Author: Antifa

The posers and powers that be in Washington, DC are just downstream of a furious flood of righteous anger headed their way, directly their way, from Americans of every stripe and persuasion.

The jig is up for the hacks and heedless thieves of Washington, DC. They have awakened a sleeping giant; we, the people, will not surrender our precious privacy, will not see our children and grandchildren impoverished for the sake of extravagant tax cuts and wars of adventure, and we will not sacrifice our Constitution to a stuttering emperor’s vain view of himself.
The dilettantes and doyens of the DLC are in for a severe shock, for we will not follow any further down their futile paths. They wave their position papers and polls as proudly as Neville Chamberlain waved his signed and sealed piece of paper from the Fuhrer. We are not amused. Never again.

For five long years, a cesspool of corruption in our Capitol has relentlessly drained our Treasury and nation of assets, wealth and opportunities — all for the sake of the wealthy investors and donors who put this pirate party in power. It is high time all that plunder was paid back.

The intolerable acts of the wannabe king, George Bush, caused this flood. He and his cronies were asked to govern; they only plundered. They were asked to protect; they only promoted themselves at any price. They abandon Americans at every turn.

Now the ground is moving. The giant is awake, and like the mad King George we sent packing 230 years ago, the crooked king who is cowering in our White House will learn too late the original American motto —

     “Don’t Tread On Me.”

 The American government’s gulag by Guantanamo Bay isn’t about terror, or a war upon it, or about enemy combatants or security.  It’s a symptom, not a cause. It’s a pimple on a pirate’s ass.

The grand goal of Guantamo is to rid us of the rule of law. How the orange jumpsuits get handled is irrelevant; how the public gets handled is irrelevant.  It’s the principle that’s vital.  It’s the black flag that matters.

Guantanamo is about dismantling the rule of law, internationally and domestically. As it accomplishes that, it fully serves its purpose.
The program is Full Spectrum Dominance.  Everything leads up to FSD.  Everything serves that in America now.

Here in the New American Century, the neocons especially need a royal President, with kingly powers, to pull off Full Spectrum Dominance of planet Earth’s other nations.

FSD can only be accomplished through a top-down command structure. You’ve heard that a camel is a race horse designed by a committee?  Well, that’s why they can’t let Congress handle this.  Congress gets handled on this, just like the beards in orange jumpsuits get handled.

The neocons must have a captain; they must have a king.

For the neocons understand America precisely.

Do you?

America is point three billion people in a world of six point six billion.  For every American, there are 21 other human beings, most with funny names. All are in the same life, liberty n’ pursuit of happiness racket that you are.

Problem is, there just ain’t enough energy or stuff to go around, American style. Not even remotely close. This world is never going to look like America — you’d need from 12 to 21 more planet Earths to pay that kind of vig.

So it’s irreducibly a brigand’s world — where some of that six point six will have — and most will never. Ever. There’s just too many of us.  We’re even tipping the goddamned weather over on it’s keister. The ice at both poles is melting. There’s a drought in the Amazon.

What is America’s response?  What’s our program?  Well, the richest and most powerful people in the richest and most powerful nation on Earth are happy to let the neocons go for broke — let the neocons transform America into a brigand nation. If there’s going to be a struggle for resources, well, we’re going to cheat up front; we’re going to fix the fight; we’re going to own the arena.

Full Spectrum Dominance.  Including cyber space.  Including outer space.

We’ll simply be the first to raise the black flag and start slitting throats.

That’s the gleam in Rumsfeld’s eye.

That’s where America’s at.

That’s what Guantanamo’s for.

That’s the New American Century.

Get with the program, or get handled.

Among the hundreds of nameless and faceless Muslim captives at our Guantanamo penal colony, a bit over 250 are on a hunger strike, determined to starve to death rather than accept their situation.

Thirty men have been on hunger strike five months now, since August.  Our ultimate response has been to hold them down once a day, forcing feeding tubes down their noses into their stomachs, and pumping nutrient fluids into them.

This will not keep them alive; it only prolongs the inevitable. They’re dying, and will pass away in the days just ahead.  Dozens more are determined to follow them out of Gitmo.
Poor bastards.  Their medical care is in the hands of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Republicans.  Poor bastards, their fate is in the hands of Americans.

The quandary at the White House is what to do with all these skinny corpses.  Muslim burials?   Ship their bony bodies home?  Disappear them, without any markers?  Let their relatives call them just once before they expire?  (It would be their first outside or familial contact in years.)  And what to tell the world?  What to tell voting Americans?  

How to keep a lid on mass suicides in our most public concentration camp?

What will they do with thirty martyrs to liberty?

What will you do?

Gentle reader, what of your persuasion or politics or personal opinions about the great questions of our day? These thirty men are beyond that now. These men are already dead to this world, already across the river, already looking down on the quarrels of this world.

They’re in a whole other space.

