posted on May 1, 2003 03:34:32 PM new
NTS,the movie is pretty much a slasher movie,I watched a few minutes of it one time before it dawned on me what it was about.
A woman was tied between two trucks and split in half.
I say my prayers everyday,without a proclamation.I dont know if Mr. Bushs supporters, pray the same things I do...
RUMSFELD
Rummy's North Korea Connection
What did Donald Rumsfeld know about ABB's deal to build nuclear reactors there? And why won't he talk about it?
FORTUNE
Monday, April 28, 2003
By Richard Behar
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rarely keeps his opinions to himself. He tends not to compromise with his enemies. And he clearly disdains the communist regime in North Korea. So it's surprising that there is no clear public record of his views on the controversial 1994 deal in which the U.S. agreed to provide North Korea with two light-water nuclear reactors in exchange for Pyongyang ending its nuclear weapons program. What's even more surprising about Rumsfeld's silence is that he sat on the board of the company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.
The company is Zurich-based engineering giant ABB, which signed the contract in early 2000, well before Rumsfeld gave up his board seat and joined the Bush administration. Rumsfeld, the only American director on the ABB board from 1990 to early 2001, has never acknowledged that he knew the company was competing for the nuclear contract. Nor could FORTUNE find any public reference to what he thought about the project. In response to questions about his role in the reactor deal, the Defense Secretary's spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told Newsweek in February that "there was no vote on this" and that her boss "does not recall it being brought before the board at any time."
Rumsfeld declined requests by FORTUNE to elaborate on his role. But ABB spokesman Bjoern Edlund has told FORTUNE that "board members were informed about this project." And other ABB officials say there is no way such a large and high-stakes project, involving complex questions of liability, would not have come to the attention of the board. "A written summary would probably have gone to the board before the deal was signed," says Robert Newman, a former president of ABB's U.S. nuclear division who spearheaded the project. "I'm sure they were aware."
FORTUNE contacted 15 ABB board members who served at the time the company was bidding for the Pyongyang contract, and all but one declined to comment. That director, who asked not to be identified, says he's convinced that ABB's chairman at the time, Percy Barnevik, told the board about the reactor project in the mid-1990s. "This was a major thing for ABB," the former director says, "and extensive political lobbying was done."
The director recalls being told that Rumsfeld was asked "to lobby in Washington" on ABB's behalf in the mid-1990s because a rival American company had complained about a foreign-owned firm getting the work. Although he couldn't provide details, Goran Lundberg, who ran ABB's power-generation business until 1995, says he's "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." Other former top executives don't recall Rumsfeld's involvement.
Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director. There is no evidence that Rumsfeld, who took a keen interest in the company's nuclear business and attended most board meetings, made his views about the project known to other ABB officials. He certainly never made them public, even though the deal was criticized by many people close to Rumsfeld, who said weapons-grade nuclear material could be extracted from light-water reactors. Paul Wolfowitz, James Lilley, and Richard Armitage, all Rumsfeld allies, are on record opposing the deal. So is former presidential candidate Bob Dole, for whom Rumsfeld served as campaign manager and chief defense advisor. And Henry Sokolski, whose think tank received funding from a foundation on whose board Rumsfeld sat, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the 1994 agreement.
One clue to Rumsfeld's views: a Heritage Foundation speech in March 1998. Although he did not mention the light-water reactors, Rumsfeld said the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea "does not end its nuclear menace; it merely postpones the reckoning, with no assurance that we will know how much bomb-capable material North Korea has." A search of numerous databases found no press references at the time, or throughout the 1990s, noting Rumsfeld was a director of the company building the reactors. And Rumsfeld didn't bring it up either.
ABB, which was already building eight nuclear reactors in South Korea, had an inside track on the $4 billion U.S.-sponsored North Korea project. The firm was told "our participation is essential," recalls Frank Murray, project manager for the reactors. (He plays the same role now at Westinghouse, which was acquired by Britain's BNFL in 1999, a year before it also bought ABB's nuclear power business.) The North Korean reactors are being primarily funded by South Korean and Japanese export-import banks and supervised by KEDO, a consortium based in New York. "It was not a matter of favoritism," says Desaix Anderson, who ran KEDO from 1997 to 2001. "It was just a practical matter."
Even so, ABB tried to keep its involvement hush-hush. In a 1995 letter from ABB to the Department of Energy obtained by FORTUNE, the firm requested authorization to release technology to the North Koreans, then asked that the seemingly innocuous one-page letter be withheld from public disclosure. "Everything was held close to the vest for some reason," says Ronald Kurtz, ABB's U.S. spokesman. "It wasn't as public as contracts of this magnitude typically are."
However discreet ABB tried to be about the project, Kurtz and other company insiders say the board had to have known about it. Newman, the former ABB executive, says a written summary of the risk review would probably have gone to Barnevik. Barnevik didn't return FORTUNE's phone calls, but Newman's Zurich-based boss, Howard Pierce, says Rumsfeld "was on the board--so I can only assume he was aware of it."
By all accounts Rumsfeld was a hands-on director. Dick Slember, who once ran ABB's global nuclear business, says Rumsfeld often called to talk about issues involving nuclear proliferation, and that it was difficult to "get him pointed in the right direction." Pierce, who recalls Rumsfeld visiting China to help ABB get nuclear contracts, says, "Once he got an idea, it was tough to change his mind. You really had to work your ass off to turn him around." Shelby Brewer, a former head of ABB's nuclear business in the U.S., recalls meetings with Rumsfeld at the division's headquarters in Connecticut. "I found him enchanting and brilliant," he says. "He would cut through Europeans' #*!@ like a hot knife through butter."
None of them could recall Rumsfeld talking about the North Korea project. But if he was keeping his opinions to himself, others were not. The Republicans attacked the deal from the start, particularly after gaining control of Congress in 1994. "The Agreed Framework was a political orphan within two weeks after its signature," says Stephen Bosworth, KEDO's first executive director and a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. It's not hard to understand why it was controversial. North Korea is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and has repeatedly violated the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Robert Gallucci, the assistant secretary of state who spearheaded the 1994 agreement, doesn't disagree, but says, "If we didn't do a deal, either we would have gone to war or they'd have over 100 nuclear weapons."
