, or any other state - [there are] very rare examples - intervening to try to prevent oppression and violence. That's extremely rare.

ANDY CLARK
OK, another email. This is from H.P. Velten, who is from New Jersey, in the USA, and he says: "Why isn't there more controversy about Bush's motives in the US media?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
Well, actually there is plenty of controversy. One thing that was quite striking about the war in Iraq and the National Security Strategy, which is the framework for it, was that is was very strongly criticised, right at the core of the foreign policy elite - it was sharply criticised in the two major foreign affairs journals, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which rarely takes a position on current controversial issues, had a monograph condemning it. There's a whole series of other articles. It's partly reflected in the media, but not very much, because remember, the media tend to be quite supportive of power, for all sorts of reasons.

ANDY CLARK
OK, another email. This is from Rijswijk, in The Netherlands, from M.J. "Bob" Groothand. This message says: "Throughout history some nations have always tried to rule the world. Most recently Germany, Japan and Russia come to mind. If the US is now the latest 'would-be conqueror' then we can thank our lucky stars. It would be done with decency and honour for all mankind. The fact is that nothing like this is being considered by Bush or the American government. You forget that the US has a constitution and, unlike Stalin, Hitler, Hussein and other despots, Bush is up for re-election in two years and American voters are not dumb nor are they oppressed or intimidated. It's a secret ballot." Will electoral accountability rein in the US government, do you think, as this listener suggests?

NOAM CHOMSKY
First of all, the account of history is mostly fanciful, but let's put that aside. The fact that a country has a constitution and is internally democratic does not mean that it does not carry out violence and aggression. There is a long history of this. England, for example, was perhaps the most free country in the world in the 19th century and was carrying out horrifying atrocities throughout much of the world, and the case of the United States is similar. The record goes back very far. The United States was a democratic country, for example, when it invaded the Philippines a century ago, killing several hundred thousand people and leaving it devastated. It was a democratic country in the 1980s, when the current incumbents in Washington carried out a devastating war of terror in Nicaragua, leaving tens of thousands dead and the country practically ruined, an attack for which they incidentally were condemned by the World Court and the Security Council in a veto-ed resolution, but then escalated the attack, and so it continues. As to the democratic election, yes, true, there is an election, and the Republicans have explained very clearly how they intend to overcome the fact that their policies are pretty strongly opposed by the majority of the population. They intend to overcome it by driving the country into fear and panic, so that they will huddle under the umbrella of a powerful figure who will protect them. In fact, we've just seen that last September when the Security Strategy was announced and the drumbeat of propaganda for war began. There was a government media propaganda campaign, which was quite spectacular. It succeeded in convincing the majority of the population that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the security of the United States. No-one else believed that. Even Kuwait and Iran, where they despise him, didn't regard him as a threat. They knew he was the weakest country in the region. It also succeeded in convincing probably the majority of the population that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, in fact instigated it and carried it out, and was planning further attacks. Again, there isn't a particle of evidence for this, and there is no intelligence agency or security analyst in the world who believes it.

ANDY CLARK
Where is the political opposition in the US then - the Democrats? Why don't they seek to make inroads into the Republican camp? Obviously, there is a substantial peace movement - we saw hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in the US who were opposed to the military action. Where is the political opposition in the US now?

NOAM CHOMSKY
The Democratic political opposition is very tepid. There has been very little debate, traditionally, over foreign policy issues. That's recognised right in the mainstream. Political figures are reluctant to put themselves in a position where they can be condemned as calling for the destruction of the United States and supporting its enemies and presenting fantasies, and be subjected to fantasies of the kind that in fact were included in that email. Politicians are unwilling to subject themselves to that, and the result is that the voice of a large portion of the population simply is barely represented, and the Republicans recognise it. Karl Rove, the Republican campaign manager, made it clear before the last election in 2002 that the Republicans would have to try to run the election on a security issue, because if they faced it on issues of domestic policy they would lose. So they frightened the population into obedience, and he has already announced that they are going to have to do the same thing next time in the 2004 election. They are going to have to present it as voting for a war president who will defend you from destruction. Incidentally, they are simply rehearsing a script that runs right through the 1980s, the first time they were in office - the same people, approximately. If you look, the policies they implemented were unpopular. The population was opposed, but they kept pressing the panic button, and it worked. In 1981 Libya was going to attack us. In 1983 Grenada was going to set up an airbase from which the Russians would bomb us. In 1985 Reagan declared a national emergency because the security of the United States was threatened by the government of Nicaragua. Somebody watching from Mars would have collapsed in laughter. And so it went on through the 1980s. They managed to keep the population intimidated and frightened enough so that they could maintain a thin grasp on political power, and that's the effort since. They didn't invent that tactic, incidentally, but it unfortunately has its effects, and political figures and others are reluctant to stand up and face the torrent of abuse and hysteria that will immediately come from trying to bring matters back to the level of fact.

ANDY CLARK
OK, another email. This is from Boris Karaman, from Wyoming in the USA, and he says: "Peace can only come from strength and often comes after a just war. The Pax Romana resulted from the strength of the Roman Empire, not from any pacifist ideology. There is more to criticize in U.S. history when we failed to act soon enough. As examples, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot rose to power because of a lack of aggression against them. Your criticisms of a power-based approach to foreign policy are either naive or disingenuous. Those who act against threats make possible a world where arrogant leftists enjoy the freedom of speech to exhibit their errors in reasoning. Long may it be so. Peace to you, but peace through strength." What do you make of that email?

