Posts filed under 'FICTIONAL FREEDOM'
October 22nd, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
It is clearly time that folks woke up regarding military contractors. If you missed Bill Moyers interview with Jeremy Scahill, I strongly encourage you to watch it. It is online in two parts on Moyers website at PBS. Scahill has written extensively on Blackwater - most recently publishing .
In the interview, Scahill rightly points out that the Bush administration did not start the privatization (corporatization) of the military. Further, that while Cheney went to a highly profitable CEO position at Halliburton, it was under Clinton that the Halliburton contracting mushroomed:
But let’s, let’s remember here we’re talking about Blackwater right now because we have a Republican administration. For so many years, we had a Republican dominated Congress. Blackwater is certainly the beneficiary of the– the Republican monopoly in government. But this system has been bi-partisan for a very long time. When Hillary Clinton’s husband was in the White House, he was an aggressive supporter of the privatization of the war machine. Bill Clinton used mercenary forces in the Balkans. Who do we think gave Dick Cheney’s company all of those contracts during the Nineties? We talk about Halliburton. It was Clinton. It was the Clinton administration. And and, Blackwater may be a– an extraordinary Republican company. But they’re gonna be around when there’s a Democrat in office.
These so-called “peace and security” corporations are doing more than making a fat profit out of the contracting from the “war on terrorism.” These billions are being used to expand their infrastructure and reach. Some, like Blackwater, now have full scale private militaries which are larger than some nation’s militaries. So these companies may be hired by a government - or by another corporation - as a military force. In other words, what has been created, and what is rapidly growing, are standing corporate armies. That should make people across the political spectrum very nervous.
There are three books that I encourage everyone to read:
;
;
.
Scahill is not the only one writing about Blackwater and corporate militaries. Naomi Klein discusses them in relationship to disaster capitalism in her book “Shock Doctrine.” R. J. Hillhouse talks about them (fictionally) in “Outsourced.” Hillhouse also has a site The Spy Who Billed Me, and is (in part) a journalist tied into the intelligence community.
Taken together, these three books present a chilling vision of the present, and even more so of the future. While not the total focus of her book, Klein discusses the role of mercenary forces in enforcing and extending the policies implemented under the economic shock doctrine. The premise of this economic approach is to create, or take advantage of “disaster” to implement the privatization of social functions (education, public resources, critical infrastructure), and the role of militaries and police forces (including corporatized ones) in controlling a panicked (or angry) public. She talks about the presence of Blackwater in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina - as does Scahill in response to Moyers’ comparison of Blackwater to Pinkerton guards of old:
No. I mean, you know, it was like Baghdad on the bayou down there in New Orleans. And– I mean, this is the point I’m making. The poor drowned. They are left without food. They’re called looters when they take perishable goods out of a store when they’ve been systematically neglected. The rich bring in their mercenaries to guard their properties or their businesses or their hotel chains. And I think it’s a window into what happens in a national emergency. And in this country, the poor are left to suffer and die and the rich bring in their mercenaries.
Of course it is not just the rich hiring mercenaries. Blackwater showed up in New Orleans on their own, but within three days they had a contract from Homeland Security.
R. J. Hillhouse focuses more on Intelligence issues, but sometimes those are almost indistinguishable from military activities. He book “Outsourced” is set in Iraq and Afghanistan and focuses on the activities of two contractors. On one hand, she weaves a web of military contractors competing for a bigger part of the contracting pie. However, she also focuses on the merging of corporate interests and interagency competition (Pentagon and CIA in particular). In this miasma, the contractors have found an almost unimaginable gravy train. They have found an almost limitless source of no-bid contracts which pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their corporate (and personal) accounts. The ending of the conflict also ends the need for the contractors and the lucrative situation they are in. So you have a situation of contractors funding and supplying insurgents and even Al Qaida. On the other hand, the contractors in Outsourced are also intimate parts of the secret operations of the CIA and the Pentagon (who of course are not talking to each other).
So we have a monster on our hands. A monster with the best weapons, deep coffers, tremendous political influence, and the protection of corporate status. Dealing with corporatism and the influence it wields over government - the U.S. government at the head of the list - is one thing. You can apply pressure to elected representatives and to the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. However, corporations which are complete militaries into themselves are a very different scenario indeed. They are particularly a concern when the government is their primary customer.
October 21st, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
Why would a prominent law professor supposedly in favor of having the nation’s second constitutional convention organize a symposium where the keynote speaker is dead set against a convention? And why pack the three subsequent panels with people against a convention? I kept asking myself these questions as I attended the recent symposium that Larry Sabato had the audacity to title “National Constitution Convention.”
When I first heard about the event I was troubled by how it was being marketed as, literally, a national constitutional convention - not a conference about a second convention, or the case for the first time use of the option in Article V of the Constitution to hold a convention of state delegates to consider making proposed amendments. Why sell the event as a national constitution convention? The answer became clear: to sell Larry Sabato’s latest book that sets forth a large number of constitutional amendments, most of which both the panelists and nearly everyone else examining them rejects.
This raised another troubling question: Why would someone who sincerely believes our nation needs another convention, rather than relying on Congress to propose amendments, purposefully set forth so many controversial amendments? History has shown that the many attempts to get an Article V convention failed because each of them was linked to advocacy for a specific amendment. When people opposed an amendment they automatically opposed an Article V convention. So here comes Larry Sabato who engineers a lot of public attention to over 20 amendments that many will oppose. True, it brings attention to amending the Constitution. But does he think that doing this will actually promote support for the nation’s first Article V convention? It certainly did not do that at his symposium. Consider these public positions given at the event:
Keynote speaker Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential nominee, could not have been more anti-convention. She said she was “not a fan of a second convention” and is “afraid of one.” While she articulated considerable fears about the damage a convention could do, she failed to even mention the safety net created by the Framers in Article V: the difficult ratification process where three-quarters of the states would have to approve every proposed amendment. Such an obvious bias cannot be overlooked when considering her perspective and comments - so typical of political establishment elites protecting the status quo.
The biggest event speaker was Supreme Court Justice Alito who said he was “skeptical” about the nation having the kind of talent for a second convention that was present at the first one. “I’m skeptical we’d be so fortunate if we tried it a second time,” he said. He seems to not understand that our current corrupt, dysfunctional political system has for some time not attracted the very best people. He also failed to mention the 2006 decision he supported with the rest of the Supreme Court to not consider a federal lawsuit, Walker vs. Members of Congress, that dealt specifically with the obligation of Congress to obey the Constitution and call an Article V Convention.
Several panelists took the position that Americans do not have sufficient civic literary or education to support having a convention, and that we could not do better than the original Framers, ignoring many of the subsequent amendments that have been extremely important because they improved upon the initial Constitution. Not one speaker recognized that there have been hundreds of state constitutional conventions, none of which wrecked state constitutions.
Lance Cargill, Oklahoma Speaker of the House, expressed concerns about a new convention causing political and economic instabilities. Could one expect anything more from the status quo political establishment? There was not one person on the symposium panels that could be considered a true activist advocating for an Article V convention as a critically need path to major political reforms.
One of the panelists noted that Sabato talks about “a new Constitution” and, of course, that rightfully frightens people. In fact, all an Article V convention can do is propose specific amendments to the current Constitution. It just feeds opposition to a convention to speak of a “new Constitution.” So why does Sabato do that?