The problem, say a number of nuclear energy experts, is that it's possible, though difficult, to extract weapons-grade material from light-water reactors. "Reprocessing the stuff is not a big deal," says Victor Gilinsky, who has held senior posts at the Atomic Energy Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "You don't even need special equipment. The KEDO people ignore this. And we're still building the damn things."
Given the Republican outcry over the reactor deal, Rumsfeld's public silence is nearly deafening. "Almost any Republican was complaining about it," says Winston Lord, President Clinton's assistant secretary of state for East Asian/Pacific Affairs. Lord can't remember Rumsfeld speaking out. Nor can Frank Gaffney Jr., whose fervently anti-KEDO Center for Security Policy had ties to Rumsfeld. Gaffney speculates that Rumsfeld might have recused himself from the controversy because of his ABB position.
By 1998 a debate was raging in Washington about the initiative, and the delays were infuriating Pyongyang. Inspectors could no longer verify North Korea's nuclear material inventory. Still, at some point in 1998, ABB received its formal "invitation to bid," says Murray. Where was Rumsfeld? That year he chaired a blue-ribbon panel commissioned by Congress to examine classified data on ballistic missile threats. The commission concluded that North Korea could strike the U.S. within five years. (Weeks after the report was released, it fired a three-stage rocket over Japan.) The Rumsfeld Commission also concluded that North Korea was maintaining a nuclear weapons program--a subtle swipe at the reactor deal, which was supposed to prevent such a program. Rumsfeld's resume in the report did not mention that he was an ABB director.
In his final days in office, Clinton had been preparing a bold deal in which North Korea would give up its missile and nuclear programs in return for aid and normalized relations. But President Bush was skeptical of Pyongyang's intentions and called for a policy review in March 2001. Two months later the DOE, after consulting with Rumsfeld's Pentagon, renewed the authorization to send nuclear technology to North Korea. Groundbreaking ceremonies attended by Westinghouse and North Korean officials were held Sept. 14, 2001--three days after the worst terror attack on U.S. soil.
The Bush administration still hasn't abandoned the project. Representative Edward Markey and other Congressmen have been sending letters to Bush and Rumsfeld, asking them to pull the plug on the reactors, which Markey calls "nuclear bomb factories." Nevertheless, a concrete-pouring ceremony was held last August, and Westinghouse sponsored a training course for the North Koreans that concluded in October--shortly before Pyongyang confessed to having a secret uranium program, kicked inspectors out, and said it would start making plutonium. The Bush administration has suspended further transfers of nuclear technology, but in January it authorized $3.5 million to keep the project going.
Sooner or later, the outspoken Secretary of Defense will have to explain his silence.
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posted on May 3, 2003 04:01:19 AM new
I posted this in another thread. Fit's here too.
While thinking of President Bush's handling of the Afghanistan and Iraq situation I remembered this quote:
"Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), 'Twelfth Night'
Amen,
Jesus Love you, I think your an .......!
One of my favorite slogans,
Reverend Colin
posted on May 3, 2003 09:06:57 AM new"Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."
Step aside, I'll show thee a president": George W as Henry V?
Political commentators have been claiming Dubya as a modern-day Prince Hal since the 1990s, eager to ascribe a kingly divine right to a ruler who, from his assumption of the throne to his current crusade, lacks justification
by Scott Newstrom
Illustration by Taylor Jones
Shakespeare always has been, and will continue to be, misread and misquoted in support of any and every position. As a playwright who was himself constantly lifting quotations, sometimes verbatim, from classical and contemporary sources, he probably would be vaguely amused by this enduring phenomenon. After all, he penned the line "the devil can cite scripture for his purpose" (Merchant of Venice), and who better than Shakespeare serves as secular scripture in our world today?
Yet even within the general trend of Bardolatry (evidenced by renewed conspiracy theories, best-selling guides such as Harold Bloom's The Invention of the Human, and the now decade-and-a-half-long resurgence of movies adapting, citing or about Shakespeare), Henry V stands out in the public sphere, long amenable to propagandistic interpretations. In the United States today it enjoys an unchallenged predominance on syllabi for graduate courses in leadership and public policy -- for instance, excerpts from this play (and this play only) appear in at least five courses at The Kennedy School of Government alone.
Last year I was asked by a friend of a friend to serve as a fact-checker for an upcoming profile in Fortune magazine. A consulting company, Movers and Shakespeares, uses the Bard's plays to present "Fun, Team-Building, Executive Training, Leadership Development & Conference Entertainment based on the insights and wisdom of the Bard . . . as relevant in today's world as they were 400 years ago!" (Look closely on the Web site, and you'll find photos of Donald Rumsfeld and Cokie Roberts merrily reciting in costume.) The writer of the Fortune article wanted me to confirm a few of their claims about what Shakespeare's plays teach us.
Most of these claims were, on the whole, largely innocuous, if blandly reductive and politically conservative. The leaders of the workshops, Ken and Carol Adelman, are both Republican politicos and thus tend to read Shakespeare as a kind of proto-free-market capitalist. (Ken "Cakewalk" Adelman occasionally taught Shakespeare at George Washington University’s continuing education program, sits on the board of The Shakespeare Theatre, and, in his role as D.C. insider, currently serves as a member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board.) But what struck me the most about their take on Henry V was their loose use of the plot. Or, rather, their fabrication of it.
One of their "lessons" from Henry's victory at Agincourt was that good leaders leverage superior technology to defeat their enemies. Henry's troops used the longbow, which helped them overwhelm a vastly more numerous French force. This fact is, of course, historically true. But this technological "fact" is one that Shakespeare deliberately omitted from his narrative of Henry's victory, in order to play up the valor of the English soldiers and the glory of God -- he never even hints at the longbow's strategic import. Thus the Adelmans actually invert Shakespeare's own lesson from this play in order to justify a particular business strategy.
The Adelmans rely quite heavily on it for their corporate seminars, and understandably so: Henry makes a number of difficult executive decisions, all having to do with the management of people, in anticipation of, during, and after his expedition to reclaim France. He seeks legal and religious justification for his mission; he traps and executes traitors; he inspires his troops; he metes out justice; he consults; he negotiates; he wins. In short, if you want to be a good leader, you need to be able to "persuade like Henry V," as the handbook Say it Like Shakespeare exhorts us to do.
