The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030407fa_fact1
OFFENSE AND DEFENSE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
The battle between Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.
Issue of 2003-04-07
Posted 2003-03-31
As the ground campaign against Saddam Hussein faltered last week, with attenuated supply lines and a lack of immediate reinforcements, there was anger in the Pentagon. Several senior war planners complained to me in interviews that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his inner circle of civilian advisers, who had been chiefly responsible for persuading President Bush to lead the country into war, had insisted on micromanaging the war’s operational details. Rumsfeld’s team took over crucial aspects of the day-to-day logistical planning—traditionally, an area in which the uniformed military excels—and Rumsfeld repeatedly overruled the senior Pentagon planners on the Joint Staff, the operating arm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He thought he knew better,” one senior planner said. “He was the decision-maker at every turn.”

House Joint Resolution 20

Against all odds, there were enough signatures, e-mails telegrams and phone calls within the last 24 hours to Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio to persuade him to introduce before the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. a little known resolution that deprives the President of his authority to wage war.

However, we must now persuade Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that there is a growing consensus if not a plurality to mandate the resolution for a House ballot.

Therefore, please take a moment to e-mail Speaker Hastert by simply saying, "I am in favor of introducing HJ Resolution 20 for a vote."

Speaker Hastert's e-mail: Speaker@mail.house.gov.

There is urgency This must be done NOW. Please forward to every other concerned citizen you know.

Read the text and status of HJ20 at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:h.j.20:. Of note is Rep DeFazio's support.

How To Take Back America

How To Take Back America
by Thom Hartmann

Marching in the streets is important work, but wouldn't we have greater success if we also took control of the United States government?

It's vital to point out right-wing-slanted reporting in the corporate media, but isn't it also important to seize enough political power in Washington to enforce anti-trust laws to break up media monopolies?

And how are progressives - most standing on the outside of government, looking in - to deal with oil wars, endemic corporate cronyism, slashed environmental regulations, corporate-controlled voting machines, the devastation of America's natural areas, the fouling of our air and waters, and an administration that daily gives the pharma, HMO, banking, and insurance industries whatever they want regardless of how many people are harmed?

This lack of political power is a crisis others have faced before. We should learn from their experience.

After the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964, a similar crisis faced a loose coalition of gun lovers, abortion foes, southern segregationists, Ayn Rand libertarians, proto-Moonies, and those who feared immigration within and communism without would destroy the America they loved. Each of these various groups had tried their own "direct action" tactics, from demonstrations to pamphleteering to organizing to fielding candidates. None had succeeded in gaining mainstream recognition or affecting American political processes. If anything, their efforts instead had led to their being branded as special interest or fringe groups, which further diminished their political power.

So the conservatives decided not to get angry, but to get power.

Led by Joseph Coors and a handful of other ultra-rich funders, they decided the only way to seize control of the American political agenda was to infiltrate and take over one of the two national political parties, using their own think tanks like the Coors-funded Heritage Foundation to mold public opinion along the way. Now they regularly get their spokespeople on radio and television talk shows and newscasts, and write a steady stream of daily op-ed pieces for national newspapers. They launched an aggressive takeover of Dwight Eisenhower's "moderate" Republican Party, opening up the "big tent" to invite in groups that had previously been considered on the fringe. Archconservative neo-Christians who argue the Bible should replace the Constitution even funded the startup of a corporation to manufacture computer-controlled voting machines, which are now installed across the nation. And Reverend Moon took over The Washington Times newspaper and UPI.

Their efforts, as we see today, have borne fruit, as Kevin Phillips predicted they would in his prescient 1969 book "The Emerging Republican Majority," and as David Brock so well documents in his book "Blinded By The Right."

But the sweet victory of the neoconservatives in capturing control of the Republican Party, and thus of American politics, has turned bitter in the mouths of the average American and humans around the world. Soaring deficits, the evisceration of Social Security, "voluntary" pollution controls, war for oil, stacking federal benches with right-wing ideologues, bellicose and nationalist foreign policy, and the handing over of much of the infrastructure of governance to multinational corporate campaign donors has brought a vast devastation to the nation, nearly destroyed the entrepreneurial American dream, and caused the rest of the world to view us with shock and horror.