NOAM CHOMSKY
Well, we can begin by looking at the facts. Take, say, Hitler. Hitler did rise to power with the support of the United States and Britain. As late as 1937, the State Department was describing Hitler as a moderate standing between the extremes of right and left, who we must support, or else the masses of the population might take power and move in a leftist direction. In fact, the United States did not enter the war until it was attacked by Japan, and Germany declared war on the United States. In the case of Stalin, the United States didn't bring him to power, and they also didn't particularly oppose him. As late as 1948, Harry Truman, the president, was stating that he thought Stalin was a decent man, who was honest, [but] being misled by his advisers, and so on and so forth. In the case of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge developed in the early 1970s - they were virtually unknown in 1970 - and they developed in the context of a massive US bombing campaign in Cambodia. About 600,000 people died, according to the CIA, but it helped energise a fierce, vicious resistance, which took over in 1975. After it took over, the United States did nothing to try to stop it, but when Vietnam did eliminate Pol Pot, in 1978-1979, by invading and driving him out, Vietnam was bitterly attacked by the United States for the crime of getting rid of Pol Pot. The US supported a Chinese invasion to punish Vietnam, and imposed harsh sanctions on them, and in fact turned to direct support of the remnants of the Pol Pot armies in Thailand. So, if you want to talk about history, get it straight. Then we can start with the tirades.

ANDY CLARK
Do you think there is a point where force can be justified? We heard a lot of arguments about the Iraq war - that this was the lesser of two evils. The recent history of Iraq was well-known, but now it was a stage whereby something had to be done to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Lots of Iraqi people themselves - within the country - seemed to support that argument.

NOAM CHOMSKY
First of all, we don't know that Iraqis were calling out to be invaded, but if that was the goal, what was the point of all the lying? What you are saying is that Tony Blair, George Bush, Colin Powell and the rest are fanatic liars - they were pretending until the last minute that the goal was to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. If the goal was to liberate the Iraqi people, why not say so? Why the lies?

ANDY CLARK
President Bush did say that in the very last weeks [before the war]. He started talking about a war of liberation.

NOAM CHOMSKY
At the last minute, at the Azores summit, he said that, even if Saddam Hussein and his associates leave the country, the United States is going to invade anyway - meaning the US wants to control it. Now, in fact, there is a serious issue behind this. It has nothing to do with liberating the Iraqi people. You might ask the question why Iraqis did not overthrow Saddam the way, say, Romanians overthrew Ceausescu... and so on through a long series of others. Well, you know it's pretty well understood. The westerners who know Iraq best - Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the heads of the UN oil for food programme - they had hundreds of investigators running through the country. They knew the country intimately, and they have been pointing out, as have plenty of others, that what has prevented any kind of uprising in Iraq is the murderous sanctions regime, which killed hundreds of thousands of people by conservative estimates, strengthened Saddam Hussein, and made the population completely reliant on him for survival. So the first step in allowing Iraqis to liberate themselves would have been to stop preventing it, by permitting the society to reconstruct, so that then they could take care of their own affairs. If that failed, if Iraqis were unable to do what other populations have done under the rule of comparable tyrants, at that point the question of the use of force might arise, but until they have been at least given an opportunity, and haven't been prevented by US-British action from undertaking it, we can't seriously raise that question, and in fact it was not raised by Britain and the United States during the build-up to war. The focus was on weapons of mass destruction. Just look at the record.

ANDY CLARK
This is an email from Bob Kirk, in Israel. He says: "Why is Professor Chomsky so opposed to the spread of democracy and the liberation of most of the world's peoples (by the US if necessary, since the EU has abandoned challenging dictators), and what means other than persuasion and sometimes justifiable force would he propose in order to liberate the unfree societies of the world?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
I would be strongly in favour of bringing democracy to the world, and I am opposed to preventing democracy. One of the reasons - it's very striking, if you look at the last few months - [is that] I have never seen, that I can recall, such clear and brazen contempt and hatred for democracy as has been expressed by US elites. Just have a look. Europe, for example, was divided into what was called Old and New Europe. There was a criterion - Old Europe were the countries where the governments, for whatever reason, took the same positions as the vast majority of their populations. That's called democracy. New Europe - Italy, Spain, Hungary - were the countries where the governments overrode an even larger percentage of their populations. The population was more opposed in those countries than in Old Europe, but the governments disregarded their populations - maybe 80 or 90 percent of them - and followed orders from Washington, and that's called good! Turkey is the most striking example. Turkey was bitterly attacked by US commentators and elites, because the government took the same position as about 95 percent of the population. Paul Wolfowitz, who is described as the great exponent of democratisation, a few weeks ago condemned the Turkish military for not intervening to compel the government to, as he put it, "help Americans", instead of paying attention to 95 percent of their own population. This expresses brazen contempt for democracy, and the record supports it. It's not that the United States is uniquely bad, it's like any other powerful state, but take a look at the record in the areas where the US has controlled the region for a long time - Central America and the Caribbean. It's about a hundred years. The US has been willing to tolerate democracy, but as they themselves put it, only if it is - I'm quoting from a Reagan administration advocate of democracy - "top-down democracy", in which traditional elites remain in power, elites that have been associated with the United States and run their societies the way the US wants. In that case, the US will tolerate democracy. They are very similar to other powerful states, but let's not have any illusions about it. The sender is writing from the Middle East, if I remember...

ANDY CLARK
From Israel.

NOAM CHOMSKY
...and there the United States has supported brutal, oppressive dictatorships for a long time, and it has known for a long time that that is the major reason for popular opposition. Back in the 1950s, we know from internal records, president Eisenhower discussed with his staff what he called the "campaign of hatred against us" among the people of the Middle East, and the reason was that the US was supporting oppressive and undemocratic regimes and blocking democracy and development because of our interest in controlling near-east oil. Well that continues until the present day. You hear the same thing from wealthy westernised Muslims interviewed in the Wall Street Journal at this very moment. There is a long record of opposing democracy, unless it is under control, and for reasons that are rooted in familiar great power politics.