The historical Henry was far less appealing. Shakespeare, according to 19th-century essayist William Hazlitt, "labours hard to apologise for the actions of the king," but there are still traces of Henry's repellant character present in the play, leading many readers to sense a darker undertone to the apparent celebration of "this star of England," as the Epilogue lauds him.
If you think the business world fawns excessively over Henry, just wait until you hear what the Right does with him. Bill Bennett once introduced Margaret Thatcher with lines from the play; Dan Quayle fancied himself an underappreciated Prince Hal; Henry Hyde likened the managers of the impeachment trial to his fellow Henry's "band of brothers."
The play is, admittedly, eminently quotable, with purple passages ready-at-hand for such men who would be king as Pat Buchanan (who trumpeted the coincidence of his bid for the Reform Party nomination and St. Crispin's Day, the day of Henry's victory at Agincourt) and Phil Gramm (who likewise invoked the holiday during his exit from the 1996 Republican primaries). Does the insistence of these Republican invocations unwittingly reveal some unspeakable fantasy for monarchical government? (Is it merely accidental that every few years someone re-discovers the Bush family's royal lineage, information that has been public since the first Bush administration?)
Henry V didn't always belong exclusively to Republicans. Woodrow Wilson cited the play, with approval, as representing "the spirit of English life [which] has made comrades of us all to be a nation"; Franklin Roosevelt viewed the rousing Olivier film in a private screening; John F. Kennedy called Shakespeare "an American playwright" after a performance of some lines from Henry V at the White House. Yet Democrats aren't nearly as invested in this drama in recent years. In fact, the closest they come to it is through a pejorative association with kings preceding or following Henry V -- for instance, Jimmy Carter has been painted (literally and figuratively) as Henry VI. Some conservative commentators relished the opportunity to recite Henry IV's dying advice to his son whenever Clinton launched a missile attack:
"Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days."
Funny how these commentators pass over this same passage when calling upon Shakespeare's young prince today. For the Right has finally found the suitable subject for their Henriad-laden dreams: George W. Bush.
There were, admittedly, some half-hearted attempts to connect Bush I's victory in the Gulf with Henry V's at Agincourt; Michael Novak gushed in an April 1991 Fortune column:
Like Bush, Henry V was mocked by his foes as too weak and soft to fight. Like Bush from Aug. 2 until Mar. 2, Henry V grew in purpose and in stature from the first moments of his expedition until its bloody climax. Like Bush, Henry was fond of terms like "kind" and "gentle," but fiercely resolute for vindication of the right. Like Bush, before the battle Henry V prayed mightily . . .
But the simile is stretched far too thinly here -- no matter how uncanny the fact that Branagh's version of Henry V was reported the previous year to be one of the Bush household's favorite films, or that a PBS study guide for the same movie encouraged students to write a presidential campaign speech for Henry V, or that RAF Air Commodore Ian Macfadyen quoted the play before the initial air strikes against Iraq.
No, this is an analogy that has been seeking a referent, and the Right appears exultant in casting an appropriate actor as the Bard's hero. Whether it was the Texas governorship, the campaign for the Republican nomination, the post-election Florida debacle, or the battle over John Ashcroft (no kidding), someone was ready and eager to recall the Shakespearean analogue of the transformed wayward Prince and his martial triumph. (Once more unto the breach: an Army major general recited the Crispin's day speech to his troops before deployment in this second Gulf buildup; publishers donated copies of Henry V to U.S. military personnel as part of a revived "Armed Services Edition"; a professor at the Naval War College urged that a threatening speech of Henry's "be printed in Arabic on leaflets and dropped on Baghdad, Basra, and especially Tikrit."
Ken Adelman provides a representative instance of this yearning for W. to play this part -- this quotation comes from a 1999 Washington Magazine piece in which he casts political celebrities into (what he imagines to be) their suitable Shakespearean roles:
GEORGE W. BUSH
Henry V. A son who wishes to redeem his father's reign, Hal puts the indiscretions of his youth behind him to get serious and go straight: "Presume not that I am the thing I was, for God doth know [and] so shall the world perceive, that I have turned away my former self." The young king leads a robust and relentless campaign that ends in stunning victory. (Okay, I'm a Republican, but Henry V ruled as one, too.)
This version of the story resonates with a number of cherished American narratives, from the Prodigal Son to the (supposed) outsider who pulls himself up by his own bootstraps -- tack on the victory against impossible odds, and you've got prime Spielberg material.
And yet Shakespeare's version occurs within the narrative framework of a son who has inherited power. The dramatist thus managed to blend vertical authority with horizontal camaraderie in a way that evokes the best of both worlds, or at least effaces the worst of each. This sophisticated two-step is most palpably at work in the King's inspirational prelude to the final battle, in which he promises:
"He today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition."
In other words, despite the rigorous enforcement of hierarchical order throughout the rest of the play (including the execution of his former friend for petty theft), there is a glance here at a vaguely egalitarian "band of brothers." Perhaps this is what appeals to the Republicans the most -- the reality of aristocracy smoothed over by the rhetoric of democracy.
It was no surprise, then, to find commentators tripping over themselves to compare Bush W to Henry V (yet again) after his first major post-9/11 speech. The monotonous litany of their voices makes one wonder whether this was in fact a talking point pressed by a White House operative -- just listen to the chorus:
* "Prince Hal has become Henry V" -- Peter Robinson
* "I thought that last Friday, as Bush stood atop part of the rubble of the World Trade Center, he came as close as he ever will to delivering a St. Crispin's Day speech. That spirit and resolve carried over into the House chamber last night, and it was something to behold." -- Rich Lowry
* "George W. Bush faced Congress and the People of the United States. 'He to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile . . .' exclaims King Henry as dawn breaks over the fields of Agincourt. I do not know whether the president's speech writers study Shakespeare . . . Yet the world fell silent when he extended the call, even to the ever-so vile, to join him." -- Balint Vazsonyi
* "In Bush, the country discovered it had a young leader rising to the occasion, an easy-going Prince Hal transformed by instinct and circumstance into a warrior King Henry." -- Chris Matthews
* "But I also think, I've used the line before, I know, that it's a little bit like, you know, Prince Hal becoming Henry V." -- Jeff Greenfield (to whom the host replied: "Jeff, I love when you draw Shakespearian analogies. That really makes it easy for me."