Thus, many progressives are suggesting that it's time for concerned Americans to reclaim Thomas Jefferson's Democratic Party. It may, in fact, be our only short-term hope to avoid a final total fascistic takeover of America and a third world war.

"But wait!" say the Greens and Progressives and left-leaning Reform Party members. "The Democrats have just become weaker versions of the Republicans!"

True enough, in many cases. And it isn't working for them, because, as Democrat Harry Truman said, "When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time." (And, history shows, voters are equally uninterested in Republicans who act like Democrats.)

Alternative parties have an important place in American politics, and those in them should continue to work for their strength and vitality. They're essential as incubators of ideas and nexus points for activism. Those on the right learned this lesson well, as many groups that at times in the past had fielded their own candidates are now still intact but have also become powerful influencers of the Republican Party. Similarly, being a Green doesn't mean you can't also be a Democrat.

This is not a popular truth.

There's a long list of people who didn't like it - Teddy Roosevelt, H. Ross Perot, John Anderson, Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader - but nonetheless the American constitution was written in a way that only allows for two political parties. Whenever a third party emerges, it's guaranteed to harm the party most closely aligned to it.

This was the result of a well-intentioned accident that most Americans fail to understand when looking at the thriving third, fourth, and fifth parties of democracies such as Germany, India, or Israel. How do they do it? And why can't we have third parties here?

The reason is because in America - unlike most other modern democracies - we have regional "winner take all" types of elections, rather than proportional representation where the group with, say, 30 percent of the vote, would end up with 30 percent of the seats in government. It's a critical flaw built into our system, so well identified in Robert A. Dahl's brilliant book "How Democratic Is the American Constitution?"

When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to craft a constitution, republican democracy had never before been tried anywhere in what was known as "the civilized world." There were also, at that moment, no political parties, and "father of the Constitution" James Madison warned loudly in Federalist #10 against their ever emerging.

In part, Madison issued his warning because he knew that the system they were creating would, in the presence of political parties, rapidly become far less democratic. In the regional winner-take-all type of elections the Framers wrote into the Constitution, the loser in a two-party race - even if s/he had fully 49.9 percent of the vote - would end up with no voice whatsoever. And the combined losers in a 3- or more-party race could even be the candidates or parties whose overall position was most closely embraced by the majority of the people.

The best solution to this unfairness, in 1787, was to speak out against the formation of political parties ("factions"), as Madison did at length and in several venues. But within a decade of the Constitution's ratification, Jefferson's split with Adams had led to the emergence of two strong political parties, and the problems Madison foresaw began and are with us to this day.

This is particularly problematic in presidential elections. H. Ross Perot's participation in the 1992 election drew enough votes away from the elder George Bush that Bill Clinton won without a true majority. Similarly, Ralph Nader's participation in the 2000 election drew enough votes away from Al Gore that it was easy for the Supreme Court and Jeb Bush to deflect media notice away from Florida's illegal vote-rigging in the pre-election purging of the voter rolls and thus select George W. Bush as President.

Conservative activists recognized this inherent flaw in the electoral system of the United States and decided to do something about it, recruiting Ronald Reagan and forming his infamous "kitchen cabinet." They took over the Republican Party and then successfully seized control of the government of the United States of America. As we can see by comparing documents from the 1990s Project For A New American Century with today's war in Iraq, these once-marginalized conservative ideologues are the real power behind Bush's throne.

Liberals weren't so practically minded. Instead of funding think tanks to influence public opinion, subsidizing radio and TV talk show hosts nationwide, and working to take over the Democratic Party, many left to create their own parties while others gave up on mainstream politics altogether. The remaining Democrats were caught in the awkward position of having to try to embrace the same corporate donors as the Republicans, although they weren't anywhere near as successful as Republicans because they hadn't (and haven't) so fully sold out to corporate and wealthy interests.

