A QUICK VISIT TO MEXICO

Column No. 92 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - January 12, 2006

At the end of 2005, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting Mexico for nine days.  In this column I share with you some observations on the history and politics of this fascinating country, along with some travel tips for those who might be stimulated by these thoughts and other information as well, to pay Mexico a visit.  I make no pretense at being any kind of expert on Mexico.  The facts, or what I believe to be facts, are based on information gathered in a series of historical/anthropological museum visits and a bit of reading.  I think that I am stating things correctly here, but if I am not, misstatements are not made with intention and I do apologize in advance for them.

First of all, Mexico is an historic country.  There is evidence of civilization being established there going back thousands of years.  The only other area in the Western Hemisphere where, to our present knowledge, civilization arose was in the South American Andes, where the Incas created an apparently highly developed one.  They, however, did not have a written language.  The most highly developed Mexican one, the Mayan, centered in Yucatan and having at least two separate eras of civilized society, did.  However, the Spaniards who took over the country in the 16th century, Catholic Church and Royal Armed forces working side-by-side, went out of their way to destroy as much of the written legacy of the Mayans (apparently vast) as they could, by burning every Mayan book they could lay their hands on.  A few, courtesy of a few Catholic monks who realized what their superiors were doing and were horrified by it, survived, and so there is a bit of a written record still left.  But most of it is gone.  Among the Mayan achievements were an accurate calendar and the concept of zero, which their Western European conquerors had learned only from the Arabs.  It does not appear in Roman numerology.

An interesting historical conflict with the Christian world is that while Biblical literalists date the Creation of the Earth to 6004 B.C.E., the Mayans, to the best of our knowledge, dated it only to 3123 B.C.E.  I wonder how we could determine just which creation story has the correct date.

Travel tip I.  If you are flying to Mexico, making a connection in Mexico City before reaching your final destination, be careful with whom you fly.  We flew with Delta from New York City to Mexico City and then changed planes for a flight to Oaxaca.  We booked through Aero México, but we had code shares internationally with Delta and in Mexico with Mexicana Airlines.  We missed our connection in Mexico City.  We were able to get onto an AeroMexico flight several hours later but wanted to make sure that our luggage would make it also.  Neither Aero México, nor Mexicana, nor Delta, could give us any more precise information.  Fortunately, our bags got onto our flight into Oaxaca.  Others were not so fortunate.  My wife met an American couple who had flown in on Delta, made a change in Mexico City and five days later still had not got their luggage.  We heard from other travelers that this was not a totally unusual occurrence.  Next time we go to Mexico, should we have to make a change in Mexico City; we will make sure that we fly on the same, Mexican, airline from New York to wherever in Mexico.

In the history of Mexico, from the early civilizations onward, the society seems to have been made up of two primary classes: the owner-rulers and everyone else, with a few variations over time and place.  Certainly the Aztec civilization that the first Spanish explorers encountered was stratified in this way.  There was a ruling class that lived very well.  Then there were the worker/farmers who supported them and who, for example, were not allowed, on pain of death, to acquire any marginal goods or property beyond what they needed to be productive in their work.  Certain skilled tradesmen and artisans drawn from this serving class were permitted certain privileges, as were highly skilled warriors.  Beneath them all was a slave class, made up of people captured in the perpetual wars with the Aztecs’ neighbors that seemed to characterize the period.  The Aztecs produced some marvelous artwork and some magnificent buildings (most of which were destroyed by the Spanish, as they destroyed the Mayans’ books).  They also produced a remarkably violent domestic culture, with human sacrifice, sometime in very large numbers, apparently being a common occurrence.  Supposedly done to “appease the Gods,” it most likely also served a very useful purpose for the rulers for keeping the working class, the slaves, and any captured enemies in their respective places.

Travel tip II.  Mexico City is one of the largest in the world.  Its present population is around 23 million.  Its altitude is 7000 ft. and it is covered by a permanent layer of smog.  Nevertheless, it is a city that works, at least for the Mexicans who have enough to live on and for tourists (for whom Mexico, unless you stay in a high-priced hotel, is a bargain).  It has a fairly comprehensive, and very low-priced (even for Mexicans) metro system, and I strongly recommend using it to get around, especially at rush hour.  There is much to see in Mexico City.  The main Anthropological Museum in Chapultepec Park, actually a combination historical, anthropological, archeological, art, crafts, and cultural museum, is the best museum-qua-museum I have visited in the world. (Te Papa, in Wellington, New Zealand, for me ranks second; it was first before I visited the one in Mexico City.)  The exhibits are very imaginatively set forth, are very accessible, have many illustrations of the settings in which the artifacts were found, have extensive descriptions, some with English translations, very comfortable lighting, and are set up to flow historically from the first arrivals of settlers originally from Asia, perhaps as long ago as 30,000 years B.C.E.  Great museuming is not confined to this particular museum, however.  We found it in the cultural museum in the small city of Oaxaca and in other small museums in Mexico City as well.

My impression is that the general two-class system, with variations, has continued throughout Mexican history.  It was obviously a feature of the Spanish dominion which lasted until the War of Independence, 1810-1820.  It was quickly re-established by a home-grown ruling class, which had developed under the Spanish, leading to a revolt following the disastrous (for Mexico) Mexican-American War of 1846-48 (in which they lost more than half of their territory).  A fledgling democracy with some land-reform followed, with a strange interlude in the 1860s of a French “Emperor” backed by French troops.  When they were thrown out, a democracy again was established but quickly turned into another home-grown dictatorship (of President Porfirio Diaz).  “Porfirism” did bring in major foreign investment and the beginnings of industrialization but with much repression of the mass of the population by the Mexican ruling class. The modern revolution of 1910-1920 (Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, et al) threw out the Porfiristas, democracy was re-established, and major advances in education, health care, and social services were made.  But one party, the PRI, remained in power for approximately 70 years from that time to the last election, in 2000, of the rightist current President Vicente Fox.  The two-class system has been somewhat modified, of course (but see the last paragraph).  However, Mexico still has one of the widest income/wealth gaps in the world for a semi-developed country.  This has widened under NAFTA which, among other things, made it very easy for Mexican owners to send their profits abroad instead of having to re-invest them in their own country.