Interestingly, one of Sabato’s proposals for a balanced budget amendment received sufficient applications from the states to cause a convention call by Congress which it disregarded, which he should know and take a strong position on.
Let me give Sabato deserved thanks for pointing out a number of facts that theoretically should build public support for an Article V convention. He has correctly emphasized that the Founders gave us the Article V convention option because they “didn’t trust Congress.” And he has made it clear that Congress has refused to give Americans the convention option because they fear changing the political system by which they have gotten their jobs. “Congress is a burial ground for constitutional amendments,” he said. He has also made it abundantly clear that the Founders did not believe that the original Constitution was “perfect” and that, indeed, they “never intended it to be sacred and untouchable.” He has noted that the convention “was the Founders’ preferred method.” He likes quoting Thomas Jefferson who believed in periodic rebellions to safeguard American democracy. He should also quote Hamilton who stated a convention call was “peremptory” and that “Congress shall have no option” regarding a convention call.
In sum, on the one hand Sabato recognizes the need for constitutional amendments and that the route to getting important ones is through an Article V convention. On the other hand, however, nothing he is doing in his efforts promoting his latest book seem effective in actually building public support for the very difficult task of getting - after 220 years - the first Article V convention. How can we reconcile this dichotomy?
He expresses no sense of urgency despite recognizing the current political and government system is broken. “It will probably take a generation before anything happens, if it happens then,” he said - and a generation today means about 30 years. It would appear the professor is content simply to write a book about the issues, stir up a lot of negative feelings about a convention, but solve nothing regarding the problem.
He seems stuck in an academic mindset rather than proudly arguing for reform through a convention. He speaks promotes school mock constitutional conventions. In other words, he seems to have capitulated to a pretty negative perspective that despite having a big set of revolting conditions the country is not ready for soon having an Article V convention to reform and fix our broken system. Sabato knows that the Article V convention option was put into the Constitution because the Framers anticipated that the public might someday lose confidence in the federal government, and he surely knows that that day has arrived.
As a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org I welcome more explicit support for pressuring Congress to obey the Constitution and their oath of office by acknowledging that there have been over 500 applications from all 50 states for a convention. This more than satisfies the one and only requirement specified in Article V. And Sabato knows that Congress has never passed any law that in any way expands or re-interprets that single requirement that two-thirds of states ask for a convention, upon which Congress “shall” call a convention. It certainly would help the nation if Sabato would talk more about all of these circumstances than merely focus on a large set of contentious possible amendments which if a convention is never called will never come to pass.
October 17th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952 in St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad. His father Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, was a factory foreman and his mother, Maria Ivanovna Putina. He was raised as an only child; his two brothers died young, one shortly after birth, the other of diphtheria during World War II. In his youth he was often called Putka.
On the world stage, Putka’s arch rival is the 43rd President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush. He was born two days after the national holiday of the Fourth of July, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut where his father was attending Yale College in the Class of 1949. His mother was the former Barbara Pierce, whom his father had married on January 6, 1945. George was their first born. He likes to call himself Dubya (W).
Of late, Putka has been hopping mad with Dubya. Dubya has been riding rough shod in his backyard for some time now with Putka merely watching. Dubya’s latest push to expand NATO to Russia’s borders and his plans to deploy missile defense systems in the former Soviet bloc, however, seems to have finally drawn Putka’s ire. Dubya’s administration’s sporadic criticism of Putka’s rising dictatorship has not helped the matters either.
That Putka seems to have had enough of Dubya is evident from a speech in Munich last July where he derided the U.S. for its “unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions,” claiming that “the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way” and slammed its “greater and greater disdain” for international law. Not very far back, in a thinly veiled reference to the U.S., he also said,” the Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows who to eat and is not about to listen to anyone, it seems.”
Putka now seems to have had enough of Dubya’s solo stint at the world stage. Flush with his recent oil wealth, Putka wants to recapture some of the lost glories of Russia. His country is the world’s No. 2 oil producer. That combined with an oil price of $80 a barrel filling the Kremlin’s coffers like never before, Russian military has had a much needed shot in the arm. He now views the Iran standoff as another opportunity to reclaim some of the past global power status. He is pushing back hard against Dubya.
In a tit for tat response, therefore, Putka test-fired a new ballistic missile supposedly capable of thwarting Washington’s fledgling missile shield, has blocked moves at the U.N. aimed at granting Kosovo formal independence from Russia’s ally, Serbia and recently planted a Russian flag at the North Pole. Also, last week in Russia, he made the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense wait 45 minutes for him before delivering them a tongue-lashing over America’s missile defense plan. All this while, Putka has offered only lukewarm support to West’s campaign against Iran.
Not satisfied with redeploying the Russian fleet to the Mediterranean, Putka engaged in war games with China and several central Asian nations. Moscow and Beijing are more closely aligned now, against U.S. power, than they ever were during the Cold War, when their respective Communist Parties were at daggers drawn.
Putka has also withdrawn from a Cold War-era treaty governing the size of conventional military forces in Europe, ordered its old Bear bombers to fly nuclear patrols along old Cold War frontiers and this Tuesday, disregarding warnings of a possible suicide attack against him, Putka became the first occupant of the Kremlin since Stalin to visit Tehran. From Tehran yesterday, to give further heartburn to Dubya, he issued a not-so-veiled warning against any attack on Iran. This at a time when the U.S. and its key European allies are rattling their sabers loudly while pushing for a new round of sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to suspend uranium-enrichment.
At home, Putka has fanned nationalist, anti-American sentiment with nostalgia for the past global power status, has created an aggressively anti-Western youth league called “NASHI” and has ratcheted up his own rhetorical attacks on the U.S. and Western Europe.
That both Putka and Dubya are equally ruthless when it comes to pursuing their interests is a fact duly confirmed by the political legacies of their respective predecessors and their present day actions in places like Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. A quick look at their lives, however, may give us denizens of planet earth some inkling as to what is in store for us in the coming years.
As a young man, Putka studied law at State University in St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, and joined the KGB’s foreign intelligence service after graduating. His rise in the Russian political system has been meteoric after he left the KGB in 1990. He then became an ally of liberal Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg, whom he met during his study. He first became Mr Sobchak’s head of external relations and then served as deputy mayor from March 1994. When Mr Sobchak lost power in 1996 it was another liberal, deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, who recommended him for a job in the presidential administration.
There he rose to be deputy chief-of-staff before being asked, in July 1998, to take charge of one of Russia’s new security services, the Federal Security Bureau (FSB). Subsequently, President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as head of the powerful Security Council. After Boris Yeltsin sacked Sergei Stepashin in August 1999, he became Russia’s prime minister. On the last day of the 20th century, Boris Yeltsin resigned and appointed him as acting president. Presidential elections were held on March 26, 2000. Putin received 52.94 percent of all votes. The inauguration took place on May 7, 2000.
Until the presidential elections, Putka had no experience of elected office. He was not renowned as a captivating speaker - his nickname used to be the “grey cardinal”. During recent summits though, he proved to be an excellent speaker indeed. He is said to be most popular among young people, Muscovites and educated people. His reputation is of a good chairman and organiser. He is a candidate of economic sciences (1996).
