THE HANDSTAND

july 2005

Doremus Jessup, editor of the Fort Beulah The Daily Informer, in Sinclair Lewis' famous book "It Can't Happen Here", at its conclusion, "drove out, saluted by the meadow larks, and onward all day, to a hidden cabin in the Northern Woods where quiet men awaited news of freedom.....still Doremus goes on, into the sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup can never die......

Enabling Evil: Bush's Willing Executioners
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

06/14/05 counterpunch - - In 1996 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen published Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. His thesis is that the mass murder of Jews was not done on the quiet by a few Nazi fanatics. Instead, Goldhagen writes, by their complicity ordinary Germans were willing participants in the slaughter.

In other words, the German people as a people were guilty as well, because they accepted and permitted the slaughter of an ethnic group.

Goldhagen's thesis has had rough sledding. German newspapers in the Third Reich did not report on the progress of the Holocaust. Few Germans had the means or were willing to take the risks of listening to British broadcasts, which had no reporters on the German scene to investigate extermination rumors. By the time the Holocaust was underway, Hitler and the Gestapo had an iron grip on Germans and the German military. The potent German war machine had fallen victim to Nazi hubris and bitten off more of Russia than it could chew. Opposition to Hitler rose within the military. Generals hatched plots to assassinate Hitler, but every attempt failed.

If generals commanding armies could not overthrow Hitler, it is unclear what ordinary Germans could have done. They could not vote Hitler out, as the Enabling Act had made him a dictator. The Gestapo had put a stop to civil liberties, and there was no free press. And, of course, there was no Internet reporting hard facts that the toady German media covered up.

The situation in America today is quite different from wartime Germany. There is still a free press even though it is a toady corporate press without heart or courage. There is an opposition party even thought it is a toady opposition. Bush is not a dictator even though a toady Congress has permitted Bush to accumulate power in the executive branch at the expense of both civil liberties and the separation of powers established by the Constitution. Americans have an abundance of hard facts available to them from a world press via the Internet. Americans have the weapons inspectors' reports, expert testimony, and now top secret British government documents leaked to the Sunday Times (London). The documents reveal that the British government regarded Bush's premeditated invasion of Iraq as illegal and had concerns that Prime Minister Blair and cabinet ministers could be brought up on war crime charges for participating in naked aggression. The documents reveal that Bush's decision to invade Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the reasons he gave the US Congress and the American people and that the "intelligence" he cited to justify his invasion was concocted and fabricated.

If Germans were complicit, as Goldhagen claims, how can Americans avoid the charge of complicity in Bush's crimes against Iraq when Americans are in possession of such damning facts and have the power of impeachment? Why do Americans tolerate a liar and a war criminal as their president?

Why has Congress voted still more money for an illegal war launched in deception?

Why does the US military permit its human and physical resources to be squandered in a pointless war that has no strategy for victory and no timetable for withdrawal?

How can America be so dominated by a lame-duck president that it loses all sense of itself, its honor, and its purpose?

Americans are complicit in the deaths and maiming of thousands of American soldiers for no valid purpose. Americans are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children as "collateral damage." No one knows how high the number is because the Bush administration does not regard Iraqi lives as worth counting.

Bush's war of deception has devastated Iraq. Cities and towns are in ruins. Infrastructure is destroyed. Half the population is unemployed. Pollution and disease are rampant.

By continuing to defend Bush's lies, right-wing talk radio, Fox "News", the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall St Journal editorial page, the NY Post, the NY Sun and the rest of the neocon establishment are Bush's willing executioners. The neocon media differs not at all from the Nazi propaganda machine. The neocon media fosters the same hatred and blood lust: kill the Iraqis, invade Syria, bomb the Iranians, devise "useable nukes" to subdue the Muslims, kill the American traitors who criticize our fuhrer, bend the world to our exceptional will.

How much more shame and complicity will Americans allow Bush and his neocon brownshirts to shovel onto their shoulders before Americans say "enough!" and remove from office the war criminal who has sullied America's good name?