Travel Tip III.  If you can manage it, the winter is a good time to go.  The weather is mild and dry.  There are not too many tourists about.  Be prepared for some world-class museuming, some magnificent Spanish colonial era baroque churches, lots and lots of people in Mexico City, friendliness, enough people who speak at least some English (we both speak some tourist Spanish and that does help), lots and lots of history, and of course the profusion of the great mural art of Rivera, Orozco and Siquieros, as well as others in public buildings, especially in Mexico City.  You can even see, in the Palacio des Belles Artes in Mexico City, a recreation of the mural that Rivera painted on commission at Rockefeller Center in New York City that John D. had destroyed because, among other things, it had a portrait of Lenin in it.  (It also features Marx, Engels and Darwin, but old J.D. apparently was particularly incensed about Lenin being there).  And oh yes, there is the Trotsky House where he was murdered by an agent of Stalin, and much, much of the art and life of Frida Kahlo, the two-time wife of Diego Rivera, an inamorata of Trotsky as well as others, and a fine artist in her right.

I could not finish this column without a thought or two on the illegal immigration problem.  In an article written by a senior Mexican economist with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, Dr. Ricardo Pasco (The [Miami] Herald Mexico, 12/28/05) I was surprised to learn that only a minority of illegal immigrants from Mexico are unemployed farmers.  The majority are people who have jobs and at least some education but simply cannot make enough to support their families as the NAFTA-driven ever-widening income gap continues on its un-merry way.  As Dr. Pascoe says: “The problem is that wages are very low in Mexico.”  Building a wall is one way, theoretically, to solve the problem for the U.S.  (Yes, it does seem as if the Republican Right and the Israeli Right have the same set of advisors, doesn’t it?)  But criminalizing illegal immigration would likely not act as a deterrent (since the vast majority of illegal immigrants don’t get caught and likely wouldn’t even with a wall) and accomplish nothing more than expanding the United States’ already vast prison system, at taxpayer expense.  (The Georgites would likely privatize it, to provide more profits for their prison-operator campaign contributors.)  Penalizing US employers of illegal immigrants would likely be effective to some extent, except that among some the Republicans’ biggest campaign contributors are those employers who use and exploit illegal immigrant labor.  (Just imagine what would happen to their profits if they had to pay US workers a living wage.)  The best long-term solution for both countries?  Repeal NAFTA so that manufacturing jobs would stay here and profits that the Mexican ruling class makes could not so easily be exported and they might have to re-invest in income- and job-producing enterprises at home.  Just a thought.  And with it, I end this quick visit to Mexico.

WHY THE PATRIOT ACT, REDUX: FASCISM IN THE HERE AND NOW, CONTINUED

Column No. 91 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH  - January 5, 2006

Here, once again, is my short definition of fascism: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of the government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you want to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites” and of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”).

No sooner had I finished writing (on Dec. 14-15) the column published last week that, as I noted at the end of it, relevant events suddenly started occurring at breakneck speed.  This column is based on two Short Short Shots about those events that I published on the Weblog of Michael Carmichael’s The Planetary Movement.  The President of the United States, George W. Bush, and surrogates including the Secretary of State and the Attorney General, made a series of speeches and statements given over the weekend of Dec. 16-18, 2005, concerning actions in domestic surveillance that he has been taking since shortly after 9/11.  He and they claimed that he can do just about anything he wants to in the realm of the criminal justice system, in investigating and otherwise dealing with American citizens, regardless of the law and the Constitution, just as long as he says that he is acting within the law and the Constitution, and is doing what he is doing in order to “protect American lives” in his role as Commander-in-Chief.

On CNN on the morning of 12/19/2005, Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General who as White House Counsel had described the Geneva Conventions concerning treatment of prisoners-of-war, part of the Constitution by its own requirements, as “quaint,” described the Foreign Intelligence Services Act of 1978 as “out-of-date.” The FISA clearly prohibits the use of foreign intelligence services for spying on US citizens. Just as Gonzales did not advise the President to attempt re-negotiation of the Geneva Conventions, he did not in this instance advise the President to go to Congress to have the FISA amended to meet the president’s stated needs.  No, he told the President that under his C-in-C powers, he could just do what liked to do.  George liked those words, which sound an awful lot like “dictatorship,” and went ahead and did it.

In my view, this action and its defense by the Georgites has much more to do with establishing the precedent for assumption of dictatorial l power by him in any circumstance he “deems necessary under his power as C-in-C” than it does with any specifics of possible al-Qaeda terrorism.  And then, even more frightening that the domestic spying-without-a-warrant actions, is the incident which takes up the last third of this column. It shows that the purpose of the Patriot Act, as I have been saying for quite some time, goes well beyond “dealing with foreign terrorism.” Here is what I had to say about these events further on the PlanetMove Weblog.