ANDY CLARK
Let's take another email. This is from Vera Gottlieb, from British Columbia, in Canada, and she says: "Under the guise of 'fighting terrorism', the US Bill of Rights is being strongly curtailed, not to say decimated. I can't understand why the average American is not up in arms over it. Does the average American know, or care, what is really going on?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
Very few are well aware of what's going on. The Patriot Act, and the new, planned Patriot 2 Act, it is true, undermine - in principle at least, in words, and partially in actions - fundamental civil liberties to a remarkable extent. So, the current justice department has claimed the right to arrest people, including American citizens, put them in confinement indefinitely, without charge, without access to lawyers and families, until the president declares that the war on terror is over. They have even gone beyond that. The new plans include plans to actually take away citizenship if the attorney general decides to do so. This has been very harshly condemned by civil rights lawyers, law professors, others, but very little of it leaks into the media. It's not really well-known. These moves are quite dramatic. President Bush is supposed to have on his desk a bust of Winston Churchill, given to him by his friend Tony Blair, and in fact Churchill had something to say about this. He said, and this is virtually a quote, [that] for a government to put a person in prison without trial by his peers is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian governments, whether Nazi or communist. He said that in 1943, condemning proposals of a similar nature in England, which weren't enacted. Remember, in 1943 England was in pretty desperate straits - it was under attack and facing destruction by the most vicious military force in history, and nevertheless Churchill rightly described measures like these as "in the highest degree odious", and "the foundation of totalitarian governments". Yes, people should be very upset about it.

ANDY CLARK
Why isn't this an issue of common debate in the USA then? And why isn't there grassroots opposition against the Patriot Act and these things you've just been describing?

NOAM CHOMSKY
First of all, to know these things you have to do a bit of a research project. I don't say that it is hidden - you can find the facts if you look, but they are certainly not common knowledge. To the extent they are common knowledge, there is opposition, but you have to recall the great success of the government media propaganda campaign, since last September, to convince the population of the United States that they are in imminent threat of destruction by the monster Saddam Hussein, and next week it will be someone else who we have to protect ourselves against. Incidentally, the majority, who were convinced by those propaganda lies, their attitudes correlate very closely with support for war, and you can understand why - if you really believe that, you're willing to see civil liberties erode. Of course, it was fabrication, one of the most spectacular examples of propaganda fabrication known, as many have pointed out, but it did work. When people are frightened they will - sometimes - be willing not to defend the rights that they have won.

ANDY CLARK
OK, another email. This is from Venezuela. This is from Alberto Villasmil Raven, and he says: "I would like to know if Professor Chomsky thinks it possible that the US will invade Venezuela."

NOAM CHOMSKY
Well, I don't think they'll directly invade, but among the regions that are targeted for so-called preventive war, one of them is almost certainly the Andes region. It's a region of substantial resources. It is, to a certain degree, out of control. The US already has extensive military resources - a large military basing system in Ecuador, the Dutch islands, El Salvador - surrounding the region, and quite a few forces on the ground. My suspicion is that the US will probably, in Venezuela, once again support a coup as it did last year. But if that doesn't work, direct intervention is not impossible. Remember, this has long been planned. One of the very good things about the United States is it's a very free society, uniquely so. We have extensive records of internal planning. Right in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis, where we have the records, president Kennedy and his brother were discussing the threat of the Cuban missiles, and they said one of the big problems they posed was: "They might deter an invasion of Venezuela, if we decide to invade." That was 1962. These are old policies, deeply rooted.

ANDY CLARK
OK, this is from Berrada M. Ali, from Rabat, in Morocco, and his question is as follows: "Do you think that, after the unjustified and unjustifiable war against Iraq, the world will lose the meaning of its existence, like in the field of language, when we lose the grammatical rules? Will we automatically lose the reference of the meaning of sentences, and consequently the meaning of the world around us?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
In my opinion, the most honest commentary on this point has been made by strong supporters of the war in Iraq. For example, if you take a look at the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal, there is a lead article by a well-known specialist on international law, Michael Glennon, who argues that we should recognise that international law and international institutions are what he calls "hot air". They have proven their inapplicability by the fact that the United States disregards them, and he says it is right to disregard them, and the United States must maintain the right to use force as it chooses, independent of these institutions, which we simply have to dismiss and disregard. Well that's at least an honest statement. I think it's a terrible threat to the world, and it's part of the reason why the US government has become an object of massive fear around the world. The international polls on this are remarkable, and it's understandable. When a country takes that position, of course people are going to be frightened, and furthermore, as again has been pointed out over and over by intelligence agencies and analysts and so on, they'll do something about it. They'll try to find means of deterrence. The United States is calling on the world to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and terror, if only as a deterrent.

ANDY CLARK
One final email. This is from John Blessen, in Beverly Hills, in the United States, and his message is: "How can the United States best protect itself from rogue states like North Korea? And from nuclear, chemical, and biological threats from outlaw states? Cataclysmic threats to the United States are real and some say imminent, so how would you, Dr Chomsky, fashion a defense policy for the United States?"

NOAM CHOMSKY
Well, let's take the one example that was mentioned - North Korea. You can't make a general comment, it depends on the case. Take the case of North Korea. Here there is a strong consensus among the states of the region - South Korea, Japan, China and Russia - that a diplomatic path should be followed, a path of negotiations to reduce the threat, which is real, and to integrate North Korea slowly back into the region in some fashion, and that's a wise move. Actually, Clinton made moves in that direction. He didn't actually implement them, but he made them. They were pretty successful, and I think that consensus is correct. The way to defend yourself against such threats is to prevent them from arising. There are many ways to do that, and the same is true in other cases that were mentioned. In the case of Iraq, it was a horrible regime. That's why I was always opposed to the fact that the United States supported Saddam Hussein, and also was opposed to the sanctions regime, which prevented a revolt against him, but, horrible as it was, it was not a threat. Kuwait and Iran, which despise Saddam Hussein - they were both invaded by him - nevertheless didn't regard him as a threat, and there was good reason for that. Iraq was the weakest state in the region. Its military expenditures were about a third those of Kuwait, which has ten percent of its population. It had been decimated by the sanctions, virtually disarmed - a horrible place, but not a threat. This was propaganda - grotesque, ugly propaganda. If you want to look at other cases that one has a reason to be worried about - yes, then make up appropriate plans for them. Take, say, the threat of terror. That's very real and very dangerous. The threat of terror has been increased by actions of the Bush administration. For example, intelligence agencies are pointing out that recruitment for terrorist organisations like al-Qaeda has risen very sharply since the threat to invade Iraq began, and then the invasion, and that's to be anticipated for good reasons. It's understood why.