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

RESISTANCE

By K.Kwiatowski

The Downing street Memo explains in brisk understated English what I didn’t fully understand when I worked for Secretary Rumsfeld and Dough Feith in the Pentagon in 2002 and early 2003.

Like a morning cup of tea in a friendly chair with nothing to do but gaze out a window at birds around a feeder, the memo is pleasantly comforting.

I saw accurately what was happening

Yet, as Robert Shetterly and others have pointed out, accountability for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the war gamers is not likely. At this time, impeachment for Bush and Cheney is politically impossible. A successful impeachment, or any accountability for the executive branch requires a certain balance of political power. Optimistically envisioned by the Founders, this balance was tenuous even in the early years of the Republic. George W. Bush said it best after the 2004 elections with "[my] accountability moment has passed."

Today we have not even a shadow of the Nixon or Clinton era political and media power competition. Instead, we see only unbalanced power, unbalanced perspective, unbalanced minds. A warped political-media borg warning us that resistance is futile.

The mass state, while obscenely expensive, dangerous and even ridiculous, is the present reality of the United States. Imminent federal biometric ID cards courtesy of the REAL ID Act are just one more symbol of this ongoing massification and American totalitarianism. The Congress won’t impeach – to impeach its heart, its hands, or its head is to commit suicide. A pleasant fantasy for the rest of us, but that is all.

Interestingly, the Downing Street Memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it.

Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible.

Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!

LRC’s Butler Shaffer, eminently wise as always, points out that "we would be better advised to confront our own existential cowardice. Political leaders amass power only through our moral exhaustion; They are strong because we have allowed ourselves to become weak."

To murder the state you need strong citizens who understand their rights, have honed their abilities and stocked their mental and physical arsenal, and have adopted the quiet determination and moral confidence that often appears as fearlessness, but is not.

We might take a lesson from the growing Iraqi insurgency and the response of that nation nearly destroyed by our pretext-laden invasion and the American neo-Jacobin possession of that country.

The U.S. Army wonders about the robustness and fluidity of the hard to catch and harder to kill insurgents. Clearly, all Iraqi insurgents do not swear allegiance to any single creed or leader. Understanding this and dealing with Fourth Generation warfare is not Washington’s forte.

It remains wrong and immoral to demonstrate our government’s arrogance, greed and incompetence each dreadful day in Iraq. But it is a helpful demonstration for patriotic Americans at home.

How do the Iraqi insurgents do it? How are they defending themselves from the oppressive U.S. managed state in Baghdad? How are they killing it?

They know what they don’t want, and have made a personal commitment to resist it.

They are living at reduced standards, not only within or under their means but often proudly and creatively so, relying upon and strengthening extended networks of family and friends as they do.

The majority of Iraqis are angry, hurt, underemployed and under extreme stress. Yet most have not rejected or blamed God. Most retain a devotion to a religion, that like most, gathers its believers together, studies great and holy men and women, and attempts to explain human suffering while simultaneously embracing an all powerful God, whose creatures include both beasts of the field and the American enemy.

They don’t trust the central government in Baghdad. They judge the American state's intent solely from the American state's actions, never its words.

They are wary of state efforts at law enforcement, and work hard to stay out of its dangerous and lumbering way.

They love their country, and have no intention of permanently leaving its future in the hands of either the Americans or beholden U.S. allies in the region, be they of Saudi, Kuwaiti, Turkish or Israeli persuasion.

Some resist passively, some actively. They don’t understand everything that is happening, but most Iraqis have decided to pursue one or more of the countless paths of resistance to the state. Iraqis, like Russians and East Europeans before them, honed these skills under Saddam Hussein, as we hone our skills today in early totalitarian America.

All are qualified to resist. None are excluded.

French-born composer and musician Nadia Boulanger , a major influence on American music in the 20^th century, once said:

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of Liberty is a history of Resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.

"Liberty" is also a concept George W. Bush favors. He said "liberty" fifteen times in his 2005 inaugural speech, second only to his 25 mentions of "freedom." Bush didn’t specifically advocate the murder, or even the restraint, of the state. On the other hand, perhaps he did.