As is now very widely known, even in the halls of the U.S. Congress, even by some Republicans, on Dec. 16, 2005 The New York Times published a lengthy article on how the President, by Executive Order, set up a domestic extra-legal, extra-judicial spying operation shortly after 9/11. Although the Georgites often take actions that have no legal or Constitutional authority behind them, in this case the President presumably acted under the powers given to him by the original "Patriot" Act (which among other things repealed the Fourth Amendment protection against extra-judicial search and seizure) to do just about anything he wants to US citizens and non-citizens alike residing in the United States once he, on his own authority, labels them as "terrorists."

Interestingly enough, the President offers different explanations of his actions at different times. Sometimes it's the "Patriot" Act, sometimes it's his authority as Commander-in-Chief, sometimes it is the broad "Iraq Attack" authority the Congress gave him in the fall of 2002. Whatever the supposed source of his authority is at any given moment, the White House knows that there is something fishy about it, because a) they meet on it repeatedly and b) they tried as hard as they could to prevent knowledge of it from becoming public. This is even in the light of how the President has taken every opportunity to boast about it, and how it is "protecting America," once it has become public.

Bush has already indefinitely imprisoned without any judicial/legal rights one US citizen, Jose Padilla, under his claimed "Power of the Presidency" to do just about anything he wants to in the realm of spying upon, investigating, and locking up individual citizens. Only a long and costly court struggle has changed the Padilla situation, so that he finally has access to the public criminal justice system. But regardless of the details of the Padilla case, the President's claimed power to deprive US citizens of their rights in the criminal justice system is the central issue of the "Patriot" Act.

This is why this Act (and now the Iraq Attack resolution thrown in by the Georgites for good measure) is the equivalent of the Nazi-German Enabling Act of March 27, 1933, as I have written on numerous occasions in this space. The matter of spying on library records is a distraction, a sideshow that may actually have been put into the mix by the Georgites so as to distract Congress and the American people from the real issue: the establishment of Presidential dictatorial power over any and all actions of US citizens, just as long as he labels them as "terrorist." (I should note that I wrote the above sentence the day before the story about the library spying that I discuss below broke. Obviously, the library spying powers are hardly trivial, which makes the whole thing even worse.)

Does the President need this secret wire/electronic-communications tap program in order to fight terrorism? No. What Federal judge would deny a warrant to the FBI (domestic security agency) coming before him or her with an affidavit of probable cause in a case of suspected terrorism? None. (And in this instance the judge before which investigators would go presides over a secret court dealing with intelligence matters, presumably chosen for sympathy with Administration power in this regard. [Actually, none ever have: see The Progress Report of Dec. 19, 2005, http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053). However, there are still a number of judges (although the number is dwindling fast as more and more Georgite judges are placed on the bench) who would a) deny a warrant to an agency that is specifically prohibited by law from domestic surveillance, the National Security Agency, and b) to any agency asking for a warrant for spying for reasons of assumed “terrorism” without some indication of probable cause that that would be the case.

This is what Cheney and his puppet are concerned with. They want to be able to spy on and then lock up without recourse to the public, rights-protected, criminal justice system, as they deem necessary, any American citizen for what they would label “terrorism.” This would eventually include opposing the government on any issue they deem having to do with anything they would call “terrorism” without having to make some kind of reasonable case for supporting that accusation. Certainly opposition to their current foreign and domestic policies could be labeled by them as "terrorism." After all, they and their surrogates on the Privatized Ministry of Propaganda have repeatedly referred to their opponents as "traitors." It is a short step from traitor to terrorist, and to simplify matters for Bush, both words begin with a "T."

The Times held their article for one year under White House pressure. That's not good. The Times released the article on the day the Senate took up reauthorization of the Patriot Act. That's good. Hopefully Senator Feingold and those Democrats with a devotion to Constitutional Democracy, and maybe even a few of those so-called "moderate" Republicans who will be called to account here, will get to the real, central issues of the Act. If they do, we may have seen the beginning of the end of the march toward Georgite Theocratic Fascism which to my mind has to this point been inexorable.

That was the essence of my first piece on The Planetary Movement on this issue.  Then came this one, and all of a sudden I am very pessimistic again.

"Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior [he had requested 'suspect' book thru library loan program]. By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer (12/17/05, anicodemus@s-t.com)

"NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called 'The Little Red Book.'

"Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

"The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."

How many more of these do we need for people to understand that fascism isn't coming to the U.S.; it's here. In small doses for the time-being, but here nevertheless. As Bush said over the weekend of 12/16-18, he can and will do anything he pleases to "protect" the American people against anything that he deems, defines, or desires to be, the "threat of terrorism."

Of course, visiting a student who checked out a copy of Mao's "Little Red Book" couldn't possibly have anything to do with "fighting terrorism" as Bush has defined it. For him, terrorism starts and ends with al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those directly related to him. He made that clear in his radio address of Dec. 17. That Mao was one of history's ultra-secularists while bin Laden's dream would be to establish a world-wide theocratic-Islamicist empire puts them at each other's throats, or would do so were Mao alive. Actually, the present-day Chinese government is engaged in a low-level but ongoing occasionally armed struggle against Fundamentalist Muslim separatists in their own Wild West.

This use of domestic spying by an agency confined by the law to functions outside of the United States, without bothering to apply for a search warrant (which would have to be based on probable cause) even from a totally secret "anti-terrorism" court, concerning a matter that has not the hairsbreadth connection to Islamicist terrorism, is about domestic oppression, and nothing else.

We heard words about "fighting terrorism" in Berlin in the Spring of 1933. And in that Springtime for Hitler, unless you were a Communist or a certain kind of socialist, Hitlerite fascism came in on little cat feet just as the Georgite fascistic fog is enveloping us in the U.S. As George Santayana said, he who fails to learn from history is condemned to repeat it. At least the Germans of the late Weimar Republic and Early Nazi Periods had the excuse that nothing like Hitlerism had ever happened before. As Georgite theocratic fascism inexorably advances, the American people and their elected representatives do not have that excuse.