ANDY CLARK
You are somebody who seeks to debunk this propaganda that you say the US government is pushing onto the population. What sort of attitudes do people take towards you now - someone who speaks out against current US policy?

NOAM CHOMSKY
I probably spend an hour a night just very reluctantly writing letters turning down invitations to talk all over the country - huge audiences, tremendous interest. The United States is not different from other countries in the world in this respect. There is great fear and concern about the policies that the Bush administration is pursuing. If you eliminate the element of panic, which was induced by the propaganda, which is unique to the United States, then opposition to the war and to the security strategy here are approximately the same as elsewhere. I and in fact other people who are willing to speak publicly are simply overwhelmed by requests and demands to discuss these issues.

ANDY CLARK
Professor Noam Chomsky, author, political activist and linguistics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thank you very much for joining us.

NOAM CHOMSKY
Thank you.

ANDY CLARK
And thank you all very much for listening.

--This interview provided courtesy of ZNET

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Human Rights are Not a Luxury for Good Times

Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, eloquently speaks on the necessity of balancing national security with freedom and human rights. In waging war on terror, all too often freedom is the first casualty.

Human rights advocates have long been wary of the way in which governments interpret and implement their security agenda. All too often security measures harm the innocent as well as the guilty. And all too often political leaders exploit public fears and prejudices to avoid accountability and promote their own interests.

Governments are not entitled to respond to terror with terror. Human rights must be upheld at all times, including times of danger and insecurity. They restrain governments from actions that harm, and provide the standards for accountability. They empower people and give them the freedom to choose, to challenge and to shape their own destiny. If the quest for a safer world is to succeed, human rights must lie at its heart.
__________________________

Security for Whom? A Human Rights Response

A message from Irene Khan, Amnesty International's Secretary General

As I write this message, I remember Claudine, a six-year-old girl whom I met when I visited Burundi last September. She was one of the survivors of a massacre by the Burundian army, in which more than 170 people had been brutally killed 10 days before my arrival. She could not recall her family name, but she remembered in vivid, painful detail the way in which her grandfather, parents, sisters and baby brother were bayoneted to death. She described how she herself was wounded but managed to escape by crawling between the legs of the soldiers. When I raised her case with the President of Burundi, he told me that the army had been fighting a civil war for the past 10 years to make the country secure from "rebels". It was apparent that Claudine's own security did not feature in that larger national security strategy.

As I write this message, the shadow of war darkens over Iraq. Military action is being contemplated in order to make the world more secure. Some 26 million Iraqi women, men and children who have risked terrible human rights abuses at the hands of their own government for several decades, who have suffered the impact of economic sanctions for more than a decade, face an uncertain fate. The only certainty is that if war comes, some of them will die. They could be killed by the fighting, or they might be killed by the Iraqi security forces if they dare to rise against the Iraqi government, or they could die if they flee and neighbouring countries refuse to grant them asylum, as happened in 1991.

Last year the international community waged a war in Afghanistan. That war too was fought in the name of security. An unknown number of civilians died in the bombing raids and hundreds of prisoners reportedly suffocated to death in sealed containers. Many Afghans continue to live precariously as large parts of the country remain insecure and under the control of commanders known to have perpetrated appalling human rights abuses.

Human rights advocates have long been wary of the way in which governments interpret and implement their security agenda at the national and international levels. All too often security measures harm the innocent as well as the guilty. All too often political leaders exploit public fears and prejudices to avoid accountability and promote their own interests.

Our fears were once again confirmed over the past year as the drive for security gained greater momentum around the world. A combination of forces sought to roll back the human rights gains of the past five decades in the name of security and "counter-terrorism". But the restrictions on liberty have not necessarily led to increased dividends on safety. Greater emphasis on security, far from making the world a safer place, has made it more dangerous by curtailing human rights and undermining the rule of international law; by shielding governments from scrutiny; by deepening divisions among people of different faiths and origins; and by diverting attention from festering conflicts and other sources of insecurity.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court, the coming into force of the agreement aimed at ending the use of child soldiers and the adoption of the protocol to allow international inspection of places of detention were important gains for human rights in the past year. On the other hand, the blatant disregard and virtual contempt which many governments displayed for international human rights and humanitarian obligations were a major setback.

At a time of heightened insecurity, governments chose to ignore and undermine the collective system of security which international law represents. Draconian measures by democratic as well as autocratic governments to intrude and intercept, to arrest and detain suspects without trial and to deport people with no regard to their fate, weakened human rights protection of individuals as well as respect for the standards of international law. The USA continued to detain prisoners from the war in Afghanistan in defiance of international humanitarian law, turned a blind eye to reports of torture or ill-treatment of suspects by its officials and allies, and sought to undermine the International Criminal Court through bilateral agreements. In the process, it undermined its own moral authority to speak out against human rights violations in other parts of the world.

Action that makes people feel insecure cannot make states or societies secure. Because of the real or alleged actions of a few individuals, entire communities identified by race, religion or national origin are being viewed with suspicion. The result is growing unease and uncertainty among large sections of the population. Racial profiling and detention of immigrants in the USA, and labelling of refugees and asylum-seekers as "terrorists" in Europe have compounded the stigmatization. In a climate of increasing xenophobia and racism, asylum-seekers are being sent back to face imprisonment, torture or death and violent attacks on members of minority communities are on the increase. Whipping up public fears in the interests of short-term political or electoral gains is a dangerous business. In the course of the past year, ethnic and religious tensions in countries like India, Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire demonstrated the dangers of accentuating the divide between citizen and immigrant, people of different faiths, rich and poor, north and south.