* ". . . when trouble hit, how rapidly we left behind the pages of Henry the 4th and suddenly we seem to be into the pages of Henry the 5th. There had been a transformation as young George W. Bush stepped up to. Now, to be sure, he has not won his Agincourt, but he has set sail, and for that the country can be grateful." -- David Gergen, who, despite the garbled syntax of the preceding assertion, seems to have successfully fashioned himself an expert on the Bush/Henry link.
One can almost hear the stirring chords of the "Non Nobis, Domine" hymn from Branagh's post-battle tracking shot as the pundits repetitively chime in with their Shakespearean allusions.
Not that Bush's opponents couldn't also find comparisons. Consider Hazlitt’s characterization of Henry:
"He was fond of war and low company: -- we know little else of him. He was careless, dissolute, and ambitious; -- idle, or doing mischief. In private, he seemed to have no idea of the common decencies of life, which he subjected to a kind of regal licence; in public affairs, he seemed to have no idea of any rule of right or wrong, but brute force, glossed over with a little religious hypocrisy and archiepiscopal advice. . . . Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France. Because he did not know how to exercise the enormous power, which had just dropped into his hands, to any one good purpose, he immediately undertook (a cheap and obvious resource of sovereignty) to do all the mischief he could."
The audience for this supposedly self-evident connection is not someone who has read the play; rather, it is someone who hasn't, but trusts the cultural authority of Shakespeare
Some readers of the play ("we happy few," as Henry would say) have pointed out the numerous weaknesses, and disturbing echoes, in the Right-wing version of this analogy, even going so far as to call it claptrap. Major elements of the story glossed over include: the fact that the newly crowned Henry overtly rejects his cronies from his ne'er-do-well youth; the fact that Henry rather awkwardly effaces his responsibility for civilian deaths; the fact that the momentary triumph over France soon resulted in a generation's worth of making "England bleed," with carnage abroad as well as at home in civil wars; the fact that Hal informs us early in Henry IV, part I that he is deliberately misbehaving (few would claim Dubya's youthful hijinks to be part of a visionary plan of redemption -- although, as Mark Crispin Miller has argued, "it suits a politician to have everybody thinking he's a dunce" . . .
But no bother. The audience for this supposedly self-evident connection, I would argue, is not someone who has read the play; rather, it is someone who hasn't, but trusts the cultural authority of Shakespeare. We are thus lulled into recognizing Bush's supposed nobility. Moreover, the precise moment of George/Hal's maturation is usefully malleable, as it has been played and replayed incessantly for half a decade; its most recent occasions include the war in Afghanistan, the announcement of a new preemptive military doctrine, and Bush's address to the United Nations. Even stage directors seem eager to reinforce the reciprocal dynamic between Bush and Henry, with more than one theater company producing Henry V in response to current events. Analogies between Iraq and 'Agincourt' have, inevitably, resulted from Bush's current foreign quarrels. (They might not be so far off the mark, with Republican bumper stickers and buttons proclaiming the slogan "First Iraq, Then France."
What remains most galling about the loaded way in which the right insists upon the W/V connection is how deeply reactionary it is. The reductive reading of Shakespeare and the reductive reading of history are both lamentable, but perhaps inevitable in a sound-bite world. What isn't inevitable is the conclusion of these readings: that we should celebrate the Bush presidency on account of some rather tenuous (and by no means unproblematic) similarities to a fictionalized king. This is using a cultural authority (Shakespeare) to bolster a political authority (the Bush regime) which, from its inception, has been short on, and even defiant of, the authority necessary to lead a democracy: the consent of the majority of the people.
The right-wing's monarchical take on Henry V contrasts sharply with the response to an 1808 Philadelphia performance of the play. After Henry's declaration "I thought upon one pair of English legs did march three Frenchmen," the audience rioted, because the line "was interpreted as propaganda in favor of aristocratic England against revolutionary France," according to Lawrence Levine's account in his book Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.
It would be an understatement to say that the United States of America, from its origins, has had a peculiar relationship to the institution of monarchy; some still want it back. (It seems uncannily appropriate, in this context, that Tocqueville first read Henry V in a frontier log cabin.) We don't, of course, have anything like an official system of hereditary aristocracy in the United States, and having the son of a president become president is obviously not without precedent, so to speak (these would be Adams family values -- John Quincy, as it happens, considered himself a critic of Shakespearean performance.)
Yet there was surprisingly little conversation about Bush's rather advantageous familial circumstances during the 2000 campaign. (As the host of Saturday Night Live just before the Inauguration, Charlie Sheen was asked if he would ever play the role of president, as does his father Martin Sheen; in response, he quipped "I could never be the president. Think about it. I've abused cocaine, I've been arrested, I'm not a very smart guy. It's a big joke to think people would want someone like me just because his dad was president."
For the first half century of our independence from Great Britain, there were occasional movements calling for an elective king, but never a king who could hand his title to his son. If anything, in 1776 Americans were so dismayed by King George III's behavior that, according to historian Forrest McDonald, "they established almost no executive branches at all. The Congress of the Confederation had no executive arm . . . mistrust lingered, as is attested by the fact that a quarter to a third of the delegates [at the 1787 Constitutional Convention] supported a plural executive."
While the Constitution does admit an executive branch with limitations and checks, it explicitly states that "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States" (Article 1, Section 9). Yet the inertia of social institutions is extraordinarily difficult to redirect. George Washington himself was taken with the symbols of kingship, preferring the title 'His High Mightiness' and employing kingly iconography in his public appearances. Given this early American history of infatuation with regal trappings, maybe we shouldn't be all that surprised that there are some today who would favor thinking of the Bush family as a kind of dynasty, and that these royalists are thus understandably elated by the resonances with King Henry's story.