The way ahead is clear. We should promote our great leader's love of liberty and resist, resist, resist!

Karen Kwiatowski, Ph.D.

Is Israel
an American Value?
Commentary by
Laura Dawn Lewis May 31, 2005:

This year's AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) the most powerful foreign lobby in Washington's conference ran with the slogan, "Israel, an American value". Accompanying this slogan is a logo showing an American flag juxtaposed as a six-pointed star.

Imagine if Mexico, Canada or Britain displayed such hubris through proclamation. Aside from the fact that Israel is a foreign nation and not one of our territories or states, AIPAC, its PR and government lobby is same alien organization under investigation for spying on us directly and indirectly with ties to several Israeli spy networks uncovered and disbanded since 2001, the latest being the Franklin/Feith affair exposed by CBS last summer.

I n FOUR separate instances during 2004, Israel found itself exposed spying on the United States: January 2004--New York City, an Israeli cell was uncovered attempting to smuggle out 500 nuclear detonation parts. February 2004--two Israeli operatives are caught red-handed stealing classified nuclear submarine fuel in Tennessee. May 2004--a four year operation blew open exposing a known Mossad agent's infiltration into the New Jersey Governor's bed and nearly Homeland Security. This was passed off as "a homosexual affair" to placate people and deflect the issue. Cipel fled to Israel to avoid Pollard's fate within days. Then we have Feith and Franklin.

This is from a country that says it doesn't spy on us yet after September 11th it wasn't an Al Qaeda cell we busted. It was a nationwide Israeli Art Student spy ring. We deported over 800 Israelis following 9-11 and fewer than fifty Arabs or Muslim extremists.

Israel an American Value?

The plan for our current conquest of the Middle East was developed by high ranking persons in the US who consistently demonstrate their loyalty to Israel at the expense of American interests and lives including The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, John Bolton who is up for our UN position, Douglas Feith, William Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Commonly they and Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others are referred to as the neocons.  Conservative they are not.  They are Trotskyites. 

The plan drafted in 1998 for the Israeli government, which required another Pearl Harbor event to motivate Americans to support a Middle East makeover for Israel and includes regime change in Iraq first, then Iran, Syria, Lebanon and other Middle East countries. 

George Washington, our first President warned of this.  He called it a "Passionate attachment for a foreign nation".  President Dwight Eisenhower also warned us of the dangers associated with making decisions based upon military conquest and profit.  He called it "the military industrial complex", an interest group of which President Bush Sr.'s Carlyle Group, Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton and the Israeli government strongly support.  Though Israel accounts for less than 1/2% of the world population, it supplies 10% of all weapons internationally.  Israel requires conflict to survive in the US subsidized lifestyle it has become accustom to. 

Today American, British, Australian and several other nation's men and women die in a war that would never exist if Americans, (England and Australia too.  The French and Italians figured this out)had  stayed true to our founding values rather than the agenda driven values of a foreign nation. Terror is a tactic, an excuse and a reason to scare Americans into relinquishing our rights to feel "safe".  An army cannot fight a tactic.  It is impossible!

Ironically, the terrorists have already won if it is "our freedom" they are after. Americans via our representatives in the government continue to decimated our constitution and shred our rights, trading our freedom for wars protecting our "freedom". In reality The Patriot Act's passage and enforcement represents the Terrorists ultimate trophy. They convinced us to abandon the very freedoms we say we fight for.

As for President Bush's rallying cry, "freedom isn't free". Actually it is.  Every person on this planet is born free.  God gives us freedom. Governments take it away through laws, force and fear. Case in point, President Bush in six years succeeded in stripping more freedoms from the American people than any President in history, all in the name of freedom.  Ironically, his only job, according to the oath of office is to protect the US constitution, the document protecting our freedoms, not the American people, freedom or democracy.  We don't need a ruler, nor do the other 180 or so countries. We need leaders, leaders who have the best interests of the US at heart and only the best interests of the US.  We haven't had one of these for a while.