Putting yourself down by starvation is not suicide. Suicide is some quick and easy pop, some deed that is irrevocable. You can lay back and say, “There, I’ve done it.”

Shotguns, pills, razors, high places, even setting off a Semtex vest — are all quick and irreversible choices.  And they are cowardly compared to starvation.  Digesting yourself is an infinity of raw moments spent choosing excruciating pain and weakness again and again, while the remedy lies always at your fingertips.

What could motivate a human being to actually carry that off?  These men in Gitmo are damn close to doing just that.

What is this thing they do?

Try a 30-day water fast yourself.  Very quickly you see this world as through a veil.  You see it for what matters, and what does not.  What used to be vital daily business doesn’t count in the least. There is no money, no entertainment, no pleasure that could distract you from food, and your choice not to eat it.  You hold your life in your hands, and it is life that you think about.

It’s a very clear state of mind.  Your senses are acute; you stand in your soul, utterly and intimately aware of the fragile membrane between life and death. You see a wide world full of human beings who are really only alive between one heartbeat and the next, yet they fight and kill over table scraps and creature comforts — and pleasures.

Will power only carries you through the early rounds.  After the first week, your sole strength is your identity and mindfulness — your desire to transform yourself by this discipline — “I will not be as I was before.”

You spend your days on the further shore; like a caterpillar you keep vigil in your own world; you hold every living moment in your two hands; you listen to the many voices of your heart; you listen for one song.

At the far end, your entire strength is, “I await grace.”

That’s where fasting takes a human being.  Inside, and beyond.

These thirty martyrs surely started with political and personal statements in mind, but to get this far means those initial incentives have long since been rinsed away in the rising tide of a deeper reality.  The dead do not and cannot hate the living.

Their death vigil is a political statement only to us, now.  To each of them, it is their one and only means of living their own life, by seeking to be with their own self only.

Their death vigil is a personal statement only to us, now.  To each of them, it is choosing freedom over absolutely anything else.

What is this thing they do?

From out of the deepest hole in the meanest prison on this planet, they make themselves more free than we who are walking all around.

This thing they do for liberty.

Ten at once.  Ten marines meet their Maker in a flash of furious fire and fallen friends.  Human meat on the street, shattered and smoking and seeping.  Eleven more left lying about, leaking life’s blood, hovering between heartbeats, waiting to be saved or to slip away.  The whole world watching, seeing that this is where we are, and this is where we are going.

Tomorrow is today.

Where is safe in such a struggle?  Point to the province that’s been pacified — there isn’t one.  In a war with no fronts and no flanks there is only the ground you stand on at any given moment, and even that ground is compromised, under constant threat.  The foxholes are confused; there is no perimeter.  The turf you turn away from belongs to the enemy the second you show your back, because the enemy is every man, woman and child who lived here before you entered, and who lives here after you exit.

If you let them live.  If they let you live.
This is no place for soldiers.  Guerilla warfare is a game of ghosts, a game of frights, a monstrous mathematics of hearts and minds to be terrified or taken out.  A game for spooks, not soldiers, for there is nothing brave about beating prisoners; there is no honor in scorching the earth.

This is no place for soldiers.  Beyond vicious, this is a game for vampires.  You can never conquer your opponent, only cut him, again, again, and again.  You seek only to slice, to booby trap, to bleed the bastard.  You seek territory only to destroy and deny it to your enemy.  The goal posts in this game are stalemate, exhaustion and the ruination of everything useful.

Until that distant day when the last one standing wins whatever is left standing.

This is no place for soldiers.  With nowhere to advance or retreat to, victory is impossible, for both sides.  The only victory is political, and can only come by wasting soldiers, supplies, and cash beyond your enemy’s capacity to keep pace.  Today is tomorrow, until one side bleeds out.  The shooting only stops when one side loses faith in further shooting.  Which means winning is never the goal, for either side.  A decision to stop shooting is the goal.  Your crisis of faith is the ir Holy Grail.

This is no place for soldiers.  In such a struggle, hearts and minds are the only turf to contest.  In such a struggle, headlines hit harder than artillery or airpower.  Bribes beat bombs, and terror trumps all.  In such a struggle, the gloves come off, and rules grow quaint.  Whoever lives here must be too cowed to cross us, or go away, or become a ghost.  As long as there’s a spark, as long as there are hearts and minds beyond control, you cannot win or hold real estate.  You cannot say safe, or pacified, or free.

Guerilla wars are only ever won through the Final Solution, ethnic cleansing.  Remove the troublemakers until order prevails, or until you have the place to yourself.  That’s why we killed Jesus, and Geronimo, and Maura Clark, and Martin Luther King – the hearts and minds who heard them had to hear them die.  The mojo of martyrs burns longer, but cooler.  We may outlive the ghosts we put in the ground; we may gain their ground for our lifetimes, we may postpone their victory until after ours, and let them haunt people of another era.