Exploiting the international climate favouring "counter-terrorism", many governments reinforced and renewed their crack-down on political opponents and others whose loyalty they doubt, such as trade unionists, journalists, religious and racial minorities, and human rights defenders. Our country reports illustrate numerous examples where, citing national security, government forces acted with impunity to kill, rape, torture and abduct. The tragedy of Claudine was repeated many times in many places during 2002.

Amnesty International does not challenge the right of governments to act against criminal and political violence by armed groups and individuals. On the contrary, we call on governments to protect people in accordance with the law. We consistently and strongly condemn attacks against civilians as a grave abuse of their human rights. We remind armed groups and those who support them of their obligations not to target civilians whatever the circumstances. However, human rights abuse by armed groups is not a licence for governments to ignore their own obligations.

Governments are not entitled to respond to terror with terror. They are obliged at all times to act within the framework of international human rights and humanitarian law. The people who organize and perpetrate bombings of buses in Tel Aviv or a discotheque in Bali, who ambush and kill civilians in Burundi, or who take hostages in a theatre in Moscow must be brought to justice in accordance with standards of fair trial. So too must the Israeli soldiers who carry out unlawful killings in the Occupied Territories, the Indonesian police who torture in Aceh and Papua, the Russian security forces who rape villagers in Chechnya. By denying justice and perpetuating impunity, many governments have both undermined their international human rights obligations and contributed to the cycle of insecurity, violence and violations.

The focus on national security has diverted attention from some very real threats that affect the lives of millions of people. The real sources of insecurity for many people lie in the failure to halt the unimpeded flow of small arms, to eradicate extreme poverty and preventable diseases, to arrest and treat the spread of HIV/AIDS, and deal with the social dimensions of globalization. Real security will remain illusory, especially for the poor, so long as police, courts and state institutions in many countries remain inept or corrupt. Many women will continue to feel insecure as long as they are unprotected from violence in their homes and communities. Amnesty International's campaign on Russia has highlighted the failure of the parliament to adopt legislation to criminalize domestic violence, despite 50 drafts, in a country where some 14,000 women die at the hands of their partners or family members each year.

Addressing these diverse sources of insecurity requires commitment and investment by governments and the international community in all human rights economic, social, cultural, civil and political. It requires establishing or strengthening institutions that can protect human rights. New resources are being directed to security police and "counter-terrorism" agencies. Where is the new money, however, to strengthen the UN's human rights machinery which has been grossly under-funded for years? Where are the new resources to help countries build fair and effective justice and policing systems? Where are the funds to meet the social needs of poor and marginalized communities? Where is the political will and public awareness to combat violence against women?

Global insecurity, far from diminishing the value of human rights, has actually heightened the need to respect them. A more secure world demands a paradigm shift in the concept of security, a shift that recognizes that insecurity and violence are best tackled by effective, accountable states which uphold, not violate, human rights. Unless that shift happens, security will be a skewed concept, bringing in its wake greater insecurity.

Throughout the past year, Amnesty International has relentlessly challenged the narrow focus of the security agenda. Our members have lobbied governments, armed groups, corporations and others to promote and protect human rights around the world. Achieving real change in the lives of people is the measure of our success. This report documents achievements as well as disappointments. It records the efforts of our members to campaign for change, to demand justice, to expose the travesty of political rhetoric, to hold governments to account and above all, to tell the story behind the statistic, to give voice to the voiceless.

Human rights are not a luxury for good times. They must be upheld at all times, including in times of danger and insecurity. They restrain governments from actions that harm and provide the standards for accountability. They empower people and give them the freedom to choose, to challenge and to shape their own destiny. They provide a framework for constructive dialogue between governments and peoples. If the quest for a safer world is to succeed, human rights must lie at its heart.

© Amnesty International

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Senator Robert Byrd on Emerging Truth

Once again, Senator Robert Byrd has made his eloquence heard. From the floor of the Senate he sagely noted that although the American people are used to the political spin they hear from public officials, there comes a point at which they say no more. We have seen the wreaking of havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children and nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And giving us a ray of hope, he stated, "And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall."
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The Truth Will Emerge
By US Senator Robert Byrd
Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, - -
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed, exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world, over and over again, that an attack was necessary to protect our people and the world from terrorism. It assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of unmanned drones about which we heard so much morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string. Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range. Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology and our well trained troops.

Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk. But, the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?

What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of "liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years.

Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N. assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the U.S. government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced, and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease. "Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed only by an occupying military force and a U.S. administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it intends to depart.

Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies?

As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way.

The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions.

Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will.

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood - - when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie - - not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

Common Dreams NewsCenter
©Copyrighted 1997-2003

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Manufacturing Consent Through Fear

Counterpunch columnist Carl Estabrook writes on the use of fear and anxiety in manufacturing consent in America. We've become a paranoid nation, suspicious of all who appear different than ourselves, and eager to turn over our precious civil liberties in exchange for vague promises that some omni-present terrorism will be vanquished.
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Cultivating & Exploiting American Anxiety
Republic of Fear
By Carl Estabrook

By any reasonable calculation, members of the Bush administration should be looking for jobs as desperately as this year's college graduates. There are two million fewer jobs in the American economy today than on the day George Bush took office, and that fact alone should be enough for the voters in 2004 to turf out this ridiculous president and what Matt Taibbi calls his "small gang of snickering, stupid thugs whose vision of paradise is full of explosions and beautifully designed prisons".

So how did they get away with it? And how may they still get away with it in November 2004?

Greg Palast and others have demonstrated the racist purging of voters' lists, pioneered by Florida (but hardly limited to one corrupt state) for the 2000 election. And instead of fixing a system that casts doubt on every election, as Palast recently pointed out, "Astonishingly, Congress adopted the absurdly named 'Help America Vote Act,' which requires every state to replicate Florida's system of centralized, computerized voter files before the 2004 election."