Putka has good command of English and German and is fond of sports, especially wrestling. He has been going in for sambo (a Russian style of self-defence) and judo since the age of 11. He won the sambo championships of St Petersburg many times and became Master of Sports first in sambo and later in judo. Putka doesn’t smoke and he is not an excessive drinker.
Boris Yeltsin introduced him to the Russian people by saying that “he will be able to unite around himself those who will revive Great Russia in the new, 21st century”. Sergei Stepashin, federal security minister under Boris Yeltsin, later described him as a “decent and honest man”. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, said that “he’s a decent, tough and energetic man who was out of public politics due to the specifics of his job”. During a summit in June 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton praised him for “surely being capable of creating a strong and prosperous Russia”. After Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with Mr Putin in August 2000, he told that “he’s certainly no threat to the Russian democracy”.
Here are some of Putka’s famous quotes;
“History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.”
“We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”
“Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”
“My sacred duty is to bring together the Russian people, unite the people around clear tasks. We have one Fatherland, one people and a common future.”
And on America pulling out of long-standing treaties and bullying the UN, he said, “Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, they have become a hotbed of further conflicts.”
In the other corner we have Dubya of the United States of America. Possibly hobbled by childhood dyslexia, initially, Dubya’s prospects of living up to his famous lineage were dim. Though he did maintain a gentlemanly “C” average at Yale and acquired a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, he proved an uninspired student throughout his educational career. With an admittedly drinking affliction in his youth, he continued to flounder until he turned 40. His rebirth as a believing Christian, by his own admission, helped put him on the straight and narrow path that led him to the Presidency.
A lot in Dubya’s success in later life can safely be attributed to his social position and his father’s business and political connections. The first President Bush had great connections in the Middle East, particularly with the Saudi royal family and the powerful Bin Laden clan. Using his father’s Saudi connections, Dubya became a millionaire twice over through Middle Eastern oil projects. His most notable achievement in private life was becoming president and chief operating partner of a professional baseball team. He later became the supreme commander of American armed forces.
He was arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol, in Kennebunkport, Maine. Pled guilty, paid fine, and had driver’s license suspended for 30 days. Dubya, thus, is the only U.S. president to enter office with a felony conviction on his record. He was also arrested twice for college pranks (charges dropped) for celebrating a Yale football victory by pulling up Princeton goal posts and for “borrowing” a large Christmas wreath from a store door (source: Washington Post).
During his first presidential campaign, Dubya capitalized on the low expectations others had for him, and won respect - and votes - for going the distance without stumbling or embarrassing himself. His opponent, Al Gore, had to rise and exceed expectations while Bush merely had to live up to lowered expectations to rise above them and gain credence.
It was thus that in the closest election in a century, it all came down to a matter of 537 votes in Florida. Out of the nearly six million votes cast in the Sunshine State (5,861,785 total, only 36,742 of which were won by third party candidates), Bush won by a margin representing 0.0087%. That’s less than nine one-thousandths of a percentage point. To this day, many Americans doubt the win by so slim a margin. His succession to the Presidency was decided by the Supreme Court, after a month-long battle over who actually won the election.
Dubya took the oath of office on January 20, 2001 as the 43rd President of United States of America. Months later, after a convenient 911, Dubya proceeded forthwith to declare open a non-ending ‘war on terra‘ that continues to this day. That war, his terrorized nation and a few thousand overstuffed ballot boxes ensured his re-election in November 2004 to become the first son of a president to win two terms in office. After initially riding high on the ‘wings of terra’, he has recently become the least popular president of United States ever.
As a hobby, Dubya collects autographed baseballs.
Here are just some of Dubya’s many quotes;
“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.”
“I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions; I can’t answer your question.”
“I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.”
“The very act of spending money can be expensive.”
“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
“The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”
“One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected.”
[June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Lars Göran Persson, unaware that a live TV camera was running] “It’s amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency.”
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
Now the scribe has three questions to ask of readers;
Q No.1. Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by problems with reading, spelling, writing, speaking, listening, confusion with directions, confusion with certain concepts, such as “up” and “down,” “early” and “late,” and mathematics etc. Do you think Dubya still suffers from dyslexia?
Q No. 2. Dubya has given Putka a nickname. It is Pootie-Poot. What do you think Putka should call him?
Q No. 3. Who is going to kill us more in the coming years, Putka or Dubya?
What say dear readers?
Sources
1. http://vladimirputin.4u.ru/
2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0124133/bio
3. http://tinyurl.com/2pqpt6
4. http://tinyurl.com/38dyl3
5. http://tinyurl.com/32lcud
6. http://thinkexist.com/quotes/vladimir_putin/
7. http://faqs.org/health/Sick-V2/Dyslexia.html
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
October 16th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
For some it is no surprise that the illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens began prior to September 2001. The Bush administration went into office with the plan to “transform” the power of the president with its attempts to implement the “unitary executive.” It was clear from the start with the refusal to release past presidential records as required by law, and then the refusal to obey a court order to release information regarding Cheney’s energy “advisors.” The statement from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio that Qwest had denied an NSA order for calling records in February 2001 has opened a door on the lie.
President Bush and his administration have pressed continuously for “expedited” and “expanded” surveillance powers. It is clear at this point that the surveillance ordered by Bush via the NSA without FISA warrants was illegal. So too, did the companies who complied with the NSA orders break the law. That is why retrospective immunity is included in currently proposed legislation.
However, the repeated public reason for the necessity of such abridgement of existing law and Constitutional protections has been the events of September 11, 2001. Bush and company have argued repeatedly that they need these expanded powers in order to ensure national security, and as an effective tool in the “war on terrorism.” Repeated thousands of times in hundreds of appearances, we have heard September 11. If that was the impetus, then why was the administration violating the law in February 2001 - six months prior to September 11?
I can feel the spin coming that the administration took seriously the threat of Al Qaida that was at the forefront of Clinton’s exiting warnings. However, they couldn’t say anything about it in all this time, and all the questions and hearings, because it would pose a threat to “national security.”
To place this in perspective, the February 2001 date means that one month after entering office, Bush had found the FISA laws and the Constitution to be burdensome. One is left to assume that the implementation of the overthrow of the government was started almost immediately upon Bush taking the oath of office. This too is no surprise given the overlap between the Bush administration and the Project for a New American Century.
John Conyers (D-Michigan), who is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is following up on the claims of Nacchio with requests to the Justice Department and Mike McConnell (head of the NSA) for release of information relating to the NSA surveillance orders.
Another Congressional request for information has brought for letters from AT&T and Verizon regarding NSA surveillance requests in 2005. The response from the telecom giants shows significant requests (88,000 for Verizon alone), but the White House has told the telecoms to not respond to Congressional demands for information citing “national security” (see previous link). Meanwhile, the FCC has also refused to investigate the scope and timing of the information provided by the telecom companies - also citing national security.
Related to, but separate from the telecom response to NSA and FBI requests is the FBI running National Security Letters (NSLs) for the Pentagon. This from :
The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.
This information gotten by the ACLU shows that the Pentagon has moved well outside the scope of its powers by . Such activity would likely fall afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act:
… generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.
So that blows a huge hole in Dick of the Department of Defense engaging in domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering:
Vice President Dick Cheney has defended the practice as a “perfectly legitimate activity” used to investigate possible acts of terrorism and espionage.