Is Israel an American Value? As an American, I am deeply offended by AIPAC's insinuation and representation. The equation of Zionism, a racial and faith supremacy, military-based political movement represented by the Star of David with American values horrifies me. After the attack on the USS Liberty for which Israel has never apologized and continues to disrespect the survivors, to even pretend that Zionism has anything to do with our values...what arrogance! As a Christian, knowing the persecution, terror and murder visited upon Christians within the Occupied Territories by Zionists including American citizens, embellishing an Israeli flag   with my country's colors and symbols while promoting that the American value system has anything to do with supporting Zionism represents a desecration akin to placing an American Flag within a swastika or communist symbol. And what of the implied meaning?

Is support for Israel an American value? Absolutely not. Israel is an apartheid state. In the United States we believe all men and women are created equal. Apartheid may be an Israeli value but it IS NOT an American value.

ISRAEL, AN AMERICAN VALUE?
Israel is a theocracy, which actively discriminates against non-Jewish persons. Ninety-three percent of Israel is off limits to resident Christians and Muslims. They cannot own homes or businesses, work in stores, attend schools or even travel through Jewish only zones.
ISRAEL, AN AMERICAN VALUE?
Israel builds walls on land that doesn't belong to it in violation of International Law and the Geneva Conventions. This construction, based upon The Hague Resolutions of 1907 and the internationally accepted laws passed after the Nuremberg trials constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity on a scale equivalent to Nazi Germany.
Israel, an American value?

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."

Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
Israel, an American value?
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Memorandum"

"American intervention...will change the United States regime into an authoritarian, totalitarian one in comparison with which the European forerunners - fascist and Nazi - will feel themselves far surpassed and perfected. "

 Benito Mussolini

Nazism Then

The man pictured here is estimated to be in his seventies and just trying to get home. The soldiers decided to hassle him and knocked him down simply to humiliate him.  This was standard procedure at Nazi checkpoints in Occupied Poland.  Jews were considered subhuman

 

Zionism Today

The man pictured above is in his sixties and just trying to get home. The soldiers decided to hassle him and knocked him down simply to humiliate him.  This is standard procedure at Israeli checkpoints. Palestinians are considered subhuman.

"It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term. In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in cooperation with the institutions of the Zionist movement." The Late Professor Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and Chairman of Israeli League for Civil and Human Rights

Israel an American Value?  Torture and summary executions were not American values until we prostituted ourselves for the sake of Israel, thus adopting their policies, programs and procedures, despite the conflicts with our constitution and stated principles.

Though these actions violate every principle the United States is founded on, we support and protect these policies in Israel and engage in them in Iraq and Afghanistan making the term, "American values" the ultimate oxymoron.

Israel's actions today (which your tax dollars as an American citizen or resident fund, support, assist and protect) against Christians and Muslims within the Occupied Territories and Israel proper are equivalent in every respect to Nazi Germany and its treatment of Jews between 1938 and 1941.

The Politics of Anti-Semitism

Protesting this, Zionism and its carnage, is not anti-Semitic, anti-Israel or conspiracy theorist.  As there is no defense for these actions, those loyal to Zionism choose the propaganda ploy called character assassination coupling it with public persecution in an effort to deflect attention from their atrocities through the use of these labels.  This breeds fear, causing people to stop questioning and accept for fear of being labeled. People who have been labeled anti-Semitic for going against Zionism include President Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Mel Gibson, The Pope, Charlie Reese, Joseph Sobran and the latest target for hitting too close to home, Britain's George Galloway. Jewish persons don't escape this defamation either: The Holocaust Industry author Norm Finkelstein, Professor Noam Chomsky and the late Israel Shahak have all been called anti-Semitic for objecting to Zionism.  None of these people are of course. It's a label designed to dumb down people and stop them listening.  It used to work pretty good, but like the boy who cried wolf...eventually people see it for what it is.  Now its a good indication the person is hitting on the truth.

Though not anti-Semitic to object to Zionism, supporting or defending it is 100% anti-American.  To place the welfare of another country before your own leaves questions of loyalty and of intent.  To uphold, fund and protect the genocide of an entire race of people is not only anti-American, it is also a war crime categorized under "Crimes Against Humanity".

Israel an American Value? 