Condi Rice knows all this.  Her arrogant public remarks are merely whitewash for the great and gleaming Fortress of Solitude, the White House, where the man who never makes mistakes commands an oval bunker, and little else.  Everything this Administration says about these twenty-one marines is a pure public pretense that the Iraqi resistance hasn’t just scored a major propaganda coup, worldwide.  That this isn’t as big as the Tet Offensive.

Behind many closed doors in Washington, there is a lot of screaming to be heard, and many harsh demands that we get even tougher with a wayward indigenous population.

With the Iraqi people.  The enemy.

And the European people.  The enemy.

And with the American people.  The real enemy.

The ones who count, if their votes are counted.

The neocon warmongers are being boiled alive by the Iraqi resistance, and now the struggle has come home to Orlando and Oregon and Ohio, to stay.  The war is now on everyone who disagrees with the faltering American Empire, and all rules are quaint.

The whole world is watching, and understands that if the Iraqis can swat twenty-one marines at once, then they can swat as they please.  That this is the same lesson conveyed by the Tet Offensive of 1968.  That there is nothing the neocons can do except whitewash their public image, increase their threats and terror across the board, increase their grip on news and information, and seize control of hearts and minds worldwide.

And that this can’t be done.

And so, the whole world understands that the war on Iraq is over, except for the Bugout Fever to follow the December 15th elections.  Seymour Hersh hints that, if we don’t get out, the Iraqis will deny us even the Green Zone, the most heavily defended and controlled bit of real estate in the whole of Iraq.  No surprise there.  Holding territory in a guerilla war is the same as lining up behind a “Shoot Me” sign.  Which is no place for soldiers.

None of this is news to the experts in guerilla warfare at the Pentagon.  They are well aware that the only winning strategy from here is to put the Iraqi population in lockdown.  Move them to camps, hamlets, refugee areas.  Ethnic cleansing in fact and practice, no matter what pretty name it is given by Condi and Rumsfeld and Friends.

Running concentration camps is no place for soldiers.  Wholesale ethnic cleansing is something the American military is absolutely unwilling to do.  That’s why General Pace so openly distanced himself from Don Rumsfeld on TV.  That’s why he publicly and pointedly reminded every grunt over there that there ARE rules, and they DO apply to every man jack in khaki or blue, including YOU, soldier.

The message hit home.  Rummy never saw the mad minute coming.  It was an expert ambush; it was a mutiny, neat and clean.  Rumsfeld was decapitated.  He mumbled and stumbled and fumbled it.  He screwed the pooch.  He came off as not in command of himself or his men.  With a few well chosen words, General Pace removed Rumsfeld from the field of honor.  On international TV, in front of the whole world, Rumsfeld was fired by his own men.  The first fragging under klieg lights, by satellite dish.

Thank you, General.  Rummy’s world is no place for soldiers.

Disassociated Press (DP) Nov. 29, 2005 — The Bush Administration today gave tacit approval to an anonymous leak of the Pentagon’s new Verizon Plan.

Political imperatives demand at least the appearance of winding down the Iraq war prior to the 2006 elections. The Verizon Plan is the result of months of careful calculation by Secretary Rumsfeld’s office.

Pentagon and Administration officials see this morning’s leak as a trial balloon; they are eager to get the public’s response to it.

Described as America’s last, best way out of a very difficult situation, the Verizon Plan embraces and embodies the President’s unshakable faith that the Lord God has repeatedly told him to smite Iraq, as well as addressing Mr. Bush’s vehement rejection of advice to the contrary.

“Here’s the sit-rep,” said a senior White House official, “We aren’t ever leaving.  Ever.  I mean, the Boss doesn’t listen to mortals anymore.  He hears voices.  He prays on things, and then he knows.  And he knows he’s got this thing wired, he knows, he just knows, that in 10 or 20 years we’ll be praising his brilliance and foresight.  We just need to have a little faith right now, okay?  To get us over this bad patch up ahead, to get us through the November election.  And that’s what the Verizon Plan is all about.”

With the 2006 Congressional elections shaping up to be a critical public referendum on GOP policies and performance, even Bush is on board with reducing our 155,000 combat troops to 80,000 or less by summer.  However, no one except Fox News pretends that this means an actual withdrawal; it is simply a policy of moving half the American troops to the permanent bases now under construction around the country, moving the other half to Kuwait, and switching over to intensive, round the clock air strikes to hang on to the country.

That’s where the Verizon Plan comes in.  “It’s beautiful,” said a senior Administration official, “Americans dig that surgical air-strike stuff on TV.  They watch that shit after dinner every night, and figure we’re winning.  No blood or guts, just high tech weapons from five miles up.  Even the kids can watch it, it’s that clean, it’s that sexy.  We’re going with air power.”

The Verizon Plan is simplicity itself.  In-theater American troops will withdraw completely from the towns and villages of Iraq, and fortify themselves behind concrete and sandbag walls at 14 permanent bases in Iraq.  They will dig deep underground bunkers for their comfort and safety, and kill any natives who dare to approach.