The manufacture of consent in the 2000 election was confirmed up by the Supreme Court, the final bulwark against democracy since the time of John Marshall and his discovery of "judicial review" (which is not in the Constitution). The court made sure that the candidate with the most votes did not become president. Of course Gore, as a carefully vetted and pre-selected candidate, did not object enough to risk his membership in the elite political club.

But almost four out of five of Americans of voting age did not vote for George Bush in 2000 -- half didn't vote, and fewer than half of those who did, voted for Bush -- a more important figure than the vague "approval rating." (As Michael Moore says, in these days of the Patriot Act, if someone you don't know calls you at home and asks whether you "approve" of the president, what are you going to say?)

"Nearly 70% of each group [voters and non-voters] says that the modern campaigns 'seem more like theater or entertainment than something to be taken seriously,' and over 70% of each group agrees that candidates are 'more concerned with fighting each other than with solving the nation's problems.'" That was the conclusion from polls taken by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, just before the 2000 election. But how can the condign condemnation of a pre-cooked electoral system by the vast majority of the nation's citizens be turned into the modicum of support that Bush requires to avoid impeachment? One word: fear.

In the propaganda campaign for the Bush administration's second demonstration war against a helpless country, Kanan Makiya was a helpful player. His book Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (1989, republished in 1998) retailed the horrors of Saddam Hussein's government without much emphasis on the fact that they were accomplished with US aid and support. As Iraq became the official hate-object in America through the fall and winter of 2002, Makiya's prominence grew -- e.g., he became the capstone for an article advocating war in the "liberal" New York Times Magazine.

But the true "republic of fear," it was clear by then, is the United States of America. Only in America was government propaganda able to make citizens personally afraid of Saddam Hussein, sufficiently to promote a war for non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." 911 was a godsend to the Bush administration, for in all the world only Americans could be made to fear Saddam Hussein because of his supposed link to "terrorism."

In mid-April the New York Times tried to take the edge off a poll showing that, even as US troops were entering Baghdad, a majority of Americans remained opposed to the policy of pre-emptive war that Bush invoked in attacking Iraq. In contrast to the unforgiving numbers, it offered this nugget of "human interest":

"Ina Urness, 71, of Higginsville, Mo., said in a follow-up interview that she approved of the administration's moving pre-emptively against nations that posed a threat to the United States. 'We ought to nip it right in the bud, because it's better them than us,' she said. 'Get over there and get them before they can have a chance to turn those missiles loose on us over here.'"

In America the fears of foreign attack are bracketed with much more reasonable fears of personal economic collapse. Can the Bush administration continue to cover one fear with the other, so that it can go on with its policy of imperial war abroad and transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich at home? Since no real critique will come from the "other" party (with an occasional exception), that seems likely. The policy of aggressive war has both domestic and foreign attractions for any United States government.

The dangers are great to the people of the world and also to the perpetrators of this vicious policy. At the end of the Second World War in Europe, the US and its allies tried and executed the German leadership for launching aggressive war, on the basis of international law formulated as the Nuremberg Principles. If those principles were applied to recent American presidents in the same way, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush pere et fils would have to be hanged. Remember, mental incompetence does not preclude execution in the US.

Carl Estabrook is a Visiting Scholar University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a CounterPunch columnist. He can be reached at: galliher@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

The Masters of the Universe

The highly-exclusive, and secretive, Bilderberg club has just concluded its annual meeting. Pepe Escobar reports for the Asia Times on this international lobby of the power elite. What have they been up to, and do they have your best interests at heart?
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Asia Times, Hong Kong
May 22, 2003

The Masters of the Universe
By Pepe Escobar

It may be instructive to learn what US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle were doing last weekend. From May 15 to 18 they were guests at the Trianon Palace Hotel, close to the spectacular Versailles palace near Paris, for the annual meeting of the Bilderberg club.

Depending on the ideological prism applied, the Bilderberg club may be considered an ultra-VIP international lobby of the power elite of Europe and America, capable of steering international policy from behind closed doors; a harmless "discussion group" of politicians, academics and business tycoons; or a capitalist secret society operating entirely through self interest and plotting world domination.

The Bilderberg club is regarded by many financial and business elites as the high chamber of the high priests of capitalism. You can't apply for membership of such a club. Each year, a mysterious "steering committee" devises a selected invitation list with a maximum 100 names. The location of their annual meeting is not exactly secret: they even have a headquarters in Leiden, in the Netherlands. But the meetings are shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Participants and guests rarely reveal that they are attending. Their security is managed by military intelligence. But what is the secretive group really up to? Well, they talk. They lobby. They try to magnify their already immense political clout, on both sides of the Atlantic. And everybody pledges absolute secrecy on what has been discussed.

The Bilderberg mingles central bankers, defense experts, press barons, government ministers, prime ministers, royalty, international financiers and political leaders from Europe and America. Guests this year, along with Rumsfeld and Perle (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is also a member) included banker David Rockefeller, as well as various members of the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos of Spain, and high officials of assorted governments. The Bilderberg does not invite - or accept - Asians, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans or Africans.

Some of the Western world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists attend Bilderberg, in their view, to polish and reinforce a virtual consensus, an illusion that globalization, defined under their terms - what's good for banking and big business is good for everybody else - is inevitable and for the greater good of mankind. If they have a hidden agenda, it is the fact that their fabulous concentration of wealth and power is completely dissociated from the explanation to their guests of how globalization benefits 6.2 billion people. Some of the club's earlier guests went on to become crucial players. Bill Clinton in 1991 and Tony Blair in 1993 were invited and duly "approved" by the Bilderberg before they took office.

There are innumerable shady, still unexplained connections between the early Bilderberg club and the Nazis, via Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, the father of Queen Beatrix, who founded the club in Bilderberg in 1954 (the name is taken from a Dutch hotel), aiming to "increase understanding between Europe and North America". Bernhard was a member of Adolf Hitler's SS. One of the founding members of the Bilderberg is Otto Wolff von Amerongen - who actively improved business links between Germany and the Soviet bloc and served on 26 boards of directors, including Deutsche Bank. Few people know him - and perhaps for some good reason: he has been linked to the Nazi's theft of Jewish holdings before and during World War II.