Just more trivia to add to the ever-growing list of abuses and illegalities engaged in by the Bush administration. Abuses for which, apparently, they will never be held accountable. But for those of you who think those of us concerned about these issues are “partisan” or “paranoid,” guess what? The next president (who may well be a Democrat) gets to inherit the “Unitary Executive” with all the extensions of power and surveillance and no oversight or accountability either. Personally, I find no comfort in that thought - nor in the ongoing dismantling of our Constitution.
Note: Nacchio is serving a six year prison term for insider trading. The information was part of recently unsealed testimony in his case. He stated that Qwest refused to comply with the NSA requests, and was retaliated against with the loss of contracts from the NSA.
October 16th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The TOPOFF 4 exercises started in Guam and Portland, Oregon. There are reports from various sources on how those are progressing. However, there is no news at all out of Phoenix (the third site in this week’s scenario). Further, while there is news regarding TOPOFF, there is absolutely nothing about Vigilant Shield 2008 which is running currently and in coordination with the exercise.
The lack of media coverage of TOPOFF is planned. Media that are involved are fake media. Yes, they have fake media present for the exercises, but have placed the real media at a distance.
Also participating in TOPOFF-4 are individuals acting as reporters and photographers that are actually reporting on the incident as part of a virtual news operation. This part of the drill is designed to test the communications and responses of the players tasked with dealing with the media. ~ KUAM News
And the media. Did I mention the drill includes fake media? ~ OregonLive
The most humorous bit of first person reporting is from an employee at the Oregon Department of Transportation Region 1 Headquarters:
ODOT Region 1 headquarters response: Evacuate the nice filtered air conditioned building that was untouched by the explosion, protected by three separate approach spans to the bridge, to send everybody outside into the rain that is now supposedly polluted with radioactive dust. Take a full head count of 600 employees to make sure there are no survivors, and that everybody is now dying of massive lung cancer before letting them back in the building.
However, the news from Guam shows more disruption than from Portland. Guam had significant traffic disruption, and the access to the hospital is blocked to all but emergency vehicles. As I already noted, there is no news about Arizona and how the TOPOFF exercise is going there. Nor is there any mention that I can find about what or how the Vigilant Shield exercise is progressing.
October 14th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
Starting tomorrow Portland, Oregon (and Phoenix AZ, and Guam) will be the site of a “simulated” terrorist attack with a “dirty bomb.” A radioactive substance is scheduled to be released so that live tracking of the plume can be observed and integrated into the exercise. According to a source I have who is in the exercise, the supposed release in the Pearl District is inaccurate. Where the release will occur is “top secret.” When I pressed, my source stated that “some things have not been made public, and he wasn’t going to leak the information.”
According to the Oregon Fact Sheet on the exercise:
The Scenario
The T4 full-scale exercise is based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11). Terrorists have planned attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam. They have brought radioactive material into the United States. The first of three coordinated attacks occurs in Guam, with the detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or “dirty bomb,” causing casualties and widespread contamination in a populous area. Within hours, similar attacks occur in Portland and Phoenix.
An RDD is not the same as a nuclear attack. Rather, it is a conventional explosive that releases radioactive material into the surrounding area. Although it does not cause the type of catastrophic damage associated with a nuclear detonation, an RDD causes severe problems in rescuing victims, providing emergency care, and managing long-term decontamination.
TOPOFF stands for “Top Officials” and is a Homeland Security exercise costing about $2.5 million for Portland and surrounds funded by Congress.
While state agencies have been preparing for the exercise for two years, there has been no effort to prepare Portland’s citizens for either the exercise or a real emergency. Periodic public broadcasts of what to put in an emergency kit aside, one would think that the state would have taken advantage of the funding to prepare for an actual emergency.
TOPOFF 4 is a “full scale exercise,” meaning that first responders are included in the drill.
Some people are quite nervous about the exercise, and I would be the last to say that they are overly paranoid. Certainly it is difficult for a “full scale exercise” to be realistic if there are not real people panicking. We’ll see as the exercise runs for five days.
However, TOPOFF 4 is not the only major “exercise” that is occurring October 15-20. Also running will be Vigilant Shield 2008. This is a six day martial law exercise being run by NorthCom. The NORTHCOM Fact Sheet on Vigilant Shield states”
National Level Exercise 108
will include the simulated detonation of three radiological dispersal devices within the USNORTHCOM and U.S. Pacific Command areas of responsibility. These exercise events and others are designed to test the full range of incident management response procedures at the local, state, and federal levels.
Purpose: Exercise VIGILANT SHIELD 2008 and National Level Exercise 1-08 will provide local, state, tribal, interagency, Department of Defense, and nongovernmental organizations and agencies involved in homeland security and homeland defense the opportunity to participate in a full range of exercise scenarios that will better prepare participants to prevent and respond to national crises. The participating organizations will conduct a multilayered, civilian led response to a national crisis.
In other words, Vigilant Shield is running in coordination with TOPOFF 4. However, Vigilant Shield appears to be bigger as “These linked exercises will take place 15 - 20 October 2007 and are being conducted throughout the United States with several partner nations (Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom), as well as the Territory of Guam..”
It seems like a strong possibility that the three TOPOFF sites may be targets for martial law “exercises,” and possibly beyond that.
According to the NORTHCOM fact sheet, NORTHCOM is “conducting multiple homeland defense and critical infrastructure protection events.” These “events include “aerospace” defense and control, as well as inter-agency coordination.
So, NORTHCOM will be testing response and “missile defense” which likely means a number of military jets in the air, and “bogies” on air controller’s screens. If this sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. Massive “exercises” were also occurring on September 11, 2001 (see also Complete 9/11 Timeline). While this has been left out of most of the corporate media renditions of that day, those who have bothered to look at the full story are well aware of those events.
The level of the TOPOFF & Vigilant Shield exercises presents a distraction, and possibly an opportunity, for other things to happen. Whether that is a “terrorist” attack, or an opportunity to launch “surgical strikes” at the “Axis of Evil” remains to be seen.
Unlike some folks, I actually think that practicing emergencies is theoretically a good idea. Fire drills, tornado drills, etc. can help individuals and communities meet such events more readily. However, I have found no reason to trust those currently in power, and the scope of these exercises makes me quite leery. Not to mention that Vigilant Shield has a 2008 title (Vigilant Shield 2008) and I am pretty sure this is 2007.
The Oregon Truth Alliance has produced a Citizen’s Pocket Guide to TOPOFF 4 & Vigilant Shield 08 which I recommend that everyone take a look at. For those in Portland, it also includes a map (below) of the expected radioactive plume and “kill zone.”
October 8th, 2007
By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
In my recent article “The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn’t nearly as dire as I’m asserting it is.
This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.
Have we not all heard about the New York woman on her way to rehab who passed through the Phoenix airport, became distraught when she had just missed her flight, and was arrested for disorderly conduct by airport police? The suspect, Carol Ann Gotbaum, was handcuffed and then placed in a holding cell and left alone. According to police, when they returned, she was dead. At this writing, Gotbaum’s family and officials are awaiting the autopsy report-the “official” cause of death.