WHY THE PATRIOT ACT, REDUX: FASCISM IN THE HERE AND NOW

Column No. 90 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - December 22, 2005

Here, once again, is my short definition of fascism: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of the government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.”   (If you want to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism -- And The Georgites” and of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”).

On Tuesday, Dec. 13, our Editor/Publisher, Judge Stephen Gheen ran the following commentary:

Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue has just released another macabre insight into President Bush.  Bush summoned Republican Congressional leaders to the White House to urge extension of the Patriot Act without significant changes to the expansive provisions of that Act.  Thompson reports the following exchange occurred during the meeting.  GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.”  -- Capitol Hill Blue”

One may have to take what is published in Capitol Hill Blue with a grain of salt or two.  Two respected, and certainly anti-Georgite, political analysts who are good friends of mine have reservations about its credibility, especially on specifics.  However, even if Bush did not utter those exact words (one of my friends surmised that he would have said something like “F--- the Constitution” rather than the more literary version of rejection quoted above) there is plenty in his actions that demonstrates that the “goddamned piece of paper” reference is exactly how he feels about it.  For example, as I have said on numerous occasions in these columns: the assumption of the independent power to declare war, the trashing of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, the ignoring of treaties that are part of the Constitution, the fact that the arguments of his surrogate Cheney (or is it the other way round?) against the McCain anti-torture amendment turned around Cheney’s absolute determination to have “nothing interfere with the power of the President.”

Put that together with other major features of the Georgite reign that fit in with the definition of fascism above and it seems to me that with the statement quoted above, or a position embodied by them if those words were not actually uttered, we are now in this country living on the brink of fascism.  How will it be implemented here, one might ask.  Through the Patriot Act, is the answer.

Why do the Georgites want these powers?  Certainly not because they have to have them in order to “fight terrorism” (any more than the War on Iraq is necessary “to fight terrorism”).  If the Georgites really wanted to do that, they already can under pre-Patriot Act statutes.  For example, there is plenty of evidence, as gathered by the 9/11 Commission itself, that the plans for the World Trade Center horror could have been detected and the attack aborted.  Further, European nations are constantly finding and arresting potential terrorists without enacting basic changes in their criminal justice systems.

The purpose of the Patriot Act would not be, it would seem, further to strengthen “Homeland Security,” beyond providing the FBI with unprecedented independent powers of surveillance.  However, report after report, from a multitude of bipartisan sources over the last three years (most recently, Dec. 5, 2005, from the 9/11 Commission itself which called his efforts a “dismal failure”), directly contradicts Bush's promises in this regard, citing dangerous under-funding, misplaced priorities, over-reliance on private industry and dire neglect at local, state, and federal levels.”

So if the Patriot Act is not about catching about particular terrorists and not about improving homeland security in general, what is it about?  By the process of elimination it would seem that, it cannot be about anything else but giving the Georgites broad-ranging powers of oppression and repression against any kind of dissent, verbal, written or physical, legal or illegal, to virtually any of its policies and programs, here at home.  With the powers granted to the President by the Act as it now stands he can label anyone he wants to, non-citizen and citizen alike, as a “terrorist” or an abettor of same, and lock them up indefinitely, without charges, without access to any part of the judicial system, and without any public notification, and apparently order them to be tortured as well.

If, in the realm of civil rights and liberties, the powers granted to the President seem to bear a strong resemblance to those granted to Adolf Hitler by the German Enabling Act of March 24, 1933 (see my TPJ columns of June 3 and June 24, 2004) in my view that is no coincidence.  Now one might say: “But Hitler and his financial backers were looking for ways to suppress major political and economic dissent from the Communist and Socialist Parties and the powerful German trade unions.  No equivalent of any of those powerful forces exists here, now.”  That is true.  However, consider the following.

Perhaps Bush and his financial backers may not have done very well in advance planning for dealing with the situation in Iraq following the invasion.  But dollars to donuts they know very well what is going to happen in this country as the chickens come home to roost as a result of  their policies on taxation, the economy, Social Security, higher education, the military, and foreign policy.  For example, when the credit crash that will surely come with the Georgites in power there might well be millions of people protesting on the streets.  And that is not the only issue that would bring people out in numbers never seen before in this country.  Think: the financial collapse of the health care delivery system under the assault of the profit-makers; the end of Social Security as we have known it under the assault of the privatizers; the next Great Depression resulting from the credit crash and the increasing export of capital; to say nothing of the results of the Draconian laws governing private thought and behavior that could be enacted in a second Bush term as part of implementing the agenda of the Christian Right.

In my view, it is to be able to very forcibly control the foreseeable massive resistance, perhaps not well organized but nevertheless massive, to the oppression and repression of the vast majority of the people of our country on behalf of the super-rich and the major corporations that form the foundation of the Georgites and Georgitism that is what the Patriot Act is all about.  Pure and simple, and frightening and fascist.

__________

Author’s note: The second half of this column draws heavily upon a column that I published on October 28, 2004, “Why the Patriot Act?’

Postscript:  As if on cue, On Dec. 16, 2005 the New York Times published a lengthy article on how the President, by Executive Order set up a domestic extra-legal, extra-judicial spying operation.  (The above column was written on Dec. 14, and is based in part on one from 10/28/04.) Although the Georgites often take actions that have no legal or Constitutional authority behind them, on this case the President presumably acted under the powers given to him by the original Patriot Act (which among other things repealed the Fourth Amendment protection against extra-judicial search and seizure) to do just about anything he wants to US citizens and non-citizens alike residing in the United States once he, on his own authority, labels them as "terrorists."

