by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyFor almost a century now the GOP has thrown the word "treason" around to describe Constitutionally protected dissent. How will it feel, I wonder, when the opposition hurls it back and makes it stick?
So much happens in so little time that time itself seems a folded telescope. I seem to recall the emergence of a well-timed recording purportedly from Bin Laden. How convenient that it emerged at a critical moment in Bush's bid for re-election! More disturbing were the celebrations throughout GOP ranks. Some Republicans went so far as to say that the tape was a "gift" to George W's otherwise failed re-election bid!
Am I the only one that sees in those statements an ugly fact about Republicanism? What word describes a dwindling segment of Grinches who find, in an alleged threat to the lives of American citizens, a reason to celebrate?
From "Paperwright": [warning: the blunt language is NOT
edited!]
So much happens in so little time that time itself seems a folded telescope. I seem to recall the emergence of a well-timed recording purportedly from Bin Laden. How convenient that it emerged at a critical moment in Bush's bid for re-election! More disturbing were the celebrations throughout GOP ranks. Some Republicans went so far as to say that the tape was a "gift" to George W's otherwise failed re-election bid!
Am I the only one that sees in those statements an ugly fact about Republicanism? What word describes a dwindling segment of Grinches who find, in an alleged threat to the lives of American citizens, a reason to celebrate?
From "Paperwright": [warning: the blunt language is NOT
edited!]
October 30 edition of Bush Campaign Terrorism ScareAs John Kerry continued to challenge Bush amid the GOP "swift boat" attacks, I wrote some of the following notes about how Bush could be trusted.
I am so freaking tired of this issue, but as long as Bush is in power, we'll have it. Yet another reason to vote the hollow man out of
office.
The press are idiots. The Bush Campaignistration are also
idiots. I'm tired of saying this over and over again.
Hey, idiots, it doesn't fucking matter who Osama bin Laden or [insert generic terrorists here] wants to win our presidential election. They're not a goddamn citizen. When you give terrorists that much power over our political process for your own political ends, as you've been doing for the last year, it's not only vile politics, it proves that you've already lost to the sonofabitch, because all they want to do is to screw with you, and videotapes are cheaper than bombs. It's even better when you twist your country in knots for your own political gain while OBL is reclining on cushions in Pakistan, doing nothing.
Good lord, even rats learn. I've been saying the same thing since May 26, and to date, I've only seen Atrios and Billmon even come close to noticing this rather obvious point, and I've not seen one person get it in the mainstream press. And no, I don't care that I'm not being heard -- it's just that this is so very destructive a problem that it's appalling that no one's figured it out.
Oh, and Osama bin Laden still being alive is not a "gift" to the Bush Campaignistration, you relentlessly disgusting fear-mongering creatures (and yes, McCain, now I'm talking to you too). It's a disgrace that he's still alive, and a further disgrace that you're happy about it.
Continue reading "Terrorism: Political Consequences"
--Terrorism: Political Consequences
Bush and his illegitimate junta can be trusted to try to steal re-election!It would appear that they did precisely that.
- He can be trusted to continue to wage completely failed and ineffective wars of naked aggression!
- Bush can be trusted to continue to endanger American security and her prestige among allies!
- Bush can be trusted to break Social Security and then argue that because it is broken, it must be abolished!
- Bush can be trusted to abrogate all Constitutional protections of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
- Bush can be trusted to finish the job of making this planet unlivable!
- Bush can be trusted to further enrich and empower a nere one percent of the nation, an elite, ruling one percent which already owns more than 40 percent of all this nation's wealth!
- Bush can be trusted to ensure that Martin Luther King Jr's dream remains a dream!
- Bush can be trusted to reform immigration laws so that the GOP can exploit the new immigrants for cheap labor! Bush can be trusted to "unite" the top one percent while exploiting fears and prejudices to keep everyone else distrustful of one another!
- Bush can be trusted to develop and use nuclear weapons in what can only be called heinous crimes against humanity, the peace, and the environment!
- Bush can be trusted to consolidate his corporate power base --just as did Hitler in a meeting with I.G. Farben, Thyssen, and Krupp!
- Bush can be trusted to wage war upon the American people who dare to express opinions differing from his own dictates, fiats, decrees!
- Bush can be trusted to consider a stolen election a "mandate"!
- Unleashed, Bush will summon up from the bowels of hell his favorite bogeymen in order to -his words - "export death and destruction to the four corners of the earth!"
We are not out of the woods. Although the US insisted upon war crimes trials at the end of World War II, Winston Churchill favored summary executions. Churchill wanted to electrocute Hitler. He would have ordered "electric chairs" from the US in order to do it. The other war criminals, he said, should be summarily shot.
Justice Robert Jackson, a Roosevelt appointee to the Supreme Court, meanwhile nurtured hopes that a war crimes trial at Nuremberg would establish an international legal standard for the due process of international laws. Jackson had noble and idealistic hopes that Nuremberg might prevent another Holocaust and future wars of naked aggression. More recently, however, the GOP and George W. Bush specifically, have seemingly vindicated Hermann Goring, who pooh poohed the very concept of international law. He called it "victor's justice".