Just a few days later, again in Phoenix, a male suspect was handcuffed after an on-foot chase by police, and shortly after being handcuffed, according to police, he lost consciousness. He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In today’s New York Daily News, the story “Science teacher’s brush with police ends in heart attack” relates an incident that happened back in June of this year when an African American Brooklyn high school teacher was mistaken for a perpetrator by police, suffered a heart attack, and was left on his own by the street cops who accused him of “acting.”
As outrageous as these incidents may be, the most chilling event appeared on networks across the nation this morning with the story of a twenty year-old Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed six young people at a party Saturday night. The most obvious question: How is it that a community of citizens allows a twenty year-old to become a deputy sheriff? Why not give an M-16 to a third-grader?
Nevertheless, all of these stories are connected by a common thread: Law enforcement in the United States, whose duty it is to “protect and serve” have now become not just part of the problem but in fact, predatory devourers of those they are sworn to keep safe.
Deepening collapse will be attended by manifestations of the unraveling of all institutions, one of the most frightening examples being law enforcement’s hysterical repression of citizens.
Although we are seeing more media attention given to private security companies such as Blackwater, we should not assume that the power and funding granted to these firms will dissipate anytime soon. They are an integral part of the Shock Doctrine brilliantly analyzed by Naomi Klein in her new book of the same title. The greater the extent of the empire’s collapse, the greater the intensity of the shock applied to those who reside within the belly of the beast. From those shocks flow not only increased terror and social control, but flourishing profits for private security companies.
The U.S. government is making it unmistakably clear that it intends to use every avenue of power at its disposal to lock down the nation. A story sent to my subscribers today from the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) reveals that in its correspondence with the Treasury Department “The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government’s authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares — and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well.”
Almost daily we hear of increased surveillance of Americans as well as unprecedented restrictions on travel, not only on persons entering the U.S. but on persons traveling within the country and on dissenters who attempt to enter other countries as in the case of two activists, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright who were denied entrance into Canada on Thursday “because their names appeared on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.”
Another relevant story relinked today pertains to the anti-terrorism Vigilant Shield 2008 exercise of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) “The series of exercises is mandated by the US government to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises that would call for the use of the military inside the United States. Vigilant Shield 2008 builds a scenario of a domestic disaster in the US (terrorist attack or natural disaster). It posits the domestic use of the US military including a special role for the US Air Force.” As we know, a precedent for using the U.S. military inside the U.S. was set in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
For those considering expatriation, it will soon be too late to leave. For those who choose to remain within this increasingly locked down nation, it will be necessary to acquire survival skills, a strong community of friends, and a great deal of stealth in order to navigate this empire’s exacerbating Orwellian treachery.
October 2nd, 2007
By Phil Rockstroh of Ebullient Skepticism (Note that Phil has a web site now!!!)
“We must become the change we want to see.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates
How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.
Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.
How could it come to this? How did so many US citizens grow so apathetic, oblivious, if not flat-out hostile to the tenets of a free republic?
The authoritarianism inherent to the structure of multi-conglomerate corporatism is antithetical to the concept of the rights and liberties of the individual. Most individuals — bound by a corporation’s secrecy-prone, hierarchical values — will, over time, lose the ability to display free thinking, engage in civic discourse, and even be able to envisage the notion of freedom.
This is true, from the florescent light-flooded aisles of Wal*Mart to the insular executive offices of Haliburton to the sound stages of CNN and Fox News. Under the prevailing order, reality, for the laboring class of the corporate state, has become debt slavery; in contrast, the simulacrum of reality, in which, the striver class exists, is a milieu defined by obsessive careerism. Under the hegemony of corporatism, freedom might as well be fairy dust. It only exists in an imaginary land, not the places one arrives by way of one’s morning and evening commute.
In addition, economically, by way of decades of financial chicanery, perpetrated by the nation’s business and political elite, we are eating our seed crop, and the consequences of this harvest of deceit have left the people of the US, intellectually and spiritually malnourished.
As a result, many attempt to sate the keening emptiness and mitigate the chronic unease by gorging themselves on the Junk Food Jesus of End Time mythology, which is a belief system wherein corporeal events and actions (personal and collective) have no lasting consequence because even the human body is to be cast aside, like a junk food wrapper, when the cosmic CEO decides to make the earth a part of his heavenly franchise.
Accordingly, the corporate state requires modes of being that evince obliviousness and obedience (the defining traits of the US consumer) on the part of the majority of the populace. Ergo, the rise of both Christian consumerists and the vast apparatus of the right-wing propaganda matrix that dominates news cycles via the electronic mass media.
All coming to pass, as George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification — is rocked to sleep by his handlers cooing preposterous tales of how history will place him in the pantheon of those men whose greatness was unrecognized by the shallow and petty minds of their own era.
When, in fact, Bush, whose ruinous wars of aggression, deficit-ballooning tax breaks for the wealthy, and policies of crony capitalism (that enabled the economy-decimating, easy credit banking scams of the present) displays the character traits of a man ridden with severe psychological trauma; his attempts to tamp down immense inner turmoil, by means of his grandiose bearing, his absolute certitude regarding his own infallibility, and his bullying behavior, have resulted in an exteriorizing of his pathologies on a global scale, and this is playing out ugly, for all concerned.
Why do the people of the nation (for the most part) slouch, slack-jawed and passive, before this assault upon their collective integrity and personal dignity?
For generations, the ephemeral dazzle of pop culture paternalism and tabloid Manichaeism, as confabulated by advertising and public relations hacks and corporate news courtesans, has overwhelmed gravitas, history, even self-awareness. As all the while, shallow opportunists have been elevated to the status of pundits, experts and sages. Withal, the present system generously rewards those individuals who have mastered the art of impersonating human traits and responses in utterly contrived environments. As a whole, the majority of the populi have come to garner information about the world at large, and, worse, their own self-image, from a medium where phoniness is a treasured commodity, while authentic human traits and responses are banished to a beggar’s road.
Is it any wonder that the media types who thrive in these artificial settings have come to define authenticity as being only those attributes that appear authentic on television? Apropos, if you ask these “media personalities” about the shortcomings and corruption of the present system, they will plead the careerist’s Nuremberg Defense … of only being a stormtrooper obeisant to the “bottom line.”
Fantasy alert: One would hope that if one were to descend down a ladder constructed of these layers upon layers of bottom lines, one would arrive in a Hell reserved for those possessed with such shameless cupidity.
Reality redux: Yet as much as the human heart might yearn for such outcomes, there will never arrive the terrible majesty and bitter reckoning of anything resembling Judgement Day, heralded by celestial trumpets and legions of naked and cowering sinners; instead, in human affairs, there arises dire exigencies that can no longer be ignored nor explained away. The arrival of such a moment for the US is nearly at hand.
When a nation manifests a mixture of mass ignorance and official mendacity, in combination with uncheck power emanating from an insular and arrogant elite, a golden age of peace and plenty is as possible as holding a tea dance in a tsunami. As sure as a village of desperate fools who devour their seed crop, a nation that refuses universal health care to its children — yet rushes to the aid of its parasitic class of wealthy “speculators” and “investors” from the consequences of their own greed-besotted, fiscal debacles — is doomed.
This is the classic pattern of collective immolation experienced by a nation when power and privilege is increasingly consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. In essence, this is the key to the conundrum paralyzing the leadership of the Democratic Party: In a culture in which an individual’s worth is determined by the degree one can be exploited by the corrupt interests that control both the private and public sector, the public at large has little value to the political establishment … That is: other than, every few years, being bamboozled for their votes in the sham spectacles known as the US electoral process, a scam mostly financed, hence controlled, by the aforementioned big money interests.