Bush has already indefinitely imprisoned without any judicial/legal rights one US citizen, Jose Padilla, under this power.  Only a long and costly court struggle has changed that situation.  But this is the central issue of the Patriot Act.  This is why it is the equivalent of the Nazi-German Enabling Act of March 27, 1933, as I have written on numerous occasions in this column.  The matter of spying on library records is a distraction, a sideshow that may actually have been put into the mix by the Georgites so as to distract Congress and the American people from the real issue: the establishment of Presidential dictatorial power over any and all actions of US citizens, just as long as he labels them as "terrorist".

The Times held their article for one year under White House pressure.  That's not good.  The Times released the article on the day the Senate took up reauthorization of the Patriot Act.  That's good.  Hopefully Senator Feingold and those Democrats with a devotion to Constitutional Democracy, and maybe even a few of those so-called "moderate" Republicans who will be called to account here, will get to the real, central issues of the Act.  If they do, we may have seen the beginning of the end of the march toward Georgite Theocratic Fascism which to my mind has to this point been inexorable.

AN IRAQ EXIT PROPOSAL

Column No. 89 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - 15 December, 2005

Last week we visited the likely Bushevik strategy for leaving Iraq in time for the 2006 elections: claiming to be “staying the course” while actually cutting and running in such a way as to preserve the US bases in the Iraqi Western Desert, create some kind of US protectorate for Kurdistan and its oil reserves, and keep the Iraqi economy, whatever it is, open for US rape and pillage.  The Bush Naval Academy speech of Nov. 30, 2005 talked about achieving “victory” in Iraq. Amazingly enough, according to a New York Times article of Dec. 4, 2005, that speech was aimed not at producing a real strategy for getting out and leaving a viable nation behind, but at getting the American people to support whatever policy, overt or covert, the Busheviks follow in the country.

The speech was put together by a couple of political science professors (who says that there are no right-wingers in academia).  They focused on polling data that they interpret at indicating that Americans will continue to support the war and the ever-mounting number of casualties just as long as “victory” is promised.  Two major issues here.  One is that this Administration which takes the public posture that “we don’t pay attention to polling data” is now openly setting policy because the polls are showing just how little support the Busheviks have outside of their Christian Right/don’t-confuse-us-with-facts base.  The other is that the “victory” which Bush described in the speech consists of a series of events that are totally outside of the control of the United States: free elections in Iraq leading to the establishment of a widely accepted government leading to national stability in the country.  This must be the first time in history that “victory” is defined in terms like that.  I might have missed one, but I certainly cannot think of any previous American war in which it was so defined.

Meanwhile the Democrats are beginning to find their voice.  We have previously visited Representative Murtha’s proposal for a phased withdrawal by a time certain (TPJ 87).  Very significantly, on November 30 (AP, “Pelosi Calls for Withdrawal from Iraq”) the House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, supported Rep. Murtha’s proposal.  Previously she had aligned herself with the so-called “muscular Democrats” whose position may be summarized as “Bush is doing the right thing; he’s just doing it the wrong way.”  (That one reminds me of the position that certain liberals took in relation to Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy in the 1950s: “I agree with what he is doing [attacking “the commies” just for being commies], but I wish he would do it more politely.”)

Hillary Clinton is standing her ground, that is straddling what she and the rest of the Collaborationist-DLC think is some “vital center” out there (see HillaryClinton.com, 11/29/05).  The DLC itself launched a broadside against Rep. Pelosi (which, interestingly enough, as of Dec. 6 was not to be found on their website).  But even Sen. Joe Biden, formerly a member of the “muscular Democrats” (he may still be but he is sounding somewhat different) was strongly on the attack against Bush on the “Imus in the Morning” radio program of Dec. 5, 2005. And Zbigniew Brzezinski, hardly a leftie, is calling for a planned withdrawal by “next year” as well.

To achieve a withdrawal of US forces form Iraq by a date certain will require a detailed plan.  At the beginning of September in this space, as I said then I had the temerity to propose one, in outline form to be sure.  (It built on a proposal that I put up in this space during the 2004 Presidential campaign.) For the balance of this column, I am revisiting it.  This plan is not something that the Georgites would ever do, of course. For the goals of the plan proposed below, to achieve peace for Iraq and the Middle East region accompanied by Iraqi reconstruction, as well as a US withdrawal without abandonment of the Iraqi people, are not those of the Georgites. Theirs are what they always have been: oil and power.   The Collaborationist-DLC probably wouldn’t like it much either, because it is hardly “muscular” where the US is concerned.

The proposal does attempt to deal with the reality of Iraq before a US withdrawal with an announced date, during the withdrawal, and after it, so as to minimize to the extent possible the further pain and suffering of the Iraqi people and their civil infrastructure that will result from such an event.  That is why I suggest the involvement of the UN in a peace-keeping role.  Even better, and this is a new thought, would be if the Arab League would take on that responsibility.  Almost every authority on Iraq is predicting a massive civil war upon a US withdrawal.  That of course is very real possibility, and if the US just up and leaves with as much of a plan for doing so as the Georgites had when they overthrew Saddam, that would almost certainly happen.  But it doesn’t have to.  And so, here once again is my proposal.

1. Announce a date for the end of US offensive military action in Iraq, in combination with a UN takeover of command of all foreign forces (or their phased replacement by an Arab League force under its own command) for the purposes of peace establishment and keeping.

