Takeastand

KRUGMAN CITE: Brendan Nyhan's post on changes made to a press release on the website of the Office of Management and Budget is cited in Paul

week, claiming [Windows Media Player audio] that "It is obvious now that

makes a similar suggestion in the Aug. 12 issue, writing in a fictitious

can only hope that the debate over whether and how to invade Iraq is not

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill's trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay

there. But there is one country where the US is playing an enormous -- and

president of Venezuela. (The White House later justified its response by

Now we will see whether the Democratic-led US Senate will object to this

Committee requested an investigation from the US State Department, to find

out what it did wrong in Venezuela. What he got was a complete whitewash --

General didn't even interview a single Venezuelan, but relied on US embassy

officials and others who had a direct career interest in covering up what

happened. This is comparable to investigating Enron by talking to Ken Lay

section entitled "Miscellaneous Issues Raised by the News Media in Venezuela

or the United States." Just what issues raised by the Venezuelan and U.S.

Of course they can't hide what the press has already printed. The Washington

Post and New York Times cited numerous meetings between top US officials and

the people who led the military coup on April 11. The European press was

even more explicit about these meetings: "The coup was discussed in some

detail, right down to its timing and chances of success, which were deemed

to be excellent," reported the Observer of London, citing sources at the

There were dozens of such leads in the press that the State Department could

have investigated. But they chose not to do so; or if they did, they have

Some of the report's admissions are even more damning than the omissions.

Listing the reasons for US hostility to President Chavez, the report notes

potential impact of that on oil prices." There you have it: the number one

deciding how much oil Venezuela should produce, instead of leaving these

decisions to Washington! And people wonder why anti-US sentiment is rising

Even more importantly, the report admits that US officials did little or

sanctions on a government that was installed by military force. This means

organizations -- were a mere formality. The real message was a big green

The anti-democratic Venezuelan opposition will continue to understand that

message, until there is an explicit statement from the Bush Administration

that a coup would result in a cut-off of economic and diplomatic relations

investigation in place of the State Department's cover-up. Anything less

Mark Weisbrot is co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

in Washington, D.C. He is co-author (with Dean Baker) of Social Security:

The New York Times wrote recently about Russia getting a new "Western-style" legal code: "The code enshrines the fundamental concept of presumption of innocence and gives new responsibilities--and, in theory, independence--to judges, while it will gradually strip prosecutors of the enormous powers they have wielded over almost every step of any prosecution, from arrest to trial.

evidence, throwing out, among other things, evidence collected by wiretaps

The Times goes on to describe Russia, but unwittingly provides a perfect

politically...motivated prosecutions are common, where coercion of suspects

In Tom Cruise's new movie, Minority Report, based on Philip K. Dick's story,

individuals can be arrested before they've committed a crime. It's not much

instances from his McCarthyism Watch. At the Milwaukee airport on April 20,

high school students were detained before going to peace demonstrations in

Jones, a graduate student at the University of Maine at Orono, was fired for

developing a lesson plan on Islam and Islamic civilization as part of his

world history course at Old Town High School. Musical group Alma Melodioso,

on their way from Monroe to Park City, Utah were surrounded by cops, asked

Secret Service agents, because they had earlier asked at a gas station if

there were any Olympics security checkpoints along the way. Like several

unrelated vehicular charges, after he joined in a demonstration outside the

Israeli embassy in Boston. His teeth were forcibly pulled out while in jail.

Legislators are considering the formation of a domestic intelligence agency,

like Britain's MI-5. The new Homeland Security agency, which will lead overt

martial rule in the event of a future "attack," is seeking to be exempted

from access to information, conflict of interest rules, and whistle-blower

American citizen named Yaser Esam Hamdi who is being held indefinitely in a

naval brig in Virginia to evade constitutional protections. Mr. Hamdi was

born in Louisiana and grew up in Saudi Arabia. He has been denied access to

a lawyer, and is being held indefinitely without a crime being charged. The

about the government detaining that person and getting from that individual

bomber" (on flimsy evidence) is being held in a navy brig in Charleston,

Manhattan and asking a federal judge to return him to New York, is being

fought by the government as interfering with the president's conduct of war.