Henry V need not only be read as the affirmation of repressive authority. The play was a favorite of a member of that Democratic aristocracy, Robert Kennedy. RFK once quoted the play not in the context of bolstering elitist sentiment, but rather in the more ambiguous setting of a debate with his advisers regarding legislation "to feed hungry children in the South," as Robert Coles has related. Kennedy's allusion to Henry V required interpretation rather than reinforcement of a pre-given mindset; his allusion demanded contemplation of what Coles has termed "moral leadership" rather than smug complacency. In other words, there was a time, not so long ago, when politicians themselves actually read Henry V with some sophistication beyond crass self-promotion. When exactly did we become resigned to leaving the interpretation of Shakespeare's political significance to reactionary pundits and consultants?
When Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of "our preposterous use of books," he was referring disdainfully to someone who "knew not what to do, so he read." We have the inverse at work in the Bush/Henry connection -- the preposterous use of Shakespeare by those who have read the play (badly), bullying an audience unfamiliar with Henry V into conceding the connection. It is no small irony that this audience likely includes the president himself.
Scott Newstrom is currently a visiting assistant professor of English at Amherst College. In the fall he will be an assistant professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College.
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posted on May 4, 2003 07:09:08 AM new
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A mean-spirited America
Today, I fear my own government more than I do terrorists
By Jill Nelson
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
NEW YORK, May 2 — These days, a sense of apprehension and foreboding lurks in the back of my head and the pit of my stomach. It’s a gut-wrenching reminder that something very bad has happened and is about to happen anew. It is an anticipation of the next insult and injury in an America that has been defined under the Bush administration by a profound meanness of spirit.
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THE EVIDENCE OF this overwhelming meanness of spirit is everywhere, abroad and at home. Even the administration’s efforts to justify the war in Iraq as one of liberation and declare victory cannot mask the human costs to American troops and their families. How many thousands of Iraqis are dead? Where are the ridiculously named “weapons of mass destruction” that Bush used to justify this invasion? Witness the looting of priceless antiquities, kitsch and cash from Iraqi museums and Saddam Hussein’s palaces and homes, allowed and participated in not only by Iraqis but members of the American armed forces and their “embedfellows,” the media.
Yet to question this war and its aftermath is characterized as at worst treason and at best anti-American cynicism. And woe unto those who criticize Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root and the rest of the corporate sponsors of the Bush administration as they line up at the trough of government contracts to rebuild Iraq and control its oil. Now, the armed forces in Iraq have turned to shooting Iraqi demonstrators, the very people they supposedly came to “liberate” with democracy.
UNDER SIEGE AT HOME
Here on the home front, our e-mail communications, bookstore purchases, and even our public library withdrawals are open to government surveillance. The attorney general lengthens the arm of government repression every day, seeking the right to revoke an American’s citizenship if he alone decides their words or deeds fall within his definition of treason. Slowly chipping away at our civil and democratic rights.
The Internal Revenue Service announces that it will scrutinize the returns of the poorest taxpayers, those claiming the earned income tax credit. This is a credit offered to taxpayers who earn under $35,000 for a family of four, and it averages less than $2000. The Bush administration wants to spend $100 million to go after these working-poor Americans in search of fraud rather than concentrate on corporations who, according to some estimates, defraud the government by tens of billions of dollars every year.
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And what of the move in many states to curtail or severely cut back Medicaid benefits to the 50 million people that program currently insures, a move that will result in the loss of insurance, cuts in benefits, and an increasingly unhealthy population? And unemployment, and the awful school system, and systemic poverty, and gun violence? The list goes on.
This as President Bush crisscrosses the country like a snake-oil salesman in an effort to sell his tax-cut program, one that will again reward the wealthiest Americans and increase the tax burden on the poor and middle class. This after already pushing through a tax cut two years ago that failed to stimulate the economy but succeeded in resurrecting a deficit that, at the end of the Clinton administration a year before, was a surplus.
LIVING IN FEAR
I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am afraid of.
Meanwhile, here in our great democracy, Americans go along with the program or remain silent, too afraid of the Muslim bogeymen thousands of miles away to recognize the Christian ones in our midst. Fearful that we will be verbally attacked, or shunned, or lose our livelihoods if we dare question the meanness that characterizes our government and, increasingly, defines our national character.
I do not feel safer now than I did six, or 12, or 24 months ago. In fact, I feel far more vulnerable and frightened than I ever have in my 50 years on the planet. It is the United States government I am afraid of. In less than two years the Bush administration has used the attacks of 9/11 to manipulate our fear of terrorism and desire for revenge into a blank check to blatantly pursue imperialist objectives internationally and to begin the rollback of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and most of the advances of the 20th century.
RECIPE FOR CHANGE
It is none too early to begin organizing for the 2004 elections. Each of us must take a hard look at the changes that have been wrought by this administration internationally and domestically and ask ourselves: Is this the democracy we cherish? We must hold our elected officials accountable and make them take a stand against what increasingly looks like fascism. If they will not, we must vote them out of office.
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• Michael Rogers: Practical Futurist
• Will Femia: Weblog Central
Three years ago, before the bloodless coup d’etat that made George W. Bush president, America was a far-from-perfect nation. Yet there was the possibility, almost gone now, that our country might evolve into a place that lived up to its loftiest democratic rhetoric. Today, I live in an America that makes my stomach hurt and fills me with terror. A nation run by greedy, frightened, violent bullies. It is time to take our country back before it is too late.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jill Nelson is a journalist, teacher and author. She is a regular contributor to MSNBC.com.
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posted on May 4, 2003 12:25:00 PM new
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Bush's role in state fiscal crises
By Robert Kuttner, 4/30/2003
HE STATES ARE facing their worst budget crisis since the Great Depression. They face a collective deficit of about $100 billion during the coming months, a gap that must be closed by cuts in public services, hikes in taxes, or both. Two things are remarkable about this crisis. First, the national government, which is substantially implicated, is getting away almost scot-free. The fallout is hitting mainly governors, mayors, and state legislators, while the cuts are hitting citizens. Washington is AWOL.
Second, the cause of the state fiscal crisis is widely misunderstood. To read the conservative press, you would think that states had gone on a spending spree in the 1990s. One of Bush's close allies, conservative political strategist Grover Norquist, has positively gloated about the states' plight. ''I hope a state goes bankrupt,'' he told The New York Times, suggesting an object lesson to other states to rein in their big-spending ways.