2. In that context, announce a date for withdrawal of all US forces other than those requested by the UN.

3. Propose to the Iraqi government the repeal of the "Bremer Plan" for the takeover of the Iraqi economy by foreign investors.

4. Announce a date for the termination of all US private contracts for security and construction in Iraq, other than those that might be negotiated by the UN and the Iraqi government. Ask Congress to appropriate any funds necessary for the early termination of contracts with Halliburton, Bechtel, and etc.

5. Shut down all construction of permanent military bases, with handover of what already exists to the UN Command on an interim basis. Future disposal would be negotiated by the UN with the Iraqi government.

6. Announce support for a comprehensive Israel-Palestine settlement along the lines of the already negotiated "Geneva Agreement."

7. Renounce any interest in ownership or control of any Iraqi oil reserves.

8. Propose as a long-term solution to the Iraqi political situation a tri-partite federation, guaranteed by the UN peacekeeping mission. As part of the package, the Sunni member of the federation would be guaranteed some portion of future oil revenues.

9. Propose the creation, under UN leadership, of a new international organization for combating terrorism using the most sophisticated weapons of intelligence, police work, and focused military action as indicated.

10. Arrange for the immediate shutdown of the US "Guantanamo Prison System" around the world with the transfer of all persons held to the justice systems of their home countries.

Perfect? No. Doable with the right US leadership (to be found among neither the Georgites nor the Collaborationist-DLC)? Yes. Better than what exists now? Surely.  Remember: “The strong make the tough decisions; the weak ‘stay the course.’

EXITING IRAQ, THE GEORGITE WAY

Column No. 88 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - December 10, 2005

Since the time of 9/11, starting with comments made by Attorney General Ashcroft very early on, the Georgite line of attack on critics of their foreign policy in general and their Iraq policy in particular has been that such people are traitors.  It has remained the same until very recently, except that in the attacks on Rep. John Murtha in Congress for calling for a planned withdrawal from Iraq by a date certain, a Bush attack-dog from Ohio added the word “coward.” Dick Cheney has been a prime promulgator of the “traitor” line, pursuing it evermore viciously in recent weeks as the situation on the ground in Iraq continues to deteriorate, American troops continue to die, and the poll numbers both for him and his titular President continue to seriously erode.

Then, all of a sudden, over the weekend of Nov. 19-20, 2005, things changed. Bush, overseas no less, visiting that well-known world power Mongolia (well, it was one in the 12th and 13th centuries under Genghis Kahn and his sons, who were just a tad more competent, but no less brutal than George, Sr. and his offspring), went out of his way to call Cong. Murtha a patriot. Dick Cheney was still on the attack, but suddenly going in a new direction, too (of course by coincidence, pure coincidence: who says that Karl Rove is totally preoccupied in talking with his lawyers [although may change soon]).  Cheney’s attacks, with possibly even more venom than this venomous man usually puts forth, were focused on those critics of the War who are and have been for quite some time calling the Georgites liars. And the chosen epithets changed from “traitors and cowards,” to “corrupt,” “shameless,” and “reprehensible.” “Totally reprehensible,” he said, in charging the Georgite critics with lying about the Georgite lying.  Why this sharp turn in the direction of attack, one might ask?

It is becoming evermore clear to evermore people that the Georgites lied the US and its "coalition” partners into the war. An excellent all-round source on the War on Iraq and the Bushevik lies that led to it is: After Downing Street. For a superb brief summary of the Georgite lies, both those that got the US into the war and those being spewed forth now about that series of events and what really happened, see also “Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt. . .” by Frank Rich, New York Times, 11/27/05 (subscription service).  Then consider this recent item by Rupert Cornwell that appeared in The Independent (UK) on Monday 21 November 2005, entitled “White House Used 'Gossip' to Build Case for War:”

“The controversy in America over pre-war intelligence has intensified, with revelations that the Bush administration exaggerated the claims of a key source on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, despite repeated warnings before the invasion that his information was at best dubious, if not downright wrong.  The disclosure, in The Los Angeles Times, came after a week of vitriolic debate on Iraq, amid growing demands for a speedy withdrawal of US troops and tirades from Bush spokesmen who all but branded as a traitor anyone who suggested that intelligence was deliberately skewed to make the case for war.  Yesterday, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, joined the fray, saying that talk of manipulation of intelligence ‘does great disservice to the country.’  In Beijing, President George Bush said that a speedy pullout was ‘a recipe for disaster’ - but the proportion of Americans wanting precisely that (52 per cent according to a new poll) is now higher than wanted similar action in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam war.”

A “recipe for disaster” it may be to Bush, publicly.  But it is becoming evermore clear that a pull-out of US forces by the 2006 elections is exactly what the Georgites are suddenly now focusing on (Agence France Presse, “White House Has Withdrawal Plan,” Nov. 28, 2005). That they are is the reason for the sudden change in the content of their attacks on their Iraq War.   But further: why, you might ask, the sudden change in their own Iraq War policy?  Obviously, for political reasons: those polls and the fact that even certain Republicans are beginning to abandon ship tell the tale.  Remember –- only part of the reason for the Iraq invasion was to implement the Project for the New American Century/Neocon plan for US Middle East domination, set forth in the mid-90s. The other reason was, as Andrew Card politely told the press in August, 2002, to influence the Congressional elections of that year with a “new product line” (his words), the Iraq Attack Plan,  that would be “rolled out” at the right time, September.