When did warehousing civilians behind barbed wire and prison walls under constant military rule become an American Value?

Racism as official State Policy from the beginning…

Israel is an American value? When did the affairs of foreign countries become the value system of Americans? Are we supposed to embrace a foreign country because it gets attacked? Of course not. Israel wouldn't have a terrorist problem if it upheld the promises it made when its statehood was granted.  It hasn't and according to the writings of its founders, it never intended to. Racism has always been intrinsic to Zionism. State sanctioned apartheid and terrorism constitute founding principles and values of Israel and the Zionist movement according to the laws currently on the books in Israel and the writings of:

Theodor Herzl... "Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

"If we (the Zionists) move into a region where there are wild animals to which the Jews are not accustomed-big snakes, etc.-I shall use the natives (the Palestinians), prior to giving them employment in the transit countries, for the extermination of these animals."

Theodor Herzl,ibid, Vol.I, pp.108-109

Joseph Weitz...

"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more

There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."

Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From Israel: an Apartheid State by Uri Davis, p.5.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Ariel Sharon

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements² because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them."

Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.  

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial,"

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -Sunday, 25 March, 2001
quoted in BBC News Online (in response to the international fact-finding mission, headed by former US senator George Mitchell, investigating what sparked the 2000 September Intifada)

Based upon the principles and values the United States is founded on and the principles and values Israel is founded on, no correlation or synergy exists.

Therefore the question: Is Israel, the current apartheid state an American value? Let's take a look at what is an American value:

We hold these truths
to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  
Read our full declaration

How do the pictures and statements witnessed in this essay support the above statement?

CONCLUSION

Rather than Israel moving toward our value system of democracy, equal rights and a respect for all human life regardless of race, creed, origin or sex, the United States increasingly adopts Israel's distortion of these.  Prior to our favored nation affinity, the United States' people opposed beatings, forced internment, murder, pre-emptive wars, torture, lying, victimization and collective punishment. Not only are these policies in violation of our Constitution, each violates the teachings of Jesus Christ. American values find their origin in the Gospels, rather than the Talmud, which Israeli law draws on.  These two collections are fundamentally incompatible.  The American values expressed by our founding fathers versus the Israeli values illustrated, Americans need to decide which is who we are.  We say those of our founding fathers are our values yet we act like Israel.   Since the primary drivers of this disparity in conscience claim to be Christian, did not Jesus admonish people who present themselves one way yet act another?

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence."

Matthew 23:25

Within the gospels and New Testament there are several passages dealing with God's number one pet peeve, hypocrisy. They follow the familiar morality line of doing as one preaches. Perhaps the Christian Zionists including our President, so blindly supporting Israel, akin to idol worship some will say, and driving these genocidal and imperialistic policies may take time to read these passages, along with the Book of ACTS rather than regurgitating versus without practicing their meaning. A miracle in the making? No.  Those driving this are Christians and Jesus would never support Zionism. It is man's arrogance to believe God requires our help to cause Armageddon. In the end their faith and hearts will show them the way. In conclusion, let us ask the question we began with: Given the facts on the ground, Is Israel an American value?

Bush The Exploiter
By Peter Fredson
6-6-5
When George W. Bush was awarded the presidency, by the Republican Justices of the Supreme Court, he promised prosperity, peace, compassionate conservatism, and humility. He promised to be a "uniter not a divider." Like many politicians before him, he exaggerated, misled, and promptly forgot his promises.

He has divided this nation into warring partisan factions, one of which would cheerfully let Bush install a corporate fascist regime in his country. Every day he divides the nation with his smirking, petulant, arrogant, war-mongering pretensions. "National unity" is a symbol for domination, for deception, and for favoritism of Far Right shenanigans.

Instead of union, he gave us ruinous federal budget deficits, launched a costly and illicit war by lies, and ruined the diplomatic efforts of American statesmen to make the U.S. the most hated nation in the world. Bush "humility" promptly turned to arrogance, culminating in threatening preemptive strikes on anyone daring to dispute his imperial power. Bush continually mouths the words "liberty", "democracy", and "freedom" as distracting ploys to consolidate his power. One might well say that he callously and cynically exploits the symbols of our democracy for personal advantage.