This conservative claim is malarkey. During the 1990s, state spending adjusted for inflation and population was basically flat. The slight net state spending increase over a decade -- from 8.0 percent to 8.4 percent of personal income -- was more than accounted for by net cuts in federal aid and state increases in Medicaid costs. Other net outlay declined.
States didn't increase Medicaid services. Rather, Medicaid costs went through the roof. Medicaid pays for nursing home care, and the population is aging. Medicaid underwrites basic health care for the poor at a time when low-wage jobs don't provide health coverage. Medicaid costs have increased by about 50 percent since 1997 alone.
The other two causes of the state fiscal crisis are the current economic downturn and the foolish decisions promoted by conservative politicians during the boom years to legislate permanent cuts in state taxes.
If, like Grover Norquist and George W. Bush, you want to plunder public services, starving government is clever policy. But if you want states and cities to deliver the usual services that voters want, it is not smart to shred the tax base. However, between 1996 and 2001, states legislated permanent cuts in their tax codes of some $40 billion a year.
The states, unlike the federal government, cannot print money. Every state but one (the exception is Vermont) is constitutionally prohibited from borrowing to cover current deficits. So recessions mean cuts in services -- just when demands for services increase.
In past state fiscal crises Washington has helped in a variety of ways -- with emergency revenue sharing, extended unemployment benefits, public works projects, and increased aid to specific sectors such as education and health. This time, Washington -- which is to say George W. Bush -- has made things worse for the states in several respects.
For starters, the president is cutting federal domestic spending, much of which goes through the states. Most governors are begging Washington for additional aid, but the Bush administration would rather use federal resources for more tax cuts.
The Bush tax cuts of 2001, in addition to diverting needed federal revenue, cost the states some $10 billion a year in lost state tax receipts because of the linkage of state and federal tax systems. (Some states have acted to delink their tax system from the federal one; that will stanch this particular revenue hemorrhage but complicate tax filings.)
Further, the Bush administration has imposed extensive new costs on states without providing the funds. The most burdensome of these is Bush's mistitled No Child Left Behind Act, which imposes new standards on the states and mandates higher test scores as a condition of federal education aid but actually cuts by several billion dollars the funds needed to upgrade teaching.
For years, conservative Republicans railed against ''unfunded mandates'' -- costs imposed on states and localities by Washington absent the money to carry them out. George W. Bush, oddly, is emerging as the king of unfunded mandates.
One can also fault Bush's failure to address the structural crisis of the health system, which is the larger cause of the Medicaid budget disaster.
The man leads a charmed life. He sits in Washington, crowing about the benefits of his tax and spending cuts as if states were part of another planet. Meanwhile, governors, legislators, mayors, and local officials joust with one another over brutal choices that shouldn't have to be made -- shall we reduce child care or cut aid to the mentally ill? Gut what's left of housing assistance or close schools?
The Bush administration bears the responsibility for much of this, and George W. Bush needs to be held accountable.
Robert Kuttner's is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
Adrienne Warren had just gotten out of San Francisco General Hospital's psychiatric treatment center. She had a plane ticket and a destination -- her childhood home in Bangor, Maine.
What the 39-year-old artist, who suffers from paranoia and delusions, didn't have was anyone in Maine who wanted her. Now she's back in the city, the treatment center locked to her, with no place to call home.
Warren was discharged two weeks ago from the center, which has come under fire recently for rushing patients out the door in order to empty the building and dismantle its program -- a cost-cutting move by city health officials.
She headed to Maine, thinking she could do a little writing in the comfort of her family's wood-frame home.
Her arrival in Bangor took her family -- an uncle and grandmother -- by surprise. They hadn't seen her in 20 years. They said they couldn't afford to support her. They told her she wasn't welcome.
But then, they didn't know she was mentally ill.
Warren fled early the next morning to the bus station, where she bought a ticket to San Francisco. She arrived several days later.
Warren headed back to the only home she had known for the past year -- a brick building known as the Mental Health Rehabilitation Facility, on the grounds of San Francisco General Hospital.
But its staff had to turn her away.
Warren, whose hazel eyes are framed by strawberry blond hair, sat down on the curb in front of the facility, three small suitcases at her side.
"What am I going to do?" she asked in a trembling voice.
CAN'T GO BACK TO CENTER
One thing she cannot do is move back into the treatment center, which is not accepting new patients. The city has proposed closing the program by June 30 and converting the building into a residence for mentally ill people who don't need around-the-clock care.
Liz Gray, who oversees patient placement for the Community Behavioral Health Sciences division of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, defended the decision to discharge Warren.
"She was functional," Gray said. "We had been in contact with the family and other agencies in the state."
But Wally Warren, Adrienne's 57-year-old uncle in Bangor, said he had never talked to anyone from the treatment center. He said his niece simply appeared "out of the blue."
He was angry with his niece, he said later. He hadn't seen her in 20 years, and he wasn't happy to hear she planned to move back into the family home where he cares for his elderly mother.
"I told her I couldn't stay in the same house with her," he said.
But Wally Warren didn't know his niece was mentally ill. He didn't know she had spent the last year in a locked treatment center for people with severe mental illnesses.
He didn't know that the story she told him -- about enduring months of harassment, surveillance and death threats by a drug dealer in her Tenderloin neighborhood -- ended with her setting her apartment on fire.
UNCLE UNAWARE OF TROUBLES
"Boy, oh boy," he said. "I had no idea."
He had known nothing of her life -- or her troubles -- in San Francisco.
"I feel guilty that I instigated her going back out there to San Francisco, " he said.
But Wally Warren said his family in Maine has its own share of problems.
"I don't think my mother can go back into the role of caregiver," he said. "She is 88 years old. She is living out the last days of her life. So it would have fallen on me to do it. And I couldn't do it -- emotionally or economically."
He said his niece is one of three children abandoned by their parents some 30 years ago, and she was the one who suffered the most.
She became the "lost daughter" of the family. Until she reappeared last month.
