I don’t know how to say this…
Posted on July 2, 2007
by: Dr. Jerome Pestlebottom
“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”–Hermann Göring, a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the Nazi Party, second in command of the Third Reich, and commander of the Luftwaffe; quoted during the Nuremberg trials, 1946.
These past few terrorist acts in Britain have given me pause to think. For the past few years I’ve started speaking out against some of the rights the “government” has taken away to keep us, it’s citizens, safe. These terrorist plots have changed all that…
While habeas corpus may be the most ancient and necessary of policies against detention, without a possibility for release, I think we need to suspend it for a while. The consequences of one terrorist on the street is far worse than one (or many) innocent person being detained and held indefinitely. I mean, of course they’ll release the person eventually, so what harm can a few years being held against their will in a cell, without access to counsel or being shown the evidence against them do. Not that either of those things would matter, because they wouldn’t know what they were accused of, so… But, hey terrorist… Terrorists… Terrorists….
The Patriot Act makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.. I’ve said more than a few times, the worst thing about this country is the free, public library system… They’re not allowed to censor anything, I mean, they have in the past, but they don’t do that now. I mean, Candide by Voltaire, seized by US Customs, from Harvard in 1930 and Ulysses by James Joyce, seized by the US government from 1918-1930, but so what. Shitty, awful writing, both of them… Don’t even bother to check them out at all…
…Got off track there, I apologize. The library doesn’t censor it’s content, so books about how to kill infants at 70 miles with just thought could be in there, so we should be able to compel the librarians to divulge what you or I or anyone else checks out. Email is a very popular option for kids on the go these days, and we should be glad we know nothing will go unnoticed by the many data mining machines running. That’s important, because terrorists know about the interweb as well as any of you reading this right now. It’s true!
This brings me to Presidential Executive Orders… From this site’s discussion of Executive Orders:
Controversy
Executive Orders are controversial because they allow the President to make major decisions, even law, without the consent of Congress. This, of course, runs against the general logic of the Constitution — that no one should have power to act unilaterally. Nevertheless, Congress often gives the President considerable leeway in implementing and administering federal law and programs. Sometimes, Congress cannot agree exactly how to implement a law or program. In effect, this leaves the decision to the federal agencies involved and the President that stands at their head. When Congress fails to spell out in detail how a law is to be executed, it leaves the door open for the President to provide those details in the form of Executive Orders.
I do want people to understand that. Executive Orders for this current president were things that Alberto Gonzales (while personal consul to the president) deemed were legal under the constitution. This is a man who said the Geneva Conventions were “quaint” when discussing the treatment of detainees who were being (and still are being) tortured under that law.
No matter who you are or what you believe, you have to understand that some day the worst control-freaks among your bitterest enemies will control the federal government, and you better have restored effective, working constitutional limitations on that government before that time arrives.
– Rick Gaber
Some of these were in a video I posted earlier, but here’s the skinny…
Executive Order 10995: Allows the government to seize and control the communication media in the event of a nation emergency.
Executive Order 10997: Allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and mineral, public and private in the event of a national emergency.
Executive Order 10998: Allows the government to take over all food supplies and resources, public and private, including farms and equipment.
Executive Order 10999: Allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports in the event of a national emergency.
Executive Order 11003: Allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft in the event of a national emergency.
Executive Order 11005: Allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, public and private in the event of a national emergency.
Executive Order 11051: Grants authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11921: Allows the government to control the mechanisms of production and distribution of energy sources, and flow of money in U.S. financial institutions in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the president, congress cannot review the declaration for a period of six months
Changes to the Insurrection Act of 1807, in 2007: Wording regarding what needs to happen in order to declare a state of emergency from:
insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy
to include:
natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition
You see, this is the kind of wording we need in powers that allow the President to basically cancel all governmental functions and declare martial law… “other conditions” that’s useful because if we need to be extra safe, the president doesn’t really need a good reason to declare martial law.
Executive Order 11000: Authorizes the government to mobilize American civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
The Patriot Act: Third-party holders of your financial, library, travel, video rental, phone, medical, church, synagogue, and mosque records can be searched without your knowledge or consent. Also allows law enforcement to conduct warrant-less searches of your records, place of residence and confiscate your personal property without your knowledge or consent.
The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003: Instructs the government to build a mammoth database of citizen DNA information, aimed at detecting, investigating, prosecuting, preventing or responding to terrorist activities.
The Military Commissions Act: Strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals of anyone held in US custody as an “unlawful enemy combatant”. The act also prohibits any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD-51 & Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20: Allow the president to control and coordinate all three branches of government in the event of a “catastrophic emergency”. “Catastrophic Emergency” means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions. The end of this Presidential Directive has a section titled “Security” which is classified, there are also several Annexes mentioned, which are also classified.
Halliburton/KBR, which current Vice President Dick Cheney ran from ‘95-’00, was recently awarded a $385,000,000 contract.
The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.
Putting this entire grouping of laws/acts/orders into one clear focus shows exactly how I would go about setting up the dominoes to shut down a free society at my whim. Most of these executive orders were put in place by Kennedy, but they are in the hands of one George W. Bush (or more accurately Dick Cheney) right now, and that scares me. For a little insight into the person GWB is, here is a quote from Thomas Paine, out of Common Sense (read it sometime):
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho’ himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION.
But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed in the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.
Alright, so now that you’re good and paranoid and pissed off, let me get down to the nuts and bolts of what I wanted to say… It’s simplistic and broad, but it is this: human beings are human beings, and I love all my fellow human beings. I’ve felt this way for a while now, and I don’t think I can ever go back to feeling another way. I have people around me I care more about than someone I don’t know, but of those people I don’t know, I don’t care what nationality, race, creed, blah blah blah you are. I hate this attitude we seem to have developed and have continued to grow with that an American’s life is worth more than an Iraqi/Japanese/German/Russian/Italian/etc life… It isn’t. We are told and pushed into feeling that way in order for governments to control us and decide who the enemy is. Why do you people not seem to care that almost a million Iraqis have died since our terrorist war in Iraq began? Why does that not faze you? We are the terrorists. We bomb, kill, shoot, torture and basically shit on the people from a country that did nothing to us. Nothing. If you still think Iraq/Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, give it up. Show me one piece of evidence that Saddam ever wanted anything to do with Bin Laden and his ragtag group of misfit Muslims (which is what he was before we turned him into a god among militants).
Spending entire segments of a newscast talking about a celebrity going to jail, or a missing child, or any of the other Americentric (yes I can make up words) and idiotic news stories plaguing the pages and video screens of our free press is appalling. To quote this story:
Every 9.62 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th.
There are 9.65 Virginia Tech shootings in Iraq & Afghanistan everyday.
There are 1.61 Madrid bombings in Iraq & Afghanistan everyday.
In 11 days as many Iraqi & Afghani civilians are killed as the entire amount of American military personnel killed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Where are all the cries for these people? Why do we not care about these people? They are not the enemy. If there is any enemy in the world right now, it would be the power structures in this country and others that continue this rhetoric of “get the terrorists, get the terrorists”. Growing up with the threat of a nuclear war or a worldwide dictatorship in the world can surely