We see the result in races across the nation, such as my state of Vermont. In the 2002 election for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, the people who voted for the Democratic and Progressive candidates constituted a clear majority. Nonetheless, the Republican candidates became Governor and Lieutenant Governor with 45 percent and 41 percent of the vote respectively because each had more votes than his Democratic or Progressive opponents alone. (Example: Republican Brian Dubie - 41%; Democrat Peter Shumlin - 32%; Progressive Anthony Pollina - 25%. The Republican "won.")

Similarly, Republicans have overtly used third-party participation on the left to their advantage. In a July 12, 2002 story in the Washington Post titled "GOP Figure Behind Greens Offer, N.M. Official Says," Post writer Thomas B. Edsall noted that: "The chairman of the Republican Party of New Mexico said yesterday he was approached by a GOP figure who asked him to offer the state Green Party at least $100,000 to run candidates in two contested congressional districts in an effort to divide the Democratic vote."

The Republicans well understand - and carefully use - the fact that in the American electoral system a third-party candidate will always harm the major-party candidate with whom s/he is most closely aligned.

The Australians solved this problem in the last decade by instituting nationwide instant run-off voting (IRV), a system that is making inroads in communities across the United States. There are also efforts to reform our electoral system along the lines of other democratic nations, instituting proportional representation systems such as first proposed by John Stuart Mill in 1861 and now adopted by virtually every democracy in the world except the US, Australia, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

These are good and important efforts for the long-term future of American democracy. But they won't happen in time to influence the 2004 elections, and we're facing a crisis right now. A few Democratic stalwarts survive who may oppose Bush on the national stage, but while the rest of us fixated on the war, neo-cons are creeping on cat's paws into the very heart of Jefferson's Party.

Thus, the best immediate solution to advance the progressive agenda is for progressives to join and take back the Democratic Party, in the same way conservatives seized control of the Republican Party.

After writing the first draft of this article, just as the first 2003 attack of Baghdad began, I thought about how the Democratic Party could change if most of the protesters in the streets were to join the Democratic Party and run for leadership positions in their local town or county. In short order, it could become a powerful force for progressive principles and democracy in America and the world, maybe even in time to influence the 2004 election.

So, I called the Democratic headquarters in my home state of Vermont.

"Sign me up!" I said to the startled young man who answered the phone.

"What?" he said, taken aback by my enthusiasm.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," I said, standing and waving my arm as I talked on the phone. "We have to stop the right-wingers from ripping up our constitution, despoiling our earth, and turning America into a fascist state! Sign me up!"

"Are you a Democrat?" he said.

"Can I be a progressive Democrat?"

"Sure!" he said.

"Then I'm also a Democrat now!"

He chuckled, and said. "We're getting a lot of calls like this."

He took my contact information, and gave me the name of my county's Party leader. I told him to put me on the list for future fundraising events, to let me know how and when I could run for local Party leadership, and how I could participate on a regular basis in the decision-making processes of "my" local Democratic Party.

An hour after that call, I received an email characteristic of so many I get these days.

"I've never been so depressed in my entire life," the correspondent, an attorney and longtime progressive activist wrote. "Bush is completely ignoring us. My nation, using the same rationale Germany did in the 1930s, has just gone to war against a nation that did not attack it, and my president has declared himself a military dictator. Every time we announce peace marches, they raise the 'threat level' so they can keep us away from government buildings or use force to prevent us from marching. I've lost all hope."

A few minutes later, another old friend and activist wrote that her "heart was heavy and tears came easily." A flood of other emails arrived after the publication of my most recent article on Common Dreams, and all but one expressed despair, fear, or panic.