Today, Bush will continue to tell the American people that we have to “stay the course,” even as he is withdrawing our troops with, it is to be hoped, a reduction in American casualties.  Yes, very unusually for this man, he will be telling his fans one thing while he does quite another.  But regardless of what he says or doesn’t say, once the Georgites have started withdrawing, the major and real foreign policy issue for the 2006 US elections will no longer be withdrawal.  It will be how the US got into the War, with the subsequent death, destruction, and vast expenditures, in the first place. It will be about getting a Democratic majority in at least one House of Congress so that a serious investigation of the lies, the waste, the death and the deception used by the Bushites, possibly leading to criminal prosecution and even impeachment (if the Democrats can again gain control the House of Representatives).  The Georgites see this, they know this, and that is why the line suddenly changed from “critics are traitors” to “those who charge us with lying are reprehensible.” It is this “how dare you” line that will be front and center as they rally their fundamentalist Christian Rightist troops and set up their election day fixes to continue to promote their version of “democracy,” both in Iraq and the United States.

OK, withdrawal, one might say, isn’t that a good idea?  On paper, yes –- but the way the Georgites will be doing it, possibly not so good.  Totally ironic is the fact that the Georgite version of withdrawal will be a variation on “cut and run,” in time for Nov., 2006.  It will be accompanied by tall tales of how successful the “Coalition” has been in training the Iraqis “to do the job.”  However, just because they will be withdrawing (while all the time saying that they are not except that they are) doesn’t mean that they will have given up attaining their principal objectives for going in the first place.

Those objectives (none of which were clearly stated as objectives for the invasion beforehand)? They have gotten rid of Saddam (not stated as an objective independent of the “WMD” and the “al Qaeda link,” but it was).  They will make sure that they keep the string of permanent bases in the Western Iraqi desert now being built (some probably completed, but there is a complete wall of silence around that venture). They will likely “acquiesce” (encourage behind the scenes) in the establishment of a semi-independent Kurdistan, which will become a full US protectorate, along with, it just so happens, those potentially gigantic oil reserves.  They will do nothing to settle the Palestinian/Israel conflict on anything like rational terms.  They will continue, to the extent possible, to rape the Iraqi economy under the Bremer Plan for externalizing it,  as long as their puppets remain in power, at least.

In sum, the Georgite withdrawal will leave nothing in place that might bring some kind of stability to Iraq, might lead to the massive reconstruction program that Iraq so badly needs, might fend off the establishment of a totally undemocratic fundamentalist Shiite theocracy (built along the lines of what the Georgite Christian Right proposes for the US, ironically enough) except in a very limited area of Iraq.  They would make sure that the secular Kurds would be able to remain secular, however.

When the likely disaster on a variety of fronts would gradually overtake Iraq, the Georgite Privatized Ministry of Propaganda would be out in force of course.   Blaming it all on the ‘traitorous peace-niks” and worse, who “stabbed the military and the noble Bush Administration in the back.”  But then, blowback. Well, hardly blow-back.  More likely tornado-back.  One likely outcome?  Suppose the above scenario is followed and a secular Kurdish republic, standing astride all of that oil, is established between Iran and Turkey.  Then supposing the Isamicists fully take over the Turkish government and, turning their eyes eastward, give up the idea of getting into the European Union.  Islamicist Turkey and Islamicist Iran launch an all-out war on secular Kurdistan. For its part, Turkey, which has no oil, gets a share of what lies under Kurdistan.  A federation of those two theocracies is established, along with the Shiite portion of present-day Iraq.  The Saudi Monarchy is overthrown in a Wahabbist revolt.  The new, massive federation, soon to be armed with nuclear weapons acquired one way or another, turns its eyes on their suffering co-religionists in Palestine.  And the US military, massively weakened by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate, can do nothing about it, unless they choose to go nuclear.

Speculative?  Indeed.  Possible?  Unfortunately.

Author’s note: this column was written on 11/28-29/05, before the Bush/Annapolis speech

THE FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, VIII: A POLITICALLY VIABLE PROGRESSIVE POSITION ON THE WAR

Column No. 87 By Steven Jonas MD, MPH  - December 1, 2005

A friend, a Democrat who is no progressive and was a strong supporter of the Iraq War wrote that he never thought he would be saying that he wants the U.S. out of Iraq now, but he is.  He pointed out that the decision to invade is history, and in his view no longer controlling.  He pointed out that given that the vast majority of the anti-US insurgents in Iraq are Iraqis, not foreigners, and that the bulk of the Iraqi people want us out, now, and that our continued presence there only continues to create terrorists, the US has no national interest in staying in Iraq. (This was written before the joint Iraqi request to the US for a planned withdrawal, presumably made with advance notice to the Busheviki, was made.)  If the Iraqis, absent Hussein, cannot rule their country, that is their problem not ours, he said.

It is wrong to expect the whole world to do things like we do, he said. The US needs to look at this strictly in term of power, and the longer we stay there, the more our power diminishes, in terms of men, materiel, money, international reputation, and the ability to get other nations to cooperate with us on so many fronts and issues.  And so, he said, we should back off, and bring our troops home, now.  (He did ignore the fact that it is our invasion. Directly, with no plan for follow-up, that has created the chaos and death that wrack Iraq now.)  He found Rep. Murtha’s voice a welcome one. Where are the Democratic heavyweights, he asked? He hopes that the Democrats can mount an effective opposition.  He sees leadership as the issue and leadership has been sorely lacking in the Democratic opposition, he said.