As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe argues, members of an enemy force

confinement for the duration of war. But the rationale for such imprisonment

is narrowly defined, not, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would have

In recent months, there have been some positive signs as lower courts have

sought to deny the government the fascist powers it seeks. But on its first

opinion on the rollback of civil liberties, the Supreme Court on June 28

blocked a federal judge's order to open immigration hearings for detainees

to the public. The First Amendment, according to the federal judge, requires

immigration hearings to be open. But the Supreme Court has sided with the

government, which has adopted a blanket policy of barring the public and

media from detention and deportation hearings. To justify secret trials, the

however, adequate provisions are in place to protect sensitive information.

Across the nation, FBI agents are visiting public and university libraries,

and checking up on the reading habits of people. The FBI does not require

probable cause for a search warrant to conduct this type of inquiry under

the USA Patriot Act. Bookstores can also have their records searched by the

speech and thought--libraries, the Internet, religious groups, political

meetings, all will be subject to surveillance in cooperation with the CIA.

conversations and pager communications, not including secret surveillance

done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FBI, without any

chatrooms, political or religious meetings, and commercial databases that

include subscriptions to publications, travel records, credit profile, and

COINTELPRO, the bureau's program in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s to spy on

radical and dissident groups. COINTELPRO infiltrated dissident groups to

disinformation campaigns, and drove civil rights activists toward burnout

reorganized into an arm of the spy state. Visitors from certain countries

will be fingerprinted and made to report their whereabouts with a registry.

Colleges are singling out students on the basis of ethnic identity, asking

them to carry special identity papers. Committees of local vigilantes are

Much of the fascist agenda is being implemented by back channel means. This

information--credit history, student loans, welfare payments, drug arrests,

minor traffic violations, not to mention citizenship status. If one is poor,

imprisonment. If one so much as raises one's voice or violates a traffic

Boston's pleasant Logan airport is being transformed by an Israeli security

chief into a nightmare of surveillance including biometric devices matching

closed-circuit cameras that match the faces of terrorists and criminals, and

outstanding arrest warrants, or immigration status of anyone they choose.

radically separated into the privileged minority and the oppressed majority.

corpus during the civil war, historians single out this dictatorial act for

condemnation. Bush has appropriated all the civil liberties violations of

participating in any extracurricular activity. Precisely those participating

in extracurricular activities are least likely to be involved in drugs, as

dissenting Justice Ginsberg observed. The idea is to ingrain an absolute

Recently, Martina Navratilova said in the German weekly Die Ziet: "The most

absurd thing about my escape from injustice [from Czechoslovakia] was that I

simply exchanged one system which oppressed opinion for another." Tom Cruise

has said that he wouldn't raise his kids in the U.S. because "the U.S. is

reserved for the nightmares instigated by Stalin, Hitler, and Mao. The world

is scared of the brutal fascist regime emerging in this land whose ruling

crimes. Liberal cities like Northampton, Cambridge, Berkeley, and Ann Arbor

are defying enforcement of the Patriot Act. But this only proves the point

about two Americas: small oases of relative freedom for a few (but for how

Anis Shivani studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels,

America, July 4, 2002 -- On this, the 226th birthday of the signing of the

Declaration of Independence, the United States of America faces the dangers

corruption and greed from within what the British novelist C. P. Snow called

Not since Richard Nixon and his henchmen attempted an executive coup d'état

to subvert the Constitution has the United States been more threatened. John

Dean, counsel to Nixon, described the Watergate conspiracy as "a cancer on

eventually exposed Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell, Haldeman, Erlichman, Colson, and

A right wing conspiracy of enormous proportions involving the executive,

legislative, and judicial branches of government is methodically undermining

not only the civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, but also the

system of checks and balances established by the Founding Fathers to ensure

that no one political party, no small group of powerful forces could hijack

their great experiment in democratic government. Yet, that is exactly what

Since taking over the White House in what the respected journalist Daniel

Schorr aptly described as a judicial coup d'état, George Bush and his junta

are methodically converting "a nation of, by, and for the people," into a

plutocratic, oligarchic, authoritarian corporate state in which all real

wealth and power rests in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Congress and signed into law, rolled back federal regulations, also signed

into law, that protect the environment and all Americans who have to live

guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. With the approval of a lap dog Congress,

it has pushed through fiscally irrational tax cuts that amount to nothing

less than welfare handouts to the rich at the expense of most Americans.

reckless agenda under the banner of patriotism and national unity. We should

never forget that Bush, when speaking at Republican fundraisers, repeatedly

refers to 9/11 as "hitting the trifecta." In horse racing parlance, that

means Bush got lucky. In other words, nearly 3,000 people died to provide a

convenient excuse for why the budget surplus inherited from Bill Clinton

space-based weapons protect us from the kind of attacks that occurred last

What this budget will do is allow Secretary of War Donald Rumsfield to pour

billions into wars against enemies that don't exist, fatten the pockets of

military contractors whose campaign donations helped put Bush in power, and

satisfy pusillanimous Congressmen whose own ethics do not go beyond these

same fat cats who keep them in office. It will also suck the United States

Treasury dry of funds for any social programs that may actually strengthen

Security, and other programs that would benefit the many and not the few.