So I've started answering them by saying:

"The nation I love is confronting a crisis no smaller than those faced by Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington: a crisis that will determine if American democracy survives to the next generation. So-called 'conservatives' are turning our government inside out, trying, as they say, 'to drown it in the bathtub,' killing off regulatory agencies, ripping up the Constitution, cutting funding to social services, and turning pollution controls over to industry. Government expenses in the trillions of dollars are being shifted from us, today, to the shoulders of our children, who will certainly have to repay the deficits Bush's so-called 'tax cuts' (which are really tax deferrals) are racking up. War is being waged in our name and without our consent.

"And, most disconcerting, the leadership of this administration is made up of blatantly profiteering CEOs, former defense industry lobbyists, and failed hack politicians so outside the mainstream that one - Ashcroft - even lost an election in his home state against a dead guy.

"Unlike most other modern democracies, our American electoral system only allows for two political parties, at least at the national level. So, given that the rich, the polluters, the paranoid, and the zealot war-mongers got to the Republicans first, we have no choice but to take back the Democratic Party, reinvigorate it, reorient it, and lead it to success in 2004. We may not be able to stop Bush now, but we sure as hell can throw him out of office next year at the ballot box."

But what, some have said in response, about the corporate-controlled media?

That was the same problem faced by the Christian Right 25 years ago, when the coverage they could get was of Tammy Faye Bakker scandals. But once they'd taken over the Republican Party, the press could no longer ignore them, and Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are now regulars on network TV.

Another person answered my now-form-email by saying, "I want to participate in producing a detailed plan for the future of America, rather than just joining a corrupt and tired-out political party."

My response was that if there were enough of us in the Democratic Party, it could become a cleaned-up and powerful activist force. It's possible: just look at how the anti-abortion and gun-nut folks took over the once-moribund Republican Party.

Another said, "But what about their rigged computer-controlled voting machines?"

My answer is that only a political party as large and resourceful as the Democrats could have the power to re-institute exit polling, and catch scams like the voter-list purges Jeb Bush used to steal the 2000 and 2002 elections for himself and his brother.

And the Democratic Party can only do it if we, in massive numbers, join it, embrace it, and ultimately gain a powerful and decisive voice in its policy-making and selection of candidates.

Thom Hartmann (e-mail: thom at thomhartmann.com) is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." www.thomhartmann.com This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

WHEN DEMOCRACY FAILED: THE WARNINGS OF HISTORY

WHEN DEMOCRACY FAILED: THE WARNINGS OF HISTORY

By Thom Hartmann Thom Hartmann's Newsletter for
March 17, 2003

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was
barely reported in the corporate media. But the
Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February
27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in
demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the
world. It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide
economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A
foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous
buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small
efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were
he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether
or not
rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the
most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels,
in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to
be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and
the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he
coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man
who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect
to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and
internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his
political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and
often inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats,
foreign leaders, and the well-educated
elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a
secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation
rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he
didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his
response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most
prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who
had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press
conference. "You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch
in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out
building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his
voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the
occasion - "a sign
from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and
its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins
to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their
religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built
in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous
terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag
was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window
display. Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's
now-popular
leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating
terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that
suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and
habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones;
suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and
without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's
homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State"
passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil
libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if
the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by
then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and
the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later
say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal
police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious
persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the
first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected
were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to
offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity
ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were
many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered
police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones
safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the
meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking,
learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions.
He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the
suggestion of a political advisor, he brought
a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a
"racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the
nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a
phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech
recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of
The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the
beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the"
homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We
are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our
nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are
violated in other nations and it makes our lives better,
it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with
the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any
international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best
interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus
withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and
then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony
Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling
elite. His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the
people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations
were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a
revival of the Christian faith across
his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his
rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns"
- God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined
that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation
were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated
administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the
nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern
ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and
various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a
single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland,
consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police,
border, and investigative agencies under a single leader. He
appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new
agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a
role in the government equal to the other major departments. His
assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist
attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices
questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising
questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the
public's recollection as his central security office began
advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about
suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names
of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio
stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and
celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and
the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by
corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't
enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing
former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high
government positions. A flood of government money poured into
corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern
ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for
wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to
acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the
nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of
Middle
Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one
corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions
to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the
state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices
of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students
had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White
Rose Society), and
leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric.