The Nazi attitude toward the concept of “war crimes” is that of the GOP. My own congressman, for example, believes international conventions, even those agreed to by the US, violate US sovereignty. Yet, it was the US that insisted upon war crimes trials in the wake of WWII. It was the US that actively supported what are now known as the Nuremberg Principles. The US is bound to those principles by treaty. Moreover, US Codes —Section 2441 specifically —bind US citizens (that includes Bush) to the Principles of Nuremberg:
TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441If the GOP position prevails, George Bush will have vindicated Hermann Goring! How fitting for a President who, like Hitler, considers himself above the law!
§ 2441. War crimesRelease date: 2005-08-03
(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
...
The litmus test is the party attitude toward truth. Like Goring and the other Nazis charged at Nuremberg, the Bush attitude toward truth is simply put: truth is merely whatever works for the good of the party.
Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification and I quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you tell them the truth."Karl Rove is comfortable with this philosophy: if the people buy it, it's true. Earlier: a story repeated three times is true.
—Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
Advocating the importation of “electric chairs” from the United States, Churchill called Hitler “… the well spring of evil”. But, like Hitler, Bush ordered and carried out the attack and invasion of a sovereign nation upon a pack of lies. Nothing said by Bush about Iraq has been true. Hermann Goring’s position, however, explains why Bush may never be similarly charged: “victor’s justice”!
The GOP hopes merely to re-frame the debate, adopting Goring's defense. If overthrown and accused, Bush will not recognize the rule of law, having already placed himself above it. At what point does this deliberate subversion of our Constitution become high treason? It must be remembered that the GOP used violence to shut down the recount rooms in Florida.
Democrats have seemed timid, preferring to avoid a showdown. But a showdown seems inexorable. The rule of law must be affirmed or the people of the US, indeed, the world, will have lost the struggle for freedom forever. Either we affirm the rule of law –or will we will have proven Goring right. Either we affirm the rule of law, or we shall all become slaves.
If Goring is upheld –and Bush is just the man to do it –we might as well resort to a “state of nature” and live in the jungle. We might as well deny that Bush’s crimes had ever taken place:
It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: Say I slew them not. And the Queen replied, Then say they were not slain. But dead they are... If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.There are two kinds of republicans: the evil and the stupid. The "evil" are represented by Bush handlers who perpetrate evil though they know better and don't give a damn. The other kind are stupid and naive. They merely follow and enable.
—Robert Jackson, US Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
Our enemies...never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
~George W. Bush
Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009
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3 comments:
Jonathan Turley is the real deal. Olbermann is always great, but his segments with Jonathan Turley really are the crème de la crème. He thoroughly understands the Constitution, and recognizes that it exists primarily as a limit on what government can do. He is eloquent and forceful in his support of those limitations and his condemnation of those who regard the Constitution and Bill of Rights as mere pieces of paper.
Best of all, he is capable of putting things in terms that people understand. His depiction of Bu$hCo™ as a crime syndicate is right on the money. As amply shown in the Prosecutors' Purge, to follow the law is to be ousted, to break it is the path to promotion. As Keith puts it, "get criminal and get 'made' ."
It's about time the people in Congress including Democrats wake up to the fact that their inaction constitutes aiding and abetting this criminal enterprise.
SadButTrue said...
He thoroughly understands the Constitution, and recognizes that it exists primarily as a limit on what government can do.
Limits to government is what TRUE conservatism was about before the movement was hijacked by power hungry robber barons, imperialists, religious nut jobs, bigots, and brain dead SUV addicted gasoholics.
His depiction of Bu$hCo™ as a crime syndicate is right on the money.
I am glad that theme was, at last, picked up. I may not have been the first to have done so but several years ago I wrote: "the GOP is not political party. It's a crime syndicate." More recently, I have stated that it is a criminal conspiracy. The important thing is that the fact of it has at last entered the mainstream. And it bears repeating:
THE GOP IS NOT A POLITICAL PARTY; IT'S A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY!
It's about time the people in Congress including Democrats wake up to the fact that their inaction constitutes aiding and abetting this criminal enterprise.
Or...as Buzzflash wrote recently: the Democrats now own a piece of George W. Bush's evil war.
We have no one to vote for anymore. There is no choice but revolution.
"There is no choice but Revolution."
An opinion I share, and have expressed on a number of occasions. The sad truth behind this, I fear, is that the required revolution will be more like the French than the American experiences of the eighteenth century. Not an organized armed rebellion against a foreign power with all the logistics advantages that that entails, but a massive peasant uprising, unco-ordinated and bloody.
Another huge problem is that the same corporate interests that have so brutally raped America are at work in other countries around the world. It is this hydra-like corporate structure that would be the target of any successful revolution, and in military terms they present a very high tooth-to-tail ratio.
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