His "compassionate conservatism" is belied by his record when, as governor, he executed more prisoners than any one before him, and did it by expressing derision at pitiful appeals for compassion. His "compassionate conservatism" is belied by his direct complicity in "shock and awe" directed against the people of Iraq, resulting in the death of many thousands of innocent civilians. His "compassion" was limited by the inability or lack of desire to even count the victims, because they were mere "collateral damage."

The use of the word "compassion" by Bush must be regarded as a cynical ploy to get votes and cash, and to exploit American feelings and values for personal benefit. Not a tear was shed by Bush for the American soldiers that he sent to their deaths, to seize the resources of a sovereign country, without other provocation than neoconservative greed. In fact, the very thought that someone photographed coffins of American dead soldiers, seemed to embarrass his Right Wing supporters and thus was condemned by Bush for losing popularity, but not because of revulsion toward committing death. We might think of the "compassion" of a Texan Rattlesnake or a Nile Crocodile.

When Bush strutted about the deck of an airplane carrier under a sign proclaiming "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" it was to exploit war and to perpetuate the "noble warrior" idea to the hilt. Here is a draft-dodger AWOLER who is commander-in-chief of the mightiest army on the planet that swaggers about in uniform as though he personally had done something brave and noble.

We know that he has exploited the idea of being "commander-in-chief" as it ostensibly gives him more power than a peace president might claim. We know that the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED was NOT accomplished, that war in Iraq, the killing and destruction continue daily. We know that Bush cannot declare the end to war as it would remove his War President status, which he wields like a club. And he exploits this circumstance as he can remain in Iraq as long as he continues to allege warfare, or terrorism, or the presence of oil in Iran or other country.

Although Bush promised to be open and candid with the public

Bush governs like an imperial Roman, entitled to god-like status on all issues. Bush has made secrecy the hallmark of his regime. He seals all records, refused to let recordings be made (remembering the Nixon debacle), and make sure that all notes and memos of secret meetings with lobbyists and supporters be destroyed. Bush rarely meets with protestors, and prevents demonstrations from occurring near him. His secret agents and police monitor any person within a hundred feet of his imperial presence. Terrorism task forces make sure that demonstrators do not demonstrate, or that demonstrations are not considered newsworthy by Fox-type reporters.

Reporters know that any adverse publicity issued by them will result in immediate castigation. To counter-act nosy reporters Bush has several fake reporters at his conferences, asking "soft" questions intended to make him appear in the best possible light. But ask Helen Thomas what happened when she asked an "impertinent" question of Bush. What is more, Bush has his own government bureaus issue glowing reports concerning his administration. In this way Bush exploits news reporting, and controls it by bullying tactics.

Probably the most cynical of all "news" reporting is done by his own press secretaries. They are experts at "spinning" the truth, to obfuscate, bureaucratize, and misrepresent any item considered to be critical of Bush. Thus Bush exploits the press corps by misrepresenting, falsifying, and controlling all news items of his administration. The press corps is well aware of Bush's attempts to control or spin the news and frequently laugh at the clumsy and overt attempts of the press secretaries to mislead them.

America the Beautiful, from sea to shining sea, the forests, animals and mountains, the very air we breath, and the water we drink, that True Believers says is given by God, is being fouled because the president wants his corporate friends to make a profit from exploiting the environment. He relaxes restrictions on air and water quality and labels them "Clean Air" and "Clean Water Acts" as a cynical way to make people believe in his "stewardship" qualities. He seems willing destroy any form of life or land-form in order to make a dollar from it. His corporate pirates will chop down every tree, kill every animal, and level every mountain to feed their exploitive avarice.

It is amazing how Bush exploited a national tragedy for his personal advantage. Prior to 9/11 he had done nothing of heroic consequence except vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and cut brush. On 9/11 he was caught off guard, sat reading a kid's book, and then was whisked off by agents to a waiting plane. Dick Cheney too was whisked off to some bunker. Both of them sat doing nothing of consequence, nothing heroic.