In sum, this is the reason the Democratic Party feels little allegiance to their base. In turn, the political classes themselves are only of value to the big money corporate elite, because, by their delivery of staggering amounts of pork, massive tax cuts, and the passage of desired anti-regulatory legislation, they serve as their errand boys.
Moreover, the corporate control of congress is a microcosm of US society as a whole. Accordingly, the increasingly corporatized, ever more submissive people of the US should be termed, the Whose-Your-Daddy Nation.
Yet, since life does not exist in stasis, within this hierarchy of deceivers and dupes, we will gnaw at one another’s ankles until the whole pathetic pyramid collapses.
All around us, we can feel the shoddy structure starting to sway and buckle. Axiomatically, the value of the dollar is collapsing like the smooth facade of a con man called-out by a group of wised-up marks. At present, in the wake of the bust in the housing market, repo men are retracing the tracks of real estate grifters who fleeced legions of wishful thinkers who brought the American dream and now only possess the misery of debt slavery.
One would think the time for insurrection has arrived — that, at long last, an awakened and enraged public would rise up and foreclose on these reprobates and ne’er-do-wells squatting in the White House and skulking through Congress. The power and privilege of the corporately controlled elite of Washington should be repossessed like the Lexises of Atlanta real estate agents and the oversized pickup trucks of Tucson contractors, confiscated in the wake of the collapse of the housing market. Foreclosure signs and repossession notices should festoon the whole of official Washington.
Turn about would be fair play. Since, the rise of Reaganism, the financial sector has been engaged in selling off the assets of the nation’s public sector to the highest bidders. It is amazing that, at this point, this klavern of kleptocrats haven’t yet torn from the walls and absconded with all the copper plumbing fixtures and fittings on Capitol Hill.
Is a turnaround possible?
If we wake-up and smell the jackboot. From the miasma of right-wing media propaganda, to the proliferation of predatory capitalism, to the corruption and cupidity of the prison industrial complex, to the pandemic of police brutality and the trampling of the rights of the accused, to perennial civilian shooting sprees, to the muzzling of descent, to the rise of the national surveillance state, to the use and acceptance of torture as state policy, to the adoption of an unlawful, immoral foreign policy doctrine that promotes policies of perpetual war, one is forced to conclude that bullying, and deferring to bullies, has become the dominate mode of being in the US.
Remedy: In order to turn this trend around, the people of the US must begin to acquire the anti-authoritarian traits of empathy and engagement. The gaining of empathy alleviates the pathological need to be a bully, while social and political engagement mitigates feelings of powerlessness that authoritarian bully-boys, such as Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, et al., exploit.
In short, remedial human lessons for the US population, in general, and for the corporate and political classes, in particular.
Let us start the process by having a period of grief and repentance for the death and suffering that our government, in our name, has inflicted on the people of Iraq. This should be done as the US begins the process of a complete military withdrawal from their decimated nation, and the bestowing of economic reparations upon the millions of Iraqis who have suffered under the brutal machinations and murderous mayhem unloosed by our country’s contemptible invasion and occupation.
To do so, might save the people of our next target, Iran (as well as ourselves) a world of grief.
October 1st, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
After many years of political disappointment, more progressives, liberals and conservatives - and certainly moderates and independents - know in their hearts that voting for Democrats or Republicans is a waste. Just imagine if voter turnout was cut to 25 percent or less! Let the whole world see Americans boycotting a broken and corrupt political system and rejecting what has become a delusional democracy. To keep voting in an unjust political system makes us willing political slaves that the rich and powerful elites exploit.
Just leaving the major parties is not good enough and, besides, most Americans are not party members. We need a bolder strategy. We must humiliate the political elites in both major parties and the corporate interests that support both of them. We can send a shock wave throughout the political establishment by not voting in the 2008 presidential election.
Stop playing THEIR game. Take back control. Take back YOUR nation. Time to boycott voting. This strategy is consistent with the thinking of Gandhi and King: peaceful resistance to political tyranny that can bring the corrupt system to its knees. Ultimately, the most effective protest is through civil disobedience - to visibly and stubbornly refuse to respect what has become a corrupt, untrustworthy system. Before it can be fixed it must be deconstructed and then rebuilt. Taxation with MISrepresentation means we need a Second American Revolution; it must begin - not with violent action - but with massive withdrawal by citizens that have seen the light. We have a good head start with about half of eligible voters already so turned off that they don’t vote. Obviously that has not been sufficient to change the system.
There will be negative, defensive knee-jerk reactions to this audacious strategy. Let’s examine them:
Many will think that taking such action violates our responsibility as citizens. But taking that responsibility seriously as engaged citizens in the Jeffersonian sense must reflect that there is still a valid contract between citizens and their government. When we vote we have the right to a political system that respects we the people and gives us an authentic representative democracy. We have a right to a constitutional republic operating under the rule of law. But we have elected representatives that no longer have the public interest as their primary commitment, nor truly honor and respect our Constitution.
They have been corrupted by corporate and other special interests that fund their campaigns to get the laws, loopholes and largesse they want. They have been corrupted by power and the perks of office. They are political cowards and mostly intellectual midgets. The two major parties have a stranglehold on our political system that no longer merits our participation in their crooked game. Political parties are not part of our Constitution and the two-party duopoly has demonstrated that both Democrats and Republicans put their own interests above those of we the people, our nation and our democracy. We cannot vote our way out of our current, dreadful political system.
Whether you are on the political left or right, you will fear that not voting will help put in office people that support policies your abhor. But decades of objective political reality tell us that even people from the party that we align with do not, when elected, fulfill their promises and our hopes. Sadly, most Americans have become lesser-evil voters, deluding themselves that this is the best, least worse, yet awful choice. Instead of feeling bad about voting for candidates that we know in our hearts are not worthy of our votes and public office, we must have the courage to say “enough is enough; I will not play in this shameful game any longer.” We must stop legitimizing and abetting our disgraceful government.
Many may fear that not voting sets a terrible example to children. But isn’t it more important to tell America’s children that true patriotism must reveal itself by rejecting a political system that no longer merits respect? Thomas Jefferson believed in periodic rebellion. Now is the time for all good Americans to come to the rescue of their nation, peacefully by boycotting elections.
The small number of third party members may be screaming: yes, don’t vote for Democrats and Republicans; come over and join us! I have been a strong third party supporter, but we must face the painful truth. The two major parties have so rigged the political system in their favor and against third parties that voting for third party candidates for federal office is a futile action. We must first boycott voting to create sufficient pressure to open the system to genuine political competition. That requires a number of electoral reforms, possible if the nation gets its first Article V convention (see www.foavc.org). With reforms we can increase voter turnout to over 90 percent, as routinely seen in other democracies.
False patriotism may cause some to think that we must not show anti-American nations and terrorists that our government no longer has the trust of its citizens. But that has already been widely disseminated by endless polls and surveys, including the recent Zogby poll that found a record-low 11 percent support for Congress. Better to show our enemies that we the people have finally awakened and decided to re-assert our sovereignty and restore American democracy. Loyalty to country, yes; loyalty to government, no. Our populist American insurgency must begin with a boycott of voting.