Meanwhile, with the constant support of American air power, day to day policing of pipelines, wells, harbors, airports, and urban areas will fall to the newly reconstituted Iraqi Army, to local militias, and to any other armed groups that may spring up.  Really, any gang or social club who’s got AK-47’s and RPG’s and is willing to quell or kill civilians in their sector is welcome to join the Pentagon’s Verizon Plan.

Under the Verizon Plan, our Air Force, Marines and Navy will assign one American pilot and plane to every commissioned officer of the new Iraqi Army, and Halliburton will supply one free cell phone to  each of those Iraqi officers, so they can call up their pilot and ask for air strikes whenever they need them.  Halliburton has agreed to supply one extra battery and an earpiece with each phone, bringing the price up to $2,437.92 apiece for the thousands of Iraqi combat officers expected to join the program.

By mid-January, every American pilot will be on call 24 hours a day, working directly for his Iraqi forward observer, whomever it may be.  All our fighter jocks need do is drop their ordnance when and where they are told, and head back to the Officer’s Club until they’re needed again.   All Air Force B-2 bombers have been reorganized under Israeli control, in the new Esfahan Squadron.

While it may sound simple on the surface, the logistics of the Verizon Plan have been worked out in intricate detail.  To reach maximum efficiency, and maximum popular support, cell phones and matching American pilots will be assigned to every neighborhood militia captain as well, simply for the asking.  And to all Block Captains of Neighborhood Watch associations, simply for applying.  After all, we have plenty of bombs, and Iraq is a rather large country.  Cell phones are freely available to pedestrian crossing guards also, to help them control traffic.  And to school principals as well, since students can get rowdy now and again.

With each phone comes one full time F-16, A-10 Warthog, F-22 or FA-18 Hornet, or access to cruise missiles from offshore Navy cruisers (strict limit of one per week).  Under the Verizon Plan, local Iraqi combat leaders need only dial up their personal American pilot, give him whatever coordinates they desire — and sit back to enjoy the fireworks.

Merit badges for exceptional targeting, secondary explosions, moving vehicles, and so forth will be awarded to top performers among the Iraqi callers.  The War Plans office even came up with a new slogan for the Verizon Plan, “Can You Hit It Now?”

“This can work.  This can work.” said the Administration official, “Right now, everybody in Iraq has enemies.  Everyone knows someone they don’t like.  Under the Verizon Plan, we get our butts out of the way, and just turn everybody loose.  Let Allah sort it out.  By November of 2006 there won’t be any enemies left in Iraq.  There’ll be no one left anywhere in country that someone else doesn’t like.  After that, it’ll be a cakewalk!”

Even amidst the general joy of watching Bush and Company come unglued, an unspoken, unspeakable fear stalks the land.  A fear that gives pause to the DLC and our Democratic Senators, a fear that somehow Bush and his vicious buddies will get out of this mess intact.

That Cheney will resign on Christmas Day, taking all the blame and bad mojo with him.  That Bush will change a few faces, move Rove across the hall to an office nearer the bathroom, withdraw 40,000 grunts from Iraq just before the 2006 elections, and use Diebold to hang on to both the House and Senate. So the Dems hold back, don’t use both barrels, and come up with slogans like “We Can Do Better.”

Well, here’s the facts of life: no stunt Bush can pull will avail him anything.  Out in the heartland, the game is over.

Do you recall how Bush has been described as America’s “Daddy” and all Americans as his children? His advisors even bragged about it.

That metaphor worked for him after 9/11, when four-fifths of the country wanted someone to stand up with a bullhorn, tell us not to worry, and then go shoot the burglars who broke into our house.

You know, the Afghan burglar, the Saudi burglar, who broke in and knocked stuff over.

That’s what kids want daddies to do — go shoot the burglars so we feel safe again.

What Daddy Bush has done since 9/11 is ignore the Saudi burglar completely, and chase the Afghan burglar only as far as the picket fence. Now the Afghan burglar is standing there reloading his pistols because Daddy Bush rushed rushed next door and beat the shit out of our neighbor, old man Iraq, and set fire to his house.

Turns out Daddy Bush had a real bad grudge about old man Iraq throwing a rock at Grandpa Bush years ago.

Turns out Daddy is best friends with the Saudi burglar, and owes him a lot of money, so he’s real polite to him.

Besides all that, we’ve had a couple of storms lately, and the basement flooded, but Daddy won’t even try to clean it up or fix the roof. He won’t go to work, either. Instead, he’s spent our grocery and Christmas and college funds buying flamethrowers and guns to shoot at old man Iraq, who keeps killing our pets if they stray outside.

We can’t even walk down the driveway anymore, so we all stay in the house, which is looking more and more like a bunker every day.