Rumsfeld is an active Bilderberger. So is General Peter Sutherland from Ireland, a former European Union commissioner and chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP. Rumsfeld and Sutherland served together in 2000 on the board of Swiss energy company ABB. And ABB happened to have sold two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea. At the time, of course, North Korea was not an active member of the "axis of evil".

This year, the Bilderberg meeting in Versailles conveniently merged into the G8 meeting of finance ministers in Paris, a 20-minute car ride from Versailles, on May 19. The procedure is traditional: what happens in the Bilderberg is usually a preview of what is later discussed at the full G8 gathering, which this year will be held from June 1 to 3 at Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps.

On Bilderberg's first full working day on May 15, French President Jacques Chirac delivered a welcoming speech, trying to bury the bitter divisions among the guests over the war on Iraq by emphasizing that the US and Western Europe are longtime allies. But Chirac's gracious hosting may not have been enough to soothe the hawks in the US administration still miffed at "pacifist" France.

An influential Jewish European banker reveals that the ruling elite in Europe is now telling their minions that the West is on the brink of total financial meltdown; so the only way to save their precious investments is to bet on the new global crisis centered around the Middle East, which replaced the crisis evolving around the Cold War.

According to a banking source in the City of London connected to Versailles, what has transpired from the 2003 meeting is that American and European Bilderbergers have not exactly managed to control their split over the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline policy against the Palestinians. As the Bilderbergers were chattering away, Sharon all but rejected Bush's Middle East road map, already endorsed by the other members of the so-called quartet: the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. This road map, as it stands, is over: even the presence of US Secretary of State Colin Powell - who stopped by Versailles to brief the Bilderbergers - was not enough to persuade Sharon to even discuss the dismantling of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.

American imperial adventures are usually rehearsed at Bilderberg meetings. Europe's elite were opposed to an American invasion of Iraq since the 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Rumsfeld himself had promised them it wouldn't happen. Last week, everybody struck back at Rumsfeld, asking about the infamous "weapons of mass destruction". Most of Europe's elite do not believe American promises that Iraq's oil will "benefit the Iraqi people". They know that revenues from Iraqi oil will be used to rebuild what America has bombed. And the debate is still raging on what kind of contracts which rewarded Bechtel and Halliburton will "benefit" Western Europe.

Europe's elite, according to those close to Bilderberg, are suspicious that the US does not need or even want a stable, legitimate central government in Iraq. When that happens, there will be no reason for the US to remain in the country. Europe's elite see the US establishing "facts on the ground": establishing a long-term military presence and getting the oil flowing again under American control. This could go on for years, as long as the Americans can guarantee enough essential services to prevent the Iraqi people from engaging in a war of national liberation.

It was also extremely hard at the Versailles meeting to forge a consensus on the necessity of a European Union army totally independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The US establishment, of course, is against the EU army. But so are some Europeans, starting with anti-army cheerleader Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general. Europe's elite can't stand US domination of NATO any more. Some Europeans suggest a separate force, but controlled by NATO. Americans argue that a separate EU force would dissolve NATO's role as the UN's world army. And Americans insist that NATO is no longer confined to the defense of Europe: its troops now could go anywhere in the world, directed or not by the UN Security Council. The impasse remains.

All these crucial developments were discussed behind closed doors. The Trianon Palace Hotel in Versailles was closed to the public and all non-Bilderberg guests had to check out. Part-time employees were sent home. The ones who remained were told that they would be fired if caught revealing anything about the meeting. They couldn't speak to any Bilderberger unless spoken to. They couldn't look anybody in the eye. Armed guards completely isolated and cordoned off the hotel. Some members of the American corporate press were there - but the public will never know about it: Bilderberg news is not fit to print - or broadcast. No journalists from any media controlled by Bilderberg multinational tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch were or will be allowed to report it. Even if they somehow managed to crash the party. There's no business like (private) elite business.

@Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
No material from Asia Times Online may be republished in any form without written permission.
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What is the Force That Gave Them Meaning?

Recently Chris Hedges, author of War Is the Force That Gives Us Meaning, spoke at Rockford College, delivering the commencement address to the graduates. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of exquisite words was greeted with catcalls, jeers, and bullhorns. What was the force operating that gave them meaning?
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Rockford College Commencement Address
Presented by Chris Hedges May 17, 2003

I want to speak to you today about war and empire.

Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now.

We have forfeited the good will, the empathy the world felt for us after 9-11. We have folded in on ourselves, we have severely weakened the delicate international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and promoting peace and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of violence. We have become the company we keep.

The censure and perhaps the rage of much of the world, certainly one-fifth of the world's population which is Muslim, most of whom I'll remind you are not Arab, is upon us. Look today at the 14 people killed last night in several explosions in Casablanca. And this rage in a world where almost 50 percent of the planet struggles on less than two dollars a day will see us targeted. Terrorism will become a way of life, and when we are attacked we will, like our allies Putin and Sharon, lash out with greater fury. The circle of violence is a death spiral; no one escapes. We are spinning at a speed that we may not be able to hold. As we revel in our military prowess -- the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq -- we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war. This capacity has doomed empires in the past.

"Modern western civilization may perish," the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "because it falsely worshiped technology as a final good."

The real injustices, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the brutal and corrupt dictatorships we fund in the Middle East, will mean that we will not rid the extremists who hate us with bombs. Indeed we will swell their ranks. Once you master people by force you depend on force for control. In your isolation you begin to make mistakes.