Proof that this extraordinary strategy can work is that by now diehard Democrats and Republicans reading this are squirming in discomfort. So spread the word, if you have not deluded yourself about voting the nation into a far, far better place. Time to boycott voting. Join the picket line; admit that none of the above is the only rational decision when the choices the two major parties give us for federal officials are not worth a dime.
Voting in a delusional representative democracy is as harebrained as voting even though you know votes will not be honestly counted - which many fear may be true. We may have lost control of our government, but we still control our voting. Time to walk away from the brainwashing and fiction that it really matters which Democrat or Republican you vote for in primaries and general elections for federal office. Power elites want us to believe that. They collude with the corporate mainstream media that make tons of money from campaigns and want you to stay glued to suspenseful horse races. Loud-mouth political pundits that narrate the races are democracy’s enemies. We must stop watching and listening to the political entertainment designed to keep us obediently mesmerized, as if the game is honest. Without an audience, these phony races and media circus will disappear.
Don’t be fooled by the large number of candidates in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. It is a sham - a scheme to keep spectators glued to the illusory competition. Ron Paul has as much chance of being the Republican nominee as Dennis Kucinich has of being the Democratic nominee. With power elites controlling both major parties, zero chance for them and the other minor candidates, regardless of their grassroots support. Reflect on how both major parties accept lots of candidates in televised debates in the primary season. But come the general election with prime time televised presidential debates they keep out third party candidates that desperately need that exposure to rally meaningful support. Such is the hypocrisy and disdain of the two-party duopoly.
Come Election Day in 2008 we should party and celebrate (with TVs turned off) our populist boycott of voting and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow patriots. We must help them resist any late urge to vote, because by then millions of dollars will be spent by many special interests to make us feel guilty and ashamed if we do not vote. I can hear Paul Revere now: The liars are coming! The liars are coming! All that advertising and pundit-screaming to herd us back into the voting booths will verify that our boycott strategy works.
With having the votes of only a small minority of the electorate, whoever becomes president will have no public mandate except major, systemic political reforms that satisfy the will of the people. Either that or accept being the president of a fake democracy on the world scene.
Be brave. Stick together. Save voting for a reformed political system worthy of respect and participation.
September 29th, 2007
By: Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
I recently caught up with Rob Williams, volunteer editor of VERMONT COMMONS which is the online voice of Vermont Independence. The organization has been working for some time to establish The Second Vermont Republic which is a peaceful, democratic, grassroots, libertarian populist movement opposed to the tyranny of the U.S. Government, corporate America, and globalization and committed to the return of Vermont to its rightful status as an independent republic, as it was between 1777 and 1791. More of the history of Vermont and the Independence movement can be read at the VT Commons website.
CB: Please explain the Vermont secessionist movement and why many Vermonters support it. Why do you support it? What do you think might happen to Vermont if secession does not happen?
RW: The Vermont secession impulse is born out of our understanding that the United States - once a great republic - has become an unsustainable Empire governed by a very few. Beyond massive (and bipartisan) national electoral fraud, 9/11’s unanswered questions, a “war on terror” (that will not end, we are told, in our life times), the collapse of the U.S. Constitution, the erosion of civil liberties, and the practicing of “disaster capitalism” on a massive scale by political and economic elites, the U.S. is simply too big to function as a democratic republic in its current state. In other words, as astute observers from across the political spectrum have pointed out, the Empire is essentially ungovernable, unsustainable, and un-reformable.
We in the Vermont independence effort are a growing group of citizens who have moved beyond frustration with the current imperial system and are championing a more honest and hopeful paradigm - that of “small is beautiful” sustainability and, if need be, peaceable secession from the Empire, and the re-invention of Vermont as an independent republic, as it was from 1777 to 1791. Contrary to popular belief, New England was the first region of the country to openly call for secession - not once but several times - during the early 19th century, for similar reasons as our own in the 21st: concern about growing corporate and commercial power, and legitimate fears of a centralized federal/statist apparatus that trumps local decision-making and state sovereignty. Given expansive federal regulatory power over our food (USDA), our airwaves (FCC), our animals and livestock (NAIS), our educational endeavors (NCLB), and every other aspect of our lives, it makes sense to take a good hard look at some legitimate alternatives that exist as a forgotten part of the U.S. political tradition - this is what we are doing here at Vermont Commons newspaper.
While this is no small task, as a patriot and a secessionist both, I support Vermont independence (and indeed, the restoration of sovereignty for all states within this allegedly “indivisible” Union) because I think that peaceable secession is the only viable way to save what we so deeply appreciate about the ideals and values of our United States. And, without sounding too grandiose, secession may allow us to help sustain our civilization as a whole as we seek to “re-invent” our former republic-turned-Empire in the face of emerging “big picture” problems such as climate change, global peak oil, and the excesses of corporate globalization, what former Bush/Wall Street insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls the “tapeworm economy.”
CB: What does a “sustainable” lifestyle mean to you? What percentage of Vermonters would you say are living this way?
RW: “Sustainability” can be one of those vague and meaningless buzz words that is often used without thought. To me, living “sustainably” means practicing pragmatic but careful stewardship of our spiritual, physical, and economic resources - which leads, of course, to a thousand thoughtful daily decisions about how we live our lives. Vermont has a long tradition of frugality, self-reliance, community support, and what we call “Yankee ingenuity” - we’ll need all of these qualities in spades moving forward into this new century, which will look very different than the previous one.
And becoming more “sustainable” is a personal and collective process. Five years ago, my wife of fifteen years and I didn’t own land, keep chickens, split, stack and heat our home with local wood, grow and store some of our own food, and press our own cider, and now we do - thanks to continued collaboration with friends and neighbors who are as interested in these same sorts of issues, and are intent on finding local solutions to big picture problems.
CB: How and where do you see re-localization happening in Vermont? Which areas of the state are more supportive of the concept?
RW: Vermonters are speaking out on climate change (witness the Step It Up campaign, born out of a 5 day collective walk on behalf of “taking action on climate change” one year ago here in Vermont); beginning to adapt new and more local agricultural and energy/food consumption habits (our exploding Localvore movement, for example); conserving land for agricultural spaces (our vibrant land trust movement); seeking “alternative” energy solutions to fossil fuels (the explosion of local solar and wind companies here), and generally beginning to engage in some collective head-scratching about how we might steer our civilization towards more sustainable paths. Every Vermonter I know has a garden and knows how to grow food. Regarding regions, every section of Vermont is working on these dilemmas in their own ways. In one sense, I feel like Vermonters are returning to their roots by reviving practice in self-reliance and “do it yourself”-ness.
CB: Can Vermont feed itself? There is much talk of this, but in a state where the ground is frozen 8 months out of the year, how can Vermonters make this happen?
RW: You need a good-sized root cellar to pull this off! But more and more Vermonters I know are rediscovering the satisfaction that comes with canning, pickling, and preserving; of raising chickens and other livestock; of growing their own food and supporting CSAs, farmer’s markets, and farmers who are their neighbors. Specialty foods, many grown locally, are becoming a Vermont hallmark, as well. Once upon a time, one hundred years ago, Vermont proved much more self-sufficient then it is now. We have spent much time and energy these past few decades trying to preserve our family-owned dairy farms in the midst of a global dairy economy that milks them alive, while ignoring other agricultural needs - but we’re getting savvier in this arena, as well.