Wally Warren, a sculptor who works in a cabin north of Bangor, said she left a note on the kitchen table when she fled the family home.
"When I was a child, how I envied Etienne and Joshua (her cousins) having a father they could touch," she wrote in blue-green iridescent ink. "I remember your woodsmoke and laughter, hands that created such colorful whimsy. I will always love you for these memories. I will always love Nanna (her grandmother) for the stories she gave me."
She also left a set of color photographs of her recent paintings with the note, which ended with an apology.
'SORRY FOR CAUSING YOU PAIN'
"I hope you find your laughter back," she wrote. "I am sorry for causing you pain, disturbing your peace. It was not my intention. I will not disturb you again. Perhaps that is why I came back, to say goodbye."
When Warren returned to San Francisco a week ago, she found out she couldn't move back into the treatment center. But they did let her sit down in the lobby for a few minutes.
Sitting on a couch, Warren took a sheaf of papers from her black shoulder bag. It was a 30-page, typewritten story, titled "Drinking Tea With An Empty Cup." In the prologue, she wrote:
"Ok, so you're probably not going to believe me. Well I knew that. I tell you all my life I've been called insane and worse. Used to upset me, now I find people's persistent belief in my insanity amusing. Just another sign of my madness, I suppose. The account of events I'm going to tell you here is true but you may think of it as a fiction if you like."
It is the story of a solitary artist besieged by death threats from drug dealers who have installed cameras in her ceiling, listening devices in her walls and a device that whirrs beneath her floor.
It is the story of a woman who hides in the basement for hours, terrified of the three men who are pursuing her with guns.
And finally, it is the story of a woman who decides that her only viable option "to get out alive" is to set her apartment on fire.
BACK IN S.F. WITH $10
When Warren returned to San Francisco with only $10 in her pocket, a staff member at the treatment center found her a temporary bed in a shelter.
He gave her the phone number of a crisis clinic she could contact to get back in the bureaucratic queue for future psychiatric care.
He called a cab and reached into his own pocket for the fare.
Warren loaded her vintage luggage -- one she had whimsically decorated with Dr. Seuss characters -- into a white Luxor van.
The cab driver dropped her off at a South of Market shelter.
But Warren never checked in.
A couple days later, she turned up at the front door of the treatment center again, hungry, sleep-deprived, shivering, sunburned.
Someone let her inside. Someone wrapped her in a blanket and made a cup of tea. Someone called the hospital police, who escorted her out of the building and offered to take her to the psychiatric emergency room.
Recently, she checked into a cheap Mission District hotel.
Published May 2, 2003 ECON03
WASHINGTON -- The nation's unemployment rate swelled to 6 percent in April, returning to an eight-year high as employers slashed payrolls even deeper. The ailing economy has lost a half million jobs in three months.
The rate was up two-tenths of a percentage point from March, with payrolls falling by 48,000, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The bottom line: Employers are handing out pink slips, not job offers, and that's not likely to change soon.
``For those who are out of work, finding a job is getting tougher,'' said David Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch.
April's job losses were the third in a row, which never occurs outside of recessions, he said, adding that ``we now have such a case.'' Job cuts were concentrated in manufacturing, airlines and retail.
A separate report based on the previous month was more positive for the nation's factories. Orders rose 2.2 percent in March, an improvement over the 1.0 percent decline registered in February and the largest gain in eight months, the Commerce Department said.
Wall Street reacted favorably to that report and was unfazed by the jump in the unemployment rate. The Nasdaq closed up 30 points to post its best finish in 10 months. The Dow Jones industrials climbed 128 points.
In April, the number of unemployed workers surged to 8.8 million, with almost 2 million without jobs for 27 weeks or more. The average duration of unemployment shot up to 19.6 weeks - a 20-year high.
``There's just no denying that these are an awful set of job figures for April,'' said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics in Cleveland.
The unemployment rate last hit 6 percent in December, but it has hovered just below that mark for more than a year. The last time it was higher was in July 1994, when it reached 6.1 percent as the country was emerging from the previous recession.
Now that the Iraq war is over, modest hiring could resume, Mayland said. Some recent positive economic signs include lower gasoline prices, an improved stock market and elevated consumer confidence.
The report underscores the challenges facing President Bush as he turns his attention to domestic matters and a re-election campaign.
Democrats say Bush, like his father, is politically vulnerable on the economy. Some criticized his prime time speech Thursday night from the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying he should spend more energy on getting Americans back to work.
``As thrilling as it was for our troops on the Lincoln to see President Bush land on deck to welcome them home, millions of Americans back on dry land are wondering how they can land a job,'' said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. He said the patience of jobless workers is being worn thin by Bush's ``flights from reality.''
Bush wants Congress to pass at least $550 billion in tax cuts, including slashing taxes on corporate dividends, as a way to jump start the economy.
Even if it passes, unemployment could continue to climb through the summer because any improvements in the economy would take time to trickle down into hiring.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, traveling with Bush in California, said, ``Unemployment is a lagging indicator, and Congress must not lag in its responsibility to pass his job and growth package.''
But support for the package is tepid, and Democrats say a better way to stimulate the economy is to extend unemployment benefits a second time. The current extension expires at the end of the month, which will cut off benefits for millions of jobless workers.
April's jobless rate increase was caused in part by 680,000 people returning to the labor force. The ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq boosted Americans' confidence, sending many unemployed people back out to look for work. But their searches yielded little results because the economy wasn't healthy enough to create new jobs.
Even before the war, businesses were wary about making big spending and hiring commitments in a struggling economy.
``We're still bleeding, but the hemorrhaging has stopped,'' said Bill Cheney, chief economist with John Hancock Financial Services.
Job losses slowed last month, compared with cuts of 124,000 in March and 353,000 in February. Also encouraging was that the losses were not widespread, Cheney said.
The data were ``a little bit more reassuring than it looked on the face of it. It was almost a relief,'' he said.
The Federal Reserve likely will continue to hold the federal funds interest rate, its main tool to influence economic activity, at 1.25 percent, a 41-year-low, when it meets next week, analysts said.
A healthy economy typically adds 200,000 to 250,000 new jobs each month, Mayland said. It could be a long time before those days return.
posted on May 4, 2003 02:22:22 PM new
Its totally insane,that Americas have lost "everything" in just the last two years.