By and large, the American public does not view 9/11 as terrorist attacks by

Muslim extremists against what they saw as symbols of American economic and

called 9/11 an "attack on freedom." New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a

sickening display of political opportunism, described the victims of the

World Trade Center attack as heroes in the war to defend freedom. That would

firefighters and police, the other victims thought they were just at work

Indeed, politicians -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- the media, and the

public accept that the United States is in a state of war. Against whom? Can

considered a state of war? Yet Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield have used the

"War on Terrorism" to justify our military adventure in Afghanistan, the

purported purpose of which was to capture Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."

We haven't done that, but we are still bombing Afghan villages and killing

Philippines, Columbia, and anywhere else on the globe we perceive "evil."

Cheney, Rumsfield, and Bush, Sr., are just itching to invade Iraq and topple

Sadam Hussein. They continue to feed the public a daily diet of propaganda

evidence indicates that countries the Bush administration is on speaking

terms with are the more likely culprits. (Consider this: most of the 9/11

state of permanent war became obvious when the two most powerful Democrats

in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader

actions in Iraq to remove Hussein. (Isn't the whole idea of a covert action

to keep it a secret?) Daschle and Gephardt pretty much indicated that they

Resolution, the legislative miscue that led to the folly of Vietnam? Do they

think this is going to be "a splendid little war?" Do they think invading

Afghanistan. Well, it's not. Any invasion of Iraq will result in casualties

For Attorney General John Ashcroft, 9/11 was just what he needed to advance

his Bill of Rights-busting, theocratic agenda for America. Even before a

toadying Congress nearly unanimously passed the odious USA PATRIOT Act, the

FBI was picking up anyone from the Middle East they could find and throwing

nationals facing criminal trials under the American system of justice while

two American citizens remain locked up in military brigs without benefit of

Never mind that Ashcroft has made a mockery of the Constitutional concept of

separation of church and state by declaring Jesus our only king and holding

daily prayer sessions with top staff in his office. Never mind that he made

Justice Department resources to fight California's marijuana initiative for

the seriously ill and Oregon's Right to Die law. Never mind that he made a

mockery of his own promise to Congress not to let personal beliefs interfere

with his duties as attorney general by filing a brief involving the Second

Amendment that overturned 60 years of government policy regarding private

ownership of handguns in a relatively minor Supreme Court case. And never

mind that Ashcroft made a mockery of his post-9/11 claim to being committed

to stopping terrorism after he had already previously turned down a Justice

Department request for $305 million to investigate terrorist activities.

Congress, by its failure to live up to its constitutional responsibilities,

has also fed this malignancy destroying the fiber of our republic. Led by

one-time Republican majority leader and now minority leader of the Senate

Trent Lott and his House cohorts Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, Congress has

taken a wrecking ball to the nation's economy, creating enormous wealth for

one percent of Americans and a lingering recession for the entire country.

With the aforementioned PATRIOT Act, it has smashed the Bill of Rights. It

approving an outlandish military budget that will bankrupt the country. Even

worse, Democrats in both houses have been accessories before and after the

Equally complicit in the destruction of our Constitutional system of checks

infamous Dred Scott decision justifying slavery and the equally infamous

Plesy vs. Ferguson ruling that codified segregation have we had a court do

so much damage to the Constitution. Led by the unholy trio of Chief Justice

William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia, along with Justices

Kennedy and O'Connor, this Court has overturned a presidential election and

put George Bush in the White House. It has methodically stripped away civil

liberties and individual protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. And,

lastly, it has taken its own wrecking ball to the wall between church and

Republican (and Democratic) minions in Congress, and a Supreme Court, the

majority of whom, are committed to reshaping America in their own narrow

reactionary image, one can only ask this question: is there a doctor in the