Fear engenders cruelty; cruelty, fear, insanity, and then paralysis. In the center of Dante's circle the damned remained motionless. We have blundered into a nation we know little about and are caught between bitter rivalries and competing ethnic groups and leaders we do not understand. We are trying to transplant a modern system of politics invented in Europe characterized, among other things, by the division of earth into independent secular states based on national citizenship in a land where the belief in a secular civil government is an alien creed. Iraq was a cesspool for the British when they occupied it in 1917; it will be a cesspool for us as well. The curfews, the armed clashes with angry crowds that leave scores of Iraqi dead, the military governor, the Christian Evangelical groups who are being allowed to follow on the heels of our occupying troops to try and teach Muslims about Jesus.

Hedges stops speaking because of a disturbance in the audience. Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow takes the microphone.

"My friends, one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its ability and its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other's opinions. (Crowd Cheers) If you wish to protest the speaker's remarks, I ask that you do it in silence, as some of you are doing in the back. That is perfectly appropriate but he has the right to offer his opinion here and we would like him to continue his remarks. (Fog Horn Blows, some cheer).

The occupation of the oil fields, the notion of the Kurds and the Shiites will listen to the demands of a centralized government in Baghdad, the same Kurds and Shiites who died by the tens of thousands in defiance of Sadaam Hussein, a man who happily butchered all of those who challenged him, and this ethnic rivalry has not gone away. The looting of Baghdad, or let me say the looting of Baghdad with the exception of the oil ministry and the interior ministry -- the only two ministries we bothered protecting -- is self immolation.

As someone who knows Iraq, speaks Arabic, and spent seven years in the Middle East, if the Iraqis believe rightly or wrongly that we come only for oil and occupation, that will begin a long bloody war of attrition; it is how they drove the British out and remember that, when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon in 1982, they were greeted by the dispossessed Shiites as liberators. But within a few months, when the Shiites saw that the Israelis had come not as liberators but occupiers, they began to kill them. It was Israel who created Hezbollah and was Hezbollah that pushed Israel out of Southern Lebanon.

As William Butler Yeats wrote in "Meditations in Times Of Civil War," "We had fed the heart on fantasies / the hearts grown brutal from the fair."

This is a war of liberation in Iraq, but it is a war now of liberation by Iraqis from American occupation. And if you watch closely what is happening in Iraq, if you can see it through the abysmal coverage, you can see it in the lashing out of the terrorist death squads, the murder of Shiite leaders in mosques, and the assassination of our young soldiers in the streets. It is one that will soon be joined by Islamic radicals and we are far less secure today than we were before we bumbled into Iraq.

We will pay for this, but what saddens me most is that those who will by and large pay the highest price are poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the army because it was all we offered them. For war in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics. Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the instrument of empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war -- if we do not understand how deadly that poison is -- it can kill us just as surely as the disease.

We have lost touch with the essence of war. Following our defeat in Vietnam we became a better nation. We were humbled, even humiliated. We asked questions about ourselves we had not asked before.

We were forced to see ourselves as others saw us and the sight was not always a pretty one. We were forced to confront our own capacity for a atrocity -- for evil -- and in this we understood not only war but more about ourselves. But that humility is gone.

War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press -- remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem -- have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence -- death -- is hidden from public view.

There was no more candor in the Persian Gulf War or the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq than there was in Vietnam. But in the age of live feeds and satellite television, the state and the military have perfected the appearance of candor.

Because we no longer understand war, we no longer understand that it can all go horribly wrong. We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.

The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true -- it does create a feeling of comradeship which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong.

War allows us to rise above our small stations in life; we find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War for those who enter into combat has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the lust of the eye and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.

(A man in the audience says: "Can I say a few words here?" Hedges: Yeah, when I finish.)

Once in war, the conflict obliterates the past and the future all is one heady intoxicating present. You feel every heartbeat in war, colors are brighter, your mind races ahead of itself. (Confusion, microphone problems, etc.) We feel in wartime comradeship. (Boos) We confuse this with friendship, with love. There are those who will insist that the comradeship of war is love -- the exotic glow that makes us in war feel as one people, one entity, is real, but this is part of war's intoxication.

Think back on the days after the attacks on 9-11. Suddenly we no longer felt alone; we connected with strangers, even with people we did not like. We felt we belonged, that we were somehow wrapped in the embrace of the nation, the community; in short, we no longer felt alienated.

As this feeling dissipated in the weeks after the attack, there was a kind of nostalgia for its warm glow and wartime always brings with it this comradeship, which is the opposite of friendship. Friends are predetermined; friendship takes place between men and women who possess an intellectual and emotional affinity for each other. But comradeship -- that ecstatic bliss that comes with belonging to the crowd in wartime -- is within our reach. We can all have comrades.

The danger of the external threat that comes when we have an enemy does not create friendship; it creates comradeship. And those in wartime are deceived about what they are undergoing. And this is why once the threat is over, once war ends, comrades again become strangers to us. This is why after war we fall into despair.

In friendship there is a deepening of our sense of self. We become, through the friend, more aware of who we are and what we are about; we find ourselves in the eyes of the friend. Friends probe and question and challenge each other to make each of us more complete; with comradeship, the kind that comes to us in patriotic fervor, there is a suppression of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-possession. Comrades lose their identities in wartime for the collective rush of a common cause -- a common purpose. In comradeship there are no demands on the self. This is part of its appeal and one of the reasons we miss it and seek to recreate it. Comradeship allows us to escape the demands on the self that is part of friendship.

In wartime when we feel threatened, we no longer face death alone but as a group, and this makes death easier to bear. We ennoble self-sacrifice for the other, for the comrade; in short we begin to worship death. And this is what the god of war demands of us.

Think finally of what it means to die for a friend. It is deliberate and painful; there is no ecstasy. For friends, dying is hard and bitter. The dialogue they have and cherish will perhaps never be recreated. Friends do not, the way comrades do, love death and sacrifice. To friends, the prospect of death is frightening. And this is why friendship or, let me say love, is the most potent enemy of war. Thank you.

(Boos cheers, shouts, fog horns and the like)

Copyright © 2003 Rockford Register Star.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment for research and educational purposes only.)

Comments

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