What a plan!.Destroy the economy,the jobs,all the savings plans,stock market investors,destroy all State funding for the poor,and mentally ill.And in the middle of it all start a war and throw out funds we dont have...Oh yeah...this is from a genius
decision.
posted on May 4, 2003 06:40:52 PM new
After reading all of the posts in this thread, I'm now convinced that America is a failure and I joined the socialist party. Thank you for enlightening me, comrades!
posted on May 4, 2003 06:54:47 PM new
What a courageous guy! I really like the kind of guy who can say what he means in a straightforward way without using inuendo to cast aspersions in an indirect and cowardly manner.
posted on May 4, 2003 08:17:50 PM new
Helen,I give ebayauctionguy a year,maybe less,when reality slaps him upside the head.
It will affect those around him as well.
posted on May 4, 2003 08:25:54 PM new
Thanks Roadsmith.Some of us dont wear blinders.Republican party members are "in fighting",so its not a matter of who is in charge and what party.
Patriot Raid
Jason Halperin
t r u t h o u t | Report
Saturday 03 May 2003
A month ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.
That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.
We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.
"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.
I hesitated, lost in my own panic.
"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.
I complied and looked around at the other patrons. There were eight men including the waiter, all of South Asian descent and ranging in age from late-teens to senior citizen. One of the policemen pointed his gun point-blank in the face of the waiter and shouted: "Is there anyone else in the restaurant?" The waiter, terrified, gestured to the kitchen.
The police placed their fingers on the triggers of their guns and kicked open the kitchen doors. Shouts emanated from the kitchen and a few seconds later five Hispanic men were made to crawl out on their hands and knees, guns pointed at them.
After patting us all down, the five officers seated us at two tables. As they continued to kick open doors to closets and bathrooms with their fingers glued to their triggers, no less than ten officers in suits emerged from the stairwell. Most of them sat in the back of the restaurant typing on their laptop computers. Two of them walked over to our table and identified themselves as officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.
I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were being held. We were told by the INS agent that we would be released once they had confirmation that we had no outstanding warrants and our immigration status was OK'd.
In pre-9/11 America, the legality of this would have been questionable. After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."
"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.
"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation."
The USA PATRIOT Act was passed into law on October 26, 2001 in order to facilitate the post 9/11 crackdown on terrorism (the name is actually an acronym: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act." Like most Americans, I did not recognize the extent to which this bill foregoes our civil liberties. Among the unprecedented rights it grants to the federal government are the right to wiretap without warrant, and the right to detain without warrant. As I quickly discovered, the right to an attorney has been seemingly fudged as well.
When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month."
We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead."
We remained seated. Our IDs were taken, and brought to the officers with laptops. I was questioned over the fact that my license was out of state, and asked if I had "something to hide." The police continued to hassle the kitchen workers, demanding licenses and dates of birth. One of the kitchen workers was shaking hysterically and kept providing the day's date -- March 20, 2003, over and over.
As I continued to press for legal counsel, a female officer who had been busy typing on her laptop in the front of the restaurant, walked over and put her finger in my face. "We are at war, we are at war and this is for your safety," she exclaimed. As she walked away from the table, she continued to repeat it to herself? "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this."
I most certainly understand that we are at war. I also understand that the freedoms afforded to all of us in the Constitution were meant specifically for times like these. Our freedoms were carved out during times of strife by people who were facing brutal injustices, and were intended specifically so that this nation would behave differently in such times. If our freedoms crumble exactly when they are needed most, then they were really never freedoms at all.
After an hour and a half the INS agent walked back over and handed Asher and me our licenses. A policeman took us by the arm and escorted us out of the building. Before stepping out to the street, the INS agent apologized. He explained, in a low voice, that they did not think the two of us were in the restaurant. Several of the other patrons, though of South Asian descent, were in fact U.S. citizens. There were four taxi drivers, two students, one newspaper salesman -- unwitting customers, just like Asher and me. I doubt, though, they received any apologies from the INS or the Department of Homeland Security.
Nor have the over 600 people of South Asian descent currently being held without charge by the Federal government. Apparently, this type of treatment is acceptable. One of the taxi drivers, a U.S. citizen, spoke to me during the interrogation. "Please stop talking to them," he urged. "I have been through this before. Please do whatever they say. Please for our sake."
Three days later I phoned the restaurant to discover what happened. The owner was nervous and embarrassed and obviously did not want to talk about it. But I managed to ascertain that the whole thing had been one giant mistake. A mistake. Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU a perfectly legal one, thanks to the Patriot Act.
The Patriot Act is just the first phase of the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. From the Justice Department has emerged a draft of the Domestic Securities Enhancement Act, also known as Patriot II. Among other things, this act would allow the Justice Department to detain anyone, anytime, secretly and indefinitely. It would also make it a crime to reveal the identity or even existence of such a detainee.
Every American citizen, whether they support the current war or not, should be alarmed by the speed and facility with which these changes to our fundamental rights are taking place. And all of those who thought that these laws would never affect them, who thought that the Patriot Act only applied to the guilty, should heed this story as a wake-up call. Please learn from my experience. We are all vulnerable so speak out and organize, our Fourth Amendment rights depend upon it.
Jason Halperin lives in New York City and works at Doctors Without Borders/Medicins San Frontieres. If you are moved by this account, he asks that you consider donating to your local ACLU chapter.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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posted on May 6, 2003 12:58:09 PM new
I'm still plugging through it all Roadsmith, but I agree with you! Junque's postings are always such an asset here. You're a gift junque.
posted on May 6, 2003 03:55:54 PM new
No hymn to our new Big Brother would be complete without mention of dear Little Brother, aka "The smart one." Introducing my own state's personal millstone: Jeb Bush.
By this time next month, the state of Florida will have close to a $2 billion operating deficit. Funding for medical care for sick kids, public schools and cultural activities will have been slashed. Blame the entire affair on Gov. Jeb and his pet whackadoo, House Speaker Johnnie Byrd. (Not sure if Byrd is a greater crested or lesser crested whackadoo, but he's a strange Byrd, no doubt.)