And one cannot exist on maple syrup, milk and cheese, and apple cider alone - ultimately, we need some state leadership on diversifying our food economy, beyond our “Buy Local” campaign, and we are, of course, continually discovering the joys of trading with our neighbors, as well as remaining plugged into a global food network while we can.
CB: How are Vermonters changing their form and quantity of energy consumption? How feasible is solar energy in Vermont? What other forms of natural energy are being used? How widespread is this usage?
RW: We Vermonters live in the midst of interesting times for energy here - 2/3 of our state’s electricity, for example, is generated by so-called “clean” non-carbon-emitting energy sources - Vermont Yankee Nuclear in the western portion of the state, and HydroQuebec, which owns the eastern border’s Connecticut River dams projects. The problem here is that Vermonters ultimately don’t have much say over the future of either of these out-of-state corporate energy sources, as “clean” as people perceive them to be in the short term. The state public service board, the legislature, and, to some extent, the governor’s office have all made some strides towards renewable and “alternative” energy. I think, though that local Vermonters and businesses are ahead of the curve. I’ve got neighbors who are growing solar panels in their back yard, bringing in wood stoves for more biomass, conducting energy audits to make their homes and businesses much more efficient, and the like. And this is what it takes - let a thousand ideas and projects bloom here in the Green Mountains.
Big picture - as with sustainable agriculture, there are many ideas on the table re: energy - my current favorite is a proposal I just read suggesting that we plant 100,000 acres of switch grass across the state. Switchgrass is a relatively carbon-friendly and renewable form of biomass energy - which could theoretically replace the entire state’s imported natural gas supply for heating our Vermont homes and businesses all winter. We’ve also gotten tremendous mileage out of our “Efficiency Vermont” energy conservation program - though there is much more work to do here. We are a state with the second oldest building stock in the Empire, too, so re-tooling our buildings to make them more energy efficient is key. In short, there is plenty of work to be done, and we’re well on our way. The bottom line is - we have to figure out how to do more with less energy, and do it more efficiently, and “incentive-ize” this in any way that we can.
CB: One of Vermont’s principle “industries” is education with the state spending more on education than many other states do. Is there opposition in the state to the No Child Left Behind Act? If so, how is this opposition being expressed? To what extent are people home-schooling their children?
RW: I’ve been a local school board member for several years now. While they have their problems, Vermont’s public schools are among the highest-performing of all fifty states within the Empire - we seem to be able to absorb NCLB’s demands - often unrealistic, opportunistic, and under-funded - without flinching too much, and, while I work with a vocal minority of NCLB critics, I am surprised there isn’t more public opposition to NCLB from the rank and file, though most teachers and administrators I know would prefer to test less and educate more. I know folks in Vermont who home school for a wide variety of reasons, but I don’t have any specific numbers here.
CB: Can you tell us a bit about Vermont’s new experiment with healthcare coverage, Catamount? What is your opinion of it? How will Catamount be funded and who will actually benefit from it? How prevalent are alternative health practitioners in Vermont? Vermont obviously sits on the Canadian border, so I’m wondering how successful Vermonters have been in obtaining medications from Canada. Please comment.
RW: Vermont is a great state to be sick in, aside from occasional life-threatening traumas that demand the kind of intense and immediate care that only a high-powered and high-tech urban hospital might be able provide. I think it is too early to tell how successful Catamount will be - the jury is still out, though I know that much is riding on its performance. Our once and future republic is a refuge and an incubator for a wide variety of alternative health practitioners - you can’t swing a live catamount in this state without hitting a physical therapist, yoga mistress, Reiki guru, or massage specialist. It is nice, actually - when we get sick or stressed, we have so many affordable options in our communities, and I know many folks who go over the border for surgeries of various kinds - it is good to have options.
CB: We hear much about “community” in Vermont, but what do you actually see happening in terms of people “living in community”? Are there intentional communities in Vermont? Please explain to readers the “village green” tradition in Vermont. Why is it important?
RW: The annual town meeting tradition, in which Vermonters take the first Tuesday in early March to attend their town and school board meetings to vote on budgetary matters, is under siege here - according to some recent figures, only 20% of Vermonters polled actually attend their town meetings on a yearly basis, and some towns are switching to Australian Ballot measures. This is too bad, as there is much to celebrate with our town meetings, which Henry David Thoreau called “the true Congress,” because we look at our neighbors face to face and deliberate matters vital to our communities.
And there is this funny paradox here - because we have no intermediate governing structures between town governments and the state, for the most part (no county seats, for example) - political decision-making is very centralized, in some ways.
But local Vermonters also donate tremendous amounts of time to school and select boards, planning commissions, ad hoc committees, neighborhood groups, volunteer fire and ambulance services, and the like.
And we in the Vermont independence effort have just started our “Free Vermont” campaign - to use annual town meeting as a way to jump start a debate about peaceable secession. Find out more at www.freevermont.net/.
CB: What do you absolutely love about Vermont? What are some of the challenges of living there? What would you like to change about Vermont?
RW: Vermont is a small, rural, poor, sparsely populated, beautiful, and quiet place. This is both a blessing and a curse - it is easy to live and work out of doors, and the skiing and other recreational opportunities are phenomenal, if you can put up with cold, long, dark winters, as well as the aesthetic pleasures of “mud” and “stick” season.
But for someone who grew up in the suburbs and then spent ten years living in cities as a young man in my twenties, I love Vermont’s size, Vermont’s neighborliness, Vermonters’ “live and let live” approach, and what might be called Vermonters’ “jack of all trades” quality: everyone I meet here is involved with all kinds of fascinating projects, working with their minds, and hands, and hearts, and all are passionately dedicated to this place we call Vermont, despite our disagreements about the specifics.
I’d like to see more ethnic and racial diversity here - we have had historically and still have a very small population of color here (though trends like a growing number of African refugee resettlement programs in cities like Burlington are changing this, and for the better, I think). We also have 2,000 Mexican migrant workers, for example, working on Vermont’s farms, who tend to keep a low profile, for obvious reasons. Vermont’s legal support for “civil unions” after much contentious conversation is another example of our “live and let live” philosophy, and this, from state with gun laws so liberal you don’t even need a permit to carry a hand gun! And this sort of fascinating combination of factors is what makes Vermont unique. We’re 630,000 citizens who are not so easily pigeonholed, though the national media tries and fails to most every time.
Ultimately, I think it is Vermont’s balanced combination of fierce independence and “live and let live” attitude, of community-mindedness and self-reliance.That is most compelling to me.
CB: This question probably should have been asked first, but what is your background? Where did you grow up? How long have you lived in Vermont? Do you work with Vermont Commons full-time, or do you do other work?
RW: I am not only a “flatlander” (as Vermont natives like to call us new arrivals), I am what Ethan Allen called almost pejoratively, (I should add) a “Yorker” - I grew up in the New York suburbs just four hours south of where I now live in central Vermont’s Mad River Valley. I’ve lived in Vermont for six years - and I am volunteer (web) editor for Vermont Commons. I am an historian, teacher, and musician by training, and I teach history and media studies courses at Champlain College in Burlington, when I am not out and about at our home tending to kids, chickens, and chores.
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