Now Daddy wants us kids to help him blow up old man Iran’s house and burn down Mrs. Syria’s rundown trailer, and bring home any food and cash in their homes.

Daddy’s announced that our family is going to be Lords of the Whole City, by scaring the hell out of everyone who lives here.

Anyway, that’s what’s gone on at our house.

So, you can understand that if Daddy Bush puts on a fresh set of clothes, shaves, brushes his teeth, and sits down to a family dinner and makes nice conversation it won’t make the slightest damned difference.

Not when all our pets are dead, we’re cold and hungry, there’s water in the basement, holes in the roof, no money in the bank, no groceries in the cupboard, smoke drifing in the windows from old man Iraq’s house, all the neighbors screaming at us from across the street, the Afghan burglar reloaded, and Christmas cancelled.

Daddy Bush can’t change our minds.

We want Daddy in jail, so we can feel safe again. All the burglars in the world aren’t half as scary as Daddy is.

Politics is described as the art of finding a parade and getting in front of it.

The only parade Bush can get in front of involves rails, tar and feathers. It’s over.

If American politicians were actually free in the coming few years to choose which parade to start, stop, steer, then yes, they will be able to grandly direct the course of Bush’s downfall. Send him and his ilk home with their wallets intact.

That won’t happen.

The parade that’s building won’t have any Boy Scouts in front of it. We want blood.

And we want our money back.

Cleaning up after Bush and the pirate GOP, during the deep economic collapse America will be facing after this winter, will create a parade of angry citizens who will not be satisfied with anything less than hanging every bastard who has had any part in creating this mess.

We want our country back, we want our money back. We want the tax cuts Bush forced on us not only reversed but repaid with interest, and we want the world’s largest military budget chopped in half.

Want to get in front of a parade?  Here’s the slogan that’s ringing across the Heartland:

“To Hell With This American Empire Crap!”

(Disassociated Press) Breaking News 7:40 PM EST  Two tom turkeys pardoned earlier today by President Bush, and given a police escort to Reagan International airport for a first-class flight to Disneyland, were unexpectedly placed on a CIA “extraordinary rendition” flight to Jordan instead.

While the White House had no official comment, one very senior administration official admitted,from the side of his mouth, on super-secret deep background, that the birds have already undergone several hours of intense interrogation while in-flight, exploring unpatriotic remarks they allegedly made about all the chickenhawks present at today’s Rose Garden ceremony.

(continued)

No effort will be made to retrieve them, as burnt feathers, deep bruising, and herniated wishbones have rendered them “unfit for display at Disneyland,” our extremely senior source said.  They join tens of thousands of other enemy combatants being held somewhere beyond civilization as we once knew it.

EXTRA EXTRA:  In keeping with the holday season, and the new American spirit of unrestrained, worldwide torture, we present below the winning entries by Ms. Lynddie Blavatsky’s fifth-graders here at P.S. 911 (Girl’s School of Goth), in Peoria, who have yet again won our annual Thanksgiving Limerick Contest this year:

I raised my own turkey this year
It’s nearly the size of a steer
It was real hard to hatch it
It’s harder to catch it
Perhaps I should try second gear . . .
    — Slender Chaos

So, you can’t stand the kitchen heat
Yet you cannot admit defeat
Well, just shout Ooo-rah!
Try some old Shock n’ Awe –
Hit that bird with some Willy Pete!
    — Rack Baby

The leaves have turned russet and gold
The weather’s turned icy and cold
My pet turkey Fred
Is lying here dead
Gawd I hate to eat something this old
    — Glitter Grrl

My father went off to Iraq
And he’s never coming back
A really neat guy
Sent to die
For Cheney and Bush and PNAC
    — Latex Life

Drive around with that bird on your fender!
Shove his wattle into the blender!
Make him stand on a pail!
Make his organs fail!
Torture makes turkey taste tender.
    — Dissin Grace

My Mom died in Baghdad last summer
Which is, like, a major bummer
Her Captain said, “Sorry
These remains are gory.
She was inside an unarmored Hummer.”
    — Sorrow Serene

Contributions to our school’s Counseling Fund are clearly needed, and gratefully accepted.

The American Senate has merrily voted to overturn the nation’s Constitution.  Yes, the very same Constitution that is the envy of the world.  The Constitution that enshrines the inalienable right of every human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And to prompt judicial review of any incarceration.  Forty-nine Senators have voted to separate these inalienable rights from hundreds of human beings, permanently denying them any hope of trial, explanation, or release.

As if it was within the power of these Senators to stand above the law and cast such a criminal vote. They make a mockery of themselves and the nation to even consider the gesture, much less carry it out.  It cannot stand except in the full breach of every fundamental law of the land.  Yet it does great harm that they have done so.  Their foppish action is a blow to civilization as well as international law.  They know not what they toy with here.
From the medieval days of the Magna Carta uncounted generations have fought and bled for this very principle that no man is above the law, that the law must apply promptly and equally to every person.  Our civilization stands upon that rock.  This is what is enshrined in the Latin legal phrase habeas corpus, commonly translated as “produce the person here in court.”