He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the
corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of
his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns
of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention
without due process or access to attorneys or family. With his number
two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to
convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was
necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious
Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the
terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was
tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they
were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a
press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of
the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the
right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across
Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a
doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide
empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying
with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader
of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military
action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous
British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike
doctrine would
bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a
lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often
do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and
replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German
corporations began to take over Austrian resources. In a speech
responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign
newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I
can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the
course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but
when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a
stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we
come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of
his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press
began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and
the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to
ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd
succeeded in splitting the nation or
weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only
"one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein
Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a
nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were
attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled
"anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were
aiding the enemies of the state by failing in t he patriotic
necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was
one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning
people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals
and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was
successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of
opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily
release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist
cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress
dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention
from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing
dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and
the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth
in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of
life. A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the
nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed
in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first
experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones
worth remembering. February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of
Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the
German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that
catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution.
By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in
which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved
and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the
world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year." Most
Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known
as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its
SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly
violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which,
while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly
desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to
the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the
National Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of
government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close
alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using
war as a tool to keep power: fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of
government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business leadership,
together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to
remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the
United States alike. Through the 1930's, however, Hitler and
Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to
power and prosperity. Germany's response was to use government to
empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals,
privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of
constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through
continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws
to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the
power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the
wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the
employer of last resort through programs to build national
infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests. To the extent
that our Constitution is still intact, the
choice is again ours.

=== Thom Hartmann lived and worked in
Germany during the 1980's, and is the author
of over a dozen books, including "Unequal
Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight."

This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but
permission is granted for reprint in print, email,
blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached:
http://www.thomhartmann.com

Ready.gov spoof

The graphics at Ready.gov inspire quite a few chuckles at
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jbc/tmp/USgovt2.htm.

Victory! SB742 Dead

According to Senator Ginny Burdick' s office SB742, died this morning in committee.

Thank you all who wrote and called!

See http://www.johnfricker.com/archives/tdc/000057.html for details of the bill.

Here's a recent Oregonian article on SB742 http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/104859720379330.xml?oregonian?lcpl

Petition for Investigation

Please read and sign this petition.
PetitionPetition.com: Investigate Rachel Corrie's Death 2

What's Happening In San Francisco

Friends,

Since Wednesday night The Battle of San Francisco has waged in the downtown district. Street demonstrators have repeatedly occupied crucial intersections along Market, Mission and other downtown streets, blocking traffic, and shutting down business as usual. Corporate news has downplayed the significance and extent of the protests. Thousands of people are in the streets for hours on end. Today International ANSWER organized a rally and march at noon, bringing together 30,000 people. Now at 6pm, splinter groups have continued to occupy intersections. Police have made over 1400 arrests and have targeted individuals and equipment. A group of police rushed and confiscated a sound system providing inspirational music to the street. Legal observers are overworked as the police circle demonstrators and tourists alike, herding them onto Muni buses in mass arrests. The level of confrontation is high and it doesn't look like it will be letting up anytime soon. Activists from Oregon, Nevada and throughout California are converging on San Francisco.

What does all this lead to? Will Mayor Brown declare a state of emergency? Will the demonstrators reclaim the streets, tearing out the pavement and plant gardens? Crippling the city does send a distinct and powerful message - the source of government power derives from the people and that legitamacy is now in question. As the protests continue, the Mayor and the fragile recession sodden economy totters. President Bush can not ignore the peace movement as it asserts that this unjust, illegal and wasteful war must end now.