In light of what a former right-wing Democrat had to say, let’s look at some of the issues that progressive Democrats can use, now.  As readers of my column know, I have a somewhat different understanding of the history of what I call the War on Iraq.  In my view, it was the Georgite neocons who made sure that the War they had been advocating since the mid-1990s happened.  They considered their goals, not publicly stated of course, to be in the national interest then and they still do (see Cheney’s speeches, when he isn’t attacking the patriotism of 37-year veterans of the Marine Corps who fought in two wars, when he had “other priorities” that deterred him from fighting in even one).  These are the potentially massive Kurdish oil reserves, the permanent bases in the Iraqi western desert, “American hegemony,” and the power to legally loot and pillage the Iraqi economy.  But of course these goals are never mentioned.  What we have now, in the absence of WMD and any known link between al-Qaeda and Hussein except what appeared in “Vice’s” imagination and Bill Safire’s New York Times columns, is the goal to “bring Democracy to Iraq.”

We know that Bush’s concept of “democracy” does not include maintaining it here (see, for example, fixed elections, the destruction of Constitutional amendments IV, V, and VI, and the continual description of dissent as treason).  But he claims to want to establish it there (even though electoral democracy for the whole country would bring into power the most un-democratic, fundamentalist-Shiite concept of government.  Of course, that merging of church and state is precisely what the Georgites want to do here, so maybe Bush’s visions for Iraq and the US aren’t that far apart after all).  But whatever the case, so doing was not on the original agenda put before Congress and the American people by the Georgites.

And so we come to the resolution offered in the House of Representatives by John Murtha of Pennsylvania, certainly no leftie.  As in my proposed “Commitment I” for Democrats (see my column of last week) his resolution called for withdrawal from Iraq by a date certain.  Apparently, in addition to reading the polls, Rep. Murtha has been hearing from many of his friends and contacts at just below the highest levels of the military that this is an unwinnable operation for us and is just wasting American lives and draining the American treasury, to say nothing of the harms that it is doing to our military overall (to say nothing of the harm it is doing to people of Iraq), for no good reason.

For your information, here is the resolution that Rep. Murtha offered: “Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of American in Congress assembled, That: Section 1. The deployment of United States Forces in Iraq, by direction of Congress, is hereby terminated and forces involved are to be redeployed at the earliest practicable date. Section 2. A quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines shall be deployed in the region. Section 3. The United States of America shall pursue security and stability in Iraq through diplomacy.  The Republicans, with their usual foresight and candor, put the following resolution on the floor instead: “1 Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.”  Although their Privatized Ministry of Propaganda did their best to convince their listeners that this is what Rep. Murtha was offering (I heard that message myself on the Fox”News”Channel, 11/21/05), it of course was, and is, not.  And so we have a reasonable, solid, position to put forward, designed to achieve what about 65% of the polled American electorate wants (and now a broad coalition of Iraqi leaders wants it too): a planned withdrawal by a date certain, in the not-too-distant future.

As asked for by my friend, the Democratic leadership is beginning to rally, organize, behind this statement (see, for example, a letter put out by DNC Chair Howard Dean,

http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/11/governor_dean_s_4.php).  Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi may not be rushing to endorse this position, yet (as of the time of writing, 11/22/05, my 69th birthday!).  But on the other hand, I strongly doubt that Gov. Dean would have put out a statement like he did, if he had not received at least their tacit approval for so doing.

And so, how might we now proceed on the reasoning behind this position.  Very important, in my view, is that the “democratization of Iraq,” now Bush’s only publicly stated reason for our presence there, was never put on the table in the run-up to the invasion.  We must continue to push on the fact that Bush and his cronies lied our nation into this war.  They knew that the Niger uranium letter was a forgery and that the “aluminum tubes” were of a type that could not possibly be used in uranium centrifuges.  They knew that their single source for the "Iraq-al Qaeda connection” was a known fabricator.  They knew that the UN’s Hans Blix had found no WMD and was unlikely to.  They were sharing intelligence with him; he used what they gave him and it led to nothing.  That they knew that there were none is precisely why they rushed into the war before Blix could declare that his inspection was completed, and they presented the Security Council with a resolution they knew would be turned down by a majority.  They did not want to wait the extra month, nor did they actually want any UN involvement, given what their true agenda for the invasion was (see my column on this subject of March 16, 2004, “You Know Me Al: The Iraq War”).

This case, to me, is clear.  But for those opponents of the war who cannot believe that Bush consciously lied, that it was the “faulty intelligence” that was at fault, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.  Let's say that he wasn't lying.  In that case the stated original mission was indeed accomplished.  It turned out that there were no WMD.  There was no nuclear program.  There was no al Qaeda link.  If it were the WMD threat and dealing with an al Qaeda-Hussein link that were their true goals, Bush should have simply declared victory and left.  But because there are those true, but secret, Georgite goals, Bush cannot do that.  Now we get the new, post-invasion mission: bring democracy to Iraq.  Is that what we are spending thousands of American lives and wounds on?  Is that what we are spending billions of dollars on?  Is that why civil society in Iraq is gradually being destroyed and thousands of Iraqis killed?  Is that a mission that our nation should be involved in?  Is that a mission our nation, or even a Republican-dominated Congress could have supported when the war was started?

Rep. Murtha has given a big push to the rolling ball for Iraq withdrawal at the level of the US government that was started by members of the Black and Progressive caucuses in the House.  He has brought to it candor, credibility, tremendous publicity, and the toughness that goes with someone who worked with the United Steel Workers for decades trying to prevent the destruction of our formerly great domestic steel industry.  (Do we possibly have a union-Black alliance developing here?)  You don’t truck with Rep. Murtha.  No back-tracking and tears like those of the benighted Sen. Durbin (see my columns of July 14 and 21, 2005).  This is progressive Democratic leadership in the development stage.

“The strong make the tough decisions; the weak ‘stay the course.’ “This is something that the leadership in the Democratic Party can run with.  Let’s keep on encouraging them to do so.