Actually, there are several versions of the phrase, which is simply lifted from the opening sentence of the common legal writ issued routinely since medieval times:  habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, “You will produce the person here in court for examination.”  Just as common was habeas corpus ad testificandum, “You will produce the person here in court to testify.”

No legal or private authority may refuse the order. To allow refusal is to shatter the rule of law throughout the nation.

Prior to this liberating standard, and perennially in opposition to it, is the doctrine of the divine right of kings and other rulers to stand above the law:  Rex solutus est a legibus, “The King is free from the laws.”

Throughout history, whether they be Popes, Presidents, dictators, or cult leaders like David Koresh, the man at the top of any political organization can hardly help but find such an arrangement exceedingly convenient and pleasant, and so very easily rationalized.  From Roman times to our own sorry situation, the assumption of divine rights above the law has proved to be the most corrosive and corrupting influence on empires and nations that has ever been brought to bear, for it rots everything instantly from within.  If one man is above the law, then all may be.  Then there is no law.

George Bush believes in the divine right of kings. He believes, as he has stated, that God told him to run for President.  He believes, as he has stated, that God told him to smite Iraq.  He believes, as he has stated, that his job would be a lot easier if he was a dictator. George Bush believes, as he has stated, that he does not need to explain himself to anyone. It is for others to explain themselves; he says he is above even self-examination.  What he says and does is right because he feels it is right.  He doesn’t do nuance, and he has surrounded himself only with people who don’t feel the need to relate to reality — they simply make a new reality every morning, and let the rest of us sort it out afterwards.

Well, the rule of law that generations of Americans have fought, bled and died for says we don’t operate that way around here, no matter what King George and his advisors may say.  That all went out the window in 1776, and no matter how many different people have tried in so many different ways to bring it back, we won’t have it in America.

George is trying again, and so these are parlous times for our Republic.  Right now, we have our American government openly pursuing, and defending, two gross violations of the common law tradition of the rule of law.  Two flagrant violations of the letter and very spirit of our Constitution.

One is George Bush’s claim that he, personally, can order the incarceration of anyone he “deems” to be an enemy combatant.  Imprison them without charges, without review, without trial, without end, without recourse.  It is in support of this divine right of King George that the American Senate has lately thrown the Constitution overboard in pursuit of petty political theater, heedless of the fact they have no right or standing to even vote on such a decree, much less give it the force of law.  That’s how hollow the institution has become under Republican piracy.

The other gross violation is the new tool in Federal law enforcement’s toolkit, the National Security Letter.  This is a private and secret permit to investigate anyone, citizen or not, to the utmost degree, in the utmost secrecy.  All sorts of data mining is available to modern investigators, from credit and bank card usage, security tapes, mortgages, tax filings, school records, emails, letters, photos, bills paid, web surfing, and even the contents of your home, your computer, your safe deposit box, and your work records. None of this information is discarded, ever, and it is illegal for anyone aware of even a bit of it to tell you that such an investigation has gone on.

Your private home, your bed, your property and your opinions are no longer private under the auspices of a National Security Letter. You may be freely burgled at any time, wiretapped, bugged, recorded and photographed, and your most private musings, writings, conversations, photos, habits and opinions may be used against you for purposes of deeming you an enemy combatant.

It is easy to see that any of a thousand offhand remarks will suffice to “deem” you an enemy of the State simply because you neither approve of nor cooperate with the State’s latest crimes or international wars.  This is, indeed, King George’s mantra:  “You are either with us, or against us.”

This is a full blown return to the two centuries of royal abuses prior to the French Revolution, when the French government, with the absentee blessings of the King, issued many thousands of lettres de cachet, or ‘letters bearing the King’s Seal.’  Like today’s National Security Letters, in most instances the French King never saw or heard of the lettres de cachet issued in his name.  They could be had for the asking by government officials; they could be purchased in blank sets by wealthy persons desiring to rid themselves of troublesome individuals as the occasion arose — simply by filling in their name on the blank spot provided, and handing the paper to the local police. The person who had troubled their composure or plans soon disappeared, permanently.

Printed up in the thousands by Gutenberg’s new invention, and sold to those wealthy enough to buy them, the letters all said the same thing.  Take such and such person to the Bastille or some other local jail, convent, nunnery, hospital or workhouse and remand them there to the permanent care of the proper authorities.  No trial, no further news, no recourse.

Like Guantanamo today, it was simply understood that there were no restraints or restrictions on the treatment of the inmate once they arrived.  After all, to never hear from them again was the ideal.

King George Bush now freely exercises his divine right to bypass centuries of established common law, upon which our nation and culture and civilization rests, and bless the issue of many thousands of such lettres de cachet, upon American citizens and citizens of nations he has ordered invaded.  Some get the full “enemy combatant” treatment, most are simply watched until the time to seize them arrives.  They are on the short list permanently, until action on their status is called for.