Up to the minute news and street reports are available on Enemy Combatant Radio (http://sf.indymedia.org/ and relayed at http://www.radiofreeashland.org:8030/listen.pls).

CounterPunch has a lengthy report http://www.counterpunch.org/harrison03222003.html from the street.

CommonDreams reprints a report on the international peace demonstrations from Independent/UK http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0321-09.htm

Third Diplomat Resigns Over War

Third veteran US diplomat quits over Iraq war

Third veteran US diplomat quits over Iraq war Thursday, 20-Mar-2003 9:20AM Story from AFP
Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)

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WASHINGTON, March 20 (AFP) - Another veteran US diplomat has resigned from the State Department in protest over President George W. Bush's policy toward Iraq, becoming the third and the highest-ranking career foreign service officer to do so since last month, officials said Thursday.

Mary Wright, the number two at the US embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, told Secretary of State Colin Powell she was resigning because she could no longer perform her job in good conscience, the officials said.

"She was a good officer and very well respected," said one official. "We'll miss her."

In a letter to Powell, Wright, who joined the State Department 15 years ago after a 26-year stint in the army and army reserves, also said she disagreed with Bush's Mideast policy, his approach to North Korea and could not support the domestic consequences of the war on terrorism.

Conyers Tallying for Impeachment

House Representative Congressman John Conyers on the Judicial Committee is asking you to, through his legislative assistant Alexia, fax or email if you want Bush impeached.

Fax to ATTN: ALEXIA, assistant to Hon. Congressman John Conyers

The phones are currently ringing off the hook, according to Alexia, so please send a brief message stating whether you are for or against impeachment via email or fax: e mail: john.conyers@mail.house.gov OR Fax: (313) 226-2085

[FAX OR EMAIL, CAUSE PHONES ARE RINGING OFF THE HOOK]

They are NOT introducing articles of impeachment now. They are only TALLYING

Email: john.conyers@mail.house.gov OR Fax: (313) 226-2085

Red Alert is Martial Law in New Jersey

According to this story, New Jersey will declare martial law if the Department of Homeland Security escalates the terror threat to "Red".

If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home, the state's anti-terror czar says.

No word on other states yet. The Oregon State Police have some definitions and guidelines yet nothing specific. Read the definitions at http://www.osp.state.or.us/opss/.

Democracy Now on Jefferson Public Radio

As the JPR Fund Drive begins, it's a good time to let them know you want Democracy Now on the air! Please use http://www.ashland.net/MediaAction/ to send the JPR Board and Staff an email. Share the URL with your friends and let's send JPR a strong message, letting them know how much money they are missing by ignoring the progressive community.

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Oregon Senate Bill 742

Democrats:

Senator Ginny Burdick, Vice-Chair

Party: D District: 18

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1718

Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE S-317, Salem Or 97301

Email Address: sen.ginnyburdick@state.or.us

Web page Address: http://www.leg.state.or.us/burdick/

 

Senator Charlie Ringo

Party: D District: 17

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1717

Capitol Address: 900 Court St NE S-314 Salem, OR 97301

Email Address: sen.charlieringo@state.or.us

Web page Address: http://www.leg.state.or.us/ringo/

 

Senator Vicki Walker

Party: D District: 7

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1707

Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE S-210, Salem Or 97301

Email Address: sen.vickiwalker@state.or.us

Web page Address: http://www.leg.state.or.us/walker/

 

Senate Leadership:

Senate President Peter Courtney

Party: D District: 11

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1600

Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE S-203, Salem Or 97301

Email Address: sen.petercourtney@state.or.us

Web page Address: http://www.leg.state.or.us/senate/senpres

 

Senator Kate Brown, Democrat Leader

Party: D District: 21

Capitol Phone: 503-986-1700

Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE S-323, Salem Or 97301

Capitol Fax:503-986-1080

Email Address: sen.katebrown@state.or.us

Web page Address: http://www.leg.state.or.us/brown/

 

Please write or call these Senators today!

Posted by John at 09:56 AM | Comments (24) | TrackBack