But then the Bush advisors had a flash of electoral genius: they would proclaim Bush a genuine hero and great leader by continuously showing shots of the Twin Towers being destroyed, the American Flag waving, President Bush making a speech and showing some of the dead people.

The entire Far Right acclaimed Bush as a heroic savior, and Bush himself repeated 9/11 symbology to exhaustion, far into the 2004 elections. Once Bush latches onto a good lie, he sticks to it, so give him credit for consistence. No National Tragedy was ever so exploited as 9/11 by Bush, and so unwarranted.

Bush has his photographs taken with the American flag in the background. I should say flags, flags, and more flags. All of them waving behind George Bush! Flags in lapels, flag on car bumpers, flags on podium, flags everywhere. Although other presidents have exploited the American Flag, none have done it so regularly, predictably and nauseatingly. For a person that was not willing go give his life for his country, Bush certainly shows he is willing to give other people's lives for his country unstintingly.

George W. Bush unstintingly exploits war, exploits terror, for his own purposes. We know that the purposes involve world domination by Right Wing Corporate entities. Bush exemplifies a paranoid obsessively worrying about threats to America, who communicates that threat to the public. Bush takes political advantage from resulting fear. His cabinet, his Christian followers, and the Right Wing media propagate that fear endlessly. They intensify the fear by offering to replace it by their policies which will put America into the hands of a few billionaire Right Wingers. Rather than recurring to traditional protection they reiterate that revenge and bullying are the remedy. That the U.N. is weak and should be replaced by American muscle to "give those Muslims a good lesson."

Criticism has become synonymous with treason. No one dares ask the Bush administration about their lies or plans, but if they do the entire administration, including the Republicans in Congress will issue mass denials and reject any hint of wrong doing.

The entire Warning System of Colorful symbols were designed, not to alleviate fear, but to spread it. The Color Symbols were used lavishly any time Bush was being criticized. The nation was purposely kept in a healthy sense of fear which suited the exploitive nature of the War Hawks. Instead of finding good solutions, the Bush administration suggested using duct tape to seal people's houses against mass weapons of destruction. Instead of listening to quiet solutions of diplomacy they preferred to bully their way unilaterally in the world, showing their disgust at the "softness" of allies. Instead of peaceful solutions they looked at their arsenals of tanks, guns, planes, and bombs and decided to hell with world opinionthey would wing it alone.

The Bush media magnify and protest and dissent and connect it to unpatriotic action akin to aiding the Enemy. They exploit terrorist terror by claiming that the only remedy is to blast the enemy to hell. The Bush people claim that only they can protect the American people and that without their Home Security Vigilance everybody will be a dead puppy. They claim that "softness" and "diplomacy" won't work. They would love to see brutes like Bolton destroy the United Nations, they would love to see war hawks like Wolfowitz sack the World Bank, and they loved to see Ashcroft give unbelievers their just deserts. In effect, they glorify strength, domination, bullying as part of our Manifest Destiny to rule the world.

Meanwhile our young soldiers are in harm's way. They die, not for our country, but to enrich some oil corporation, some aircraft manufacturer, some arms dealer, some evangelist who is determined to make Christianity the only religion on this planet or destroy everyone in the process. Meanwhile a sovereign nation, Iraq, is being despoiled, destroyed, vilified, and is given Bush puppets so that Bush can build huge air bases there for perpetual domination of the entire Middle East.

There is not enough space to go into how Bush exploits other features of the economy, health, medicine, old age, elections, diplomacy or into how he selects people for his cabinet and administration. The topic of exploitation of religion alone, would merit a separate article. But half of the country will call him the worst president ever, and the other half will adore him, no matter what stupidity he advocates.

In truth, Bush exploits just about everything he touches. War, terror, fear, religion, flag, patriotism, people, values, feelings, constitution, destruction, tragedy are all grist for his ego and for his corporate sponsors.

Half the country would rejoice at his regime change, while the other half would mourn the loss of a savior hero who sat reading a child's book while the world crumbled around him.

http://peterfredson19.blogspot.com/