Because of this, the bulwark against injustice and servitude that was provided by the American Constitution is now wholly breached. The hole may appear small now, but there is nothing to prevent ever widening use of this pernicious right of King George to seize and disappear anyone who troubles his plans and aims.  He doesn’t even need to see the letters that send thousands to secret prisons around the globe.  They are simply issued in his name.  Like the Sun King in Versailles, George does not wish to be disturbed with the sordid details of his empire.

King George will receive soon enough the hard lessons that the English and French Kings were forced to receive. That no man is divine; that no man stands above the law.  Not for long.  Not in America.

The principle has nothing to do with being American or not.  The American Declaration of Independence and Constitution refer to mankind itself when it enumerates the rights of mankind.  Our founding documents do not distinguish between enemy combatants, citizens, POW’s or rebels or pirates or loyalists or horse thieves or troublesome peasants and farmers complaining about British taxes.  They refer to mankind in the broadest and most universal sense of the word, and they state without reservations that every human being has inalienable rights.  Among them is the right to prompt and full judicial review when they stand accused by anyone, of anything.

That is the law of this land, bought with patriot’s blood over and over again.

What does that make these National Security Letters?

Crimes against the Constitution.

What does that make of every Federal, State or local law enforcement official who participates in carrying out or hiding or storing information gathered under one of these National Security Letters?

A traitor to their oath of office and to the Constitution.

What does that make King George Bush as he pursues his divine right to “deem” people enemy combatants?

A traitor to his office and a traitor to the Constitution.

What does that make the forty-nine Senators who voted to deny the inalienable rights of human beings enumerated in the American Constitution to human beings held incognito in Guantanamo?

Traitors to their office and to the Constitution.

These are all high crimes and misdemeanors. These are all hanging offenses.

These Senators, these agents, this President have cast their lot with pirates and traitors, and will receive the due of pirates and traitors, at the hands of Americans.  They are living in their last days even now.  They have taken all the rope they need to hang themselves, and are busy tying their own knots.

What King George and his sycophants and agents have done is awaken yet again a sleeping giant, and when we come for each and every one of these people they will do well to tremble.

For the first oath of the free American has always been:

Don’t Tread On Me.

You have to be human to know evil. My cat, my elephant, and my peacock know nothing of the subject.

There is your garden variety human evil, the awful things people do, the things cops see every day, the daily commerce of jealousy, revenge, hatred and harm.

And then there is a special kind of human evil, a highly distilled form of evil, the blackest, blindest and most banally stupid form of evil in the entire cosmos — and that is institutional human evil.

It is human beings joining larger social organizations and then subsuming their personal will into the greater good of the organization. It is individual people doing morally repugnant things because “this thing of ours” has to survive. Grow. Succeed. Win. Profit.

It’s individual people doing what they consider to be necessary evil. Those penniless widows must be evicted or our bottom line will suffer. Those children cannot remain on Medicare or taxes will remain high. Those windfall oil profits cannot be used to pay some old person’s heating bill or civilization will collapse, and the sky will fall, too.

Every person who does something they find repugnant but necessary for the good of “this thing of ours” will predictably claim they they have no personal say in the matter. No choice. The organization they serve needs them to do this thing. It isn’t their idea or choice. Therefore even if it is evil in its effect, it’s just business, never personal.

Thus, no person is ever responsible for institutional evil, from the CEO to the clerk, from the general to the grunt. Indeed, we describe the deputies dragging penniless widows out of their shacks and hovels as good, loyal, upright family men. Stout Christian fellows all.

So were the stout Christian fellows handling Zyklon-B a few decades back. Exemplary soldiers and citizens of the Reich every one, fulfilling their duties with diligence and skill. They did not murder anyone; they merely assisted a necessary process. They merely followed orders.

Human institutions flail and fight one another. This only increases the stupid. This only increases the evil. The Serbs were right to rape and shoot Bosnians. The Bosnians were right to rape and shoot Serbs. The Iraqis are right to blow up Americans. The Americans are right to invade other countries. All because their institutions are right. Their institutions said so, and that’s good enough for the individuals taking part in them.

The walking talking point Ken Mehlman, or any of the other bobbleheads and front men for the GOP, exhibits this form of evil. If Ken were stranded alone on a desert island, he would not spin fabulous political lies all day long. That’s not him. Not his choice of how to spend his day. Without his institution to defend, he would probably turn out to be kind to other creatures, and pass his time weaving lovely baskets.

If the troops in Baghdad were not in the institutionalized murder machine they are in, they would not spend their afternoons shooting total strangers for strategic reasons they don’t pretend to understand. They’d play football and wash their cars and play with their kids. They’d build things, not burn them down and walk away.

