THE HANDSTAND

DECEMBER 2002

Osama is Under Your Bed
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective   Monday, 18 November, 2002   .   It's been a nervous week. Every night before bed, I've taken a broom handle and thrust it under my bed. Each time, I'm waiting for the "Oof!" Osama is under there, I just know it. If the President says it, it must be true, right? One of these nights, I'll bust that Osama in the ribs with my handle. Just you wait. I'm keeping my feet under the covers, though. You know, just in case....

  It happens like clockwork these days: A significant piece of legislation comes before Congress that was ostensibly drafted to help defend the nation against terrorism. Line items within the legislation do away with previously sacrosanct personal freedoms outlined within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Should said legislation pass, the power of the federal government to arrest and detain citizens without trial or access to attorney, to search private homes without warrant or notice, to tap telephone and computer communications, and to keep vital information secreted away from the eyes of the public, would be greatly enhanced.

  In the days leading up to the mandated Congressional debate regarding said legislation, terror warnings suddenly bloom like nightshade. The White House or the FBI or the CIA, or all three in concert, ratchet up the national tension level with forecasts of doom and death and fire from unknown quarters.

Said legislation passes without so much as leaving a wake in its path, nothing explodes, and everyone goes on with their lives in the belief that they just narrowly dodged a bullet. At the conclusion of the process, the foundations of American freedom have been redacted, edited, clipped and round-filed.

  The PATRIOT Act was passed in such a fashion. When that bill came up, the entire country was collecting its mail with oven mitts on to avoid exposure to anthrax, despite the fact that Democratic Senators like Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle were the intended targets of this assassination attempt.

The media got its dose of the poison, ensuring that all publicly aired conversation regarding the legislation would be coated with a veneer of hysteria. All of us were going to get 'thraxed, and so let us pass this ruinously contra-constitutional legislation without even reading it. I'd bet some serious folding green that many of the Senators who voted the thing into existence a year ago still haven't read it.

  Sometimes, this has happened when no legislation is pending. Sometimes, this happens when Mr. Bush and his pals feel they have too much light on them. When Time and Newsweek came out with blazing cover stories, and the headline "Bush Knew," when word got out that the administration had been warned specifically and in detail about terrorist plans to hijack airplanes and slam them into buildings, all of a sudden the threat siren began howling. They're going to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge! They're going to blow up the Statue of Liberty! Run for your lives!

  Needless to say, those structures still stand. No one is talking about "Bush Knew" anymore, though.....Hm.   Like clockwork this happens. Cut this phenomenon with Occam's Razor - "all things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one" - and the word 'coincidence' becomes hard to spit out.  

It happened again last week.   Legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security has wended its way towards Congressional approval. If passed, this legislation would signal the largest reorganization of the federal government since the passage of the National Security Act in 1947.

Line items within the legislation:
* * Eliminate vital aspects of the Freedom of Information Act, allowing the government and private corporate contractors to operate completely in secret and beyond citizen oversight;

* * Create something called a 'Total Information Awareness' program within the Defense Department. Conservative columnist and former Nixon aide William Safire summed up succinctly what this will do. ......"Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend - all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources, add every piece of information that government has about you -- passport application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance."

* * Redefines the term 'Terrorism.' Before, 'Terrorism' involved explosions, murder, kidnapping and any activity that used violence to frighten civilians and change the manner in which a government functioned. Under the new legislation, the definition of 'Terrorism' is expanded. Now, 'Terrorism' is defined as an act that, "Is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States," or "Appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Protests against the government or against a private contractor involved with the government are intended to 'coerce' the civilian population. Loitering is a criminal offense. If you do either of these from now on, you may consider yourself welcomed into the ranks of international terrorism. Seriously.

* * Deletes any possibility of an effective independent investigation into what went wrong on September 11th, thanks to the aforementioned FOIA restrictions.

One would think so profound a sea change in the essential rights and freedoms of the citizenry would be subject to intense Congressional debate, no? After all, it took Congress two years of discussion to nail down the specifics and the fine print of the National Security Act. This is important stuff here.......   Like clockwork comes the klaxon CNN headline on November 15th: 'FBI Warns al Qaeda Planning "Spectacular" Attack.'   Spectacular, no less.   Like clockwork comes the voice of Osama, prophesying death and doom from beyond the grave. Wasn't he dead for a while? This fellow has made more comebacks than Elvis, and always in time to redirect the national dialogue away from discussing the ways and means of incredibly important legislation.

  All 484 pages of the Homeland Security Department legislation will pass through Congress soon, likely unread by a majority of those casting the votes. At some point, the teeth of this legislation will sink in, but it will be too late to do much of anything about it. If anyone tries, you can be sure of a new burst of incredibly dire warnings coming down from on high. Osama bin Laden is under your bed. He's alive again, and planning to eat your children. Head for the hills, and never mind your constitutional rights.   They will keep doing this until someone calls them on it, out loud and in public.

  http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/11.19A.wrp.obl.bed.htm-------© William Rivers Pitt is a teacher from Boston, MA. He is the author of two books - "War On Iraq" (with Scott Ritter) available now from Context Books, and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in April 2003 from Pluto Press.

illustration jeffrense.com

Published on Saturday, October 19, 2002 by CommonDreams.org

Add Me to Your Lists

by Alan Morse

Add me to your lists Mr. Bush. Send my name to Mr. Ashcroft. Forward it to the FBI, the local police, the INS and the IRS. Make sure your Secret Service takes note. Copy my name to every blacklist, enemies list, security list, and watch list your scribes scribble. While you detain activists at airports, I am ashamed to travel unchallenged. While you abduct untold, unnamed foreign-born Americans, I am ashamed to sleep in my own bed. While you steal food, not just rights, from millions of families, I am ashamed to eat. I am ashamed to wear new clothes; ashamed to drive; ashamed to share ill-gotten wealth with your kind; even ashamed I can provide better for my little daughter than almost any father on earth. I am not a threat to you, but I stand with billions. God is not on my side–or yours–but the best traditions of freedom, right, and non-violent resistance are with me. I stand alongside the Senator your intern calls senile. I stand with the Congresswoman your operatives unseated in the primaries. I stand with the loud but lonely voices of those in print and broadcast media who are not afraid to challenge you. I stand with the growing number of principled government clerks who quietly undermine you. I stand with countless noble people across the world who are no longer cowed by bully-America. I am but one speck you can blow aside, but even your family and friends can’t ignore legions of us. In your ignorance, you have wakened forces that will bring you down. You remind me of forgotten traditions: ancestors who fought non-violently for peace in eighteenth century Virginia; antecedents who broke nineteenth century laws to help slaves to freedom; parents’ siblings who aided conscientious objectors during World War II; my own non-violent resistance to Vietnam, and more recently, to Reagan’s adventures in Nicaragua. Your adept predecessors persuaded with honey and intelligence, but your ignorance now shakes us. For that, and for that alone, I thank you. Now we will resist and topple your kind. You have guns, bombs, but we have the power of non-violent resistance. Those who read know that firepower is laughable in the face of such force. Be afraid, Mr. Bush, and all who serve yourselves in backing this fragile regime, for you have germinated the seeds of your downfall. We do not threaten your person or your pathetic toys, but we will cast you on the trash-heap of history. You can lead only by our consent...that, you have squandered. Add me to your lists, Mr. Bush. I may be insignificant, but wait. I have time, history, and numbers on my side, and I am not the tiniest bit afraid of you. ©Alan Morse, he lives in Phillips, Maine. Email: amorse@somtel.com

JFK’s Letter to Eshkol About Dimona

(Israel State Archive, Jerusalem. For more information, reference Israel and the Bomb, by Avner Cohen, pages 153-162)