It is both the highest form of human achievement to organize ourselves into vast cooperative endeavors like institutions, companies, nations, armies, religions — and our very worst feature as a species. Perhaps the trait that will be our end.

It takes some organization to do the truly stupid things.  It takes immense, ossified, institutionalized stupidity to produce mindlessly, endlessly appalling evil. Individuals are scarcely capable of conceiving the evils that a well organized institution can accomplish.

The moral struggle that takes place within each and every soul is not merely written larger in huge human institutions.  No.  It is banned, ignored and papered over. Individual thought, choice and will is not good for an organization, and is subsumed into institutional goals.  People must at some point become parts of the organization for the organization to function. Once the talking and planning is done, they must all become stupid parts that will reliably carry out their assigned role on time and in detail. Parts, by definition, are not human beings.

Perhaps our human institutions need something like Isaac Asimov’s Laws of Robotics — as soon as the first widow is being dragged, as soon as the first innocent family is “lit up” at an Iraqi checkpoint, as soon as we deny food, water and safety to our own citizens, the institution delivering this actual harm should be internally wired to stop in its tracks.  Be dissolved on the spot. Start over. DING! This isn’t working, folks, forget about it.

But we are not robots. If we choose to be stupid parts in an institution well, that is our choice. If we think that doing so will not result in stupidity and evil at some point, we are morons.

Serving only the good of our company, our nation, or whatever we call “this thing of ours,” is patently stupid, immoral and prone to evil, since it removes us from our direct choice and responsibility to the moment — the very things that we are here on Earth to express and experience.

Serving “this thing of ours” even as it delivers real harm to other human beings is institutional human evil. The special kind. The gold label hard stuff. Well distilled and aged.  Utterly black, blind and cold-blooded evil.

The kind you need to torture total strangers as your nine-to-five.

The kind you need to introduce kids and mothers to Willy Pete and call it a solid tactical solution.

The kind of stupid evil you get a medal for.

Oo-rah!

Some people say that public knowledge of secret American gulags and our use of banned chemical weapons in Falluja marks the final straw, the pivot point in this illegal war, and illegal Administration. It’s over.

Absolutely not.
This Administration’s longstanding war plans, their open theft of US elections, their dropping tons of white phosphorous and jellied gasoline on civilians in urban settings, their wholesale abandoning of storm struck US citizens, their seeking to exempt the CIA from torture bans, their relentless construction of a police state, and their hidden gulags all indicate clear top down directives and vast institutional organization.

Their secrecy and stonewalling on all these topics indicates a cold blooded determination to proceed, and win, at any costs. Ask yourself, what kind of people does it take to drive so hard to do all these things?  Only people who are absolutely certain of their direction can do these things.

You know, diehards. True believers. Fanatics. You know, neocons.

It’s not a political or military campaign to them.  It’s a crusade, and they are on a mission to put their America atop the world, permanently, by force.

To admit discouragement or defeat is beyond their ken, for they live and breathe in a better world than we do. A world where it is all so simple, so clear. So easy to see what must be done. What must be done at any costs.

All these revelations about their messy war and their hidden agenda becoming public knowledge does not mean it’s over. Not at all.

What it means is that there are other crimes and projects not yet in the daily papers, which they will now protect and pursue even more zealously. There are plans they will hurry into motion, lest they miss the opportunity to do so.

These people aren’t swayed by moral arguments or considerations any more than Ted Bundy was. They know absolutely that they are right, and have the absolute right to make history. They have no qualms. They also know that universal absolution and acclaim will come later, after they win a better world for one and all, under American royalty.

It is in this inspired state of mind that they are preparing to invade Syria, with a view to toppling Bashar’s regime. It is one project on their agenda of destabilizing the Middle East so that these Muslim countries do not band together against our interests.

It is in this inspired state of mind that they are preparing to bomb Iran, with a view to toppling the mullah’s regime and physically occupying Iran’s oil rich eastern province. It is one project on their agenda of destabilizing the Middle East so that these Muslim countries do not band together against our interests.

Saudi Arabia’s teeming hordes of unemployed youths will kick the House of Saud out at some point, and a radical Wahabbi regime will take their place. This Administration has military plans to invade and occupy Arabia in that event. It is one project on their agenda of dominating the Middle East so that these Muslim countries do not band together against our interests.

After the Middle East, there is Russia, China, South America, Africa. No banding together against our rule will be tolerated. No one can stand up as a nation before the great nation, America.

Even a wholesale public appraisal that ‘it’s all over’ is of no concern to the architects of this Iraq war and these other wars to come. When you’re right absolutely, you’re absolutely right — you do what must be done, and tell the public what they need to hear, no more.

At what point did Pol Pot or Hitler give up and admit it was over? Certainly not when the public was running merely 70% against them. Or 90%.

The cowboys in this Administration don’t see themselves in a fix, or hiding in the barn, or in fear of the sheriff, or of any man.

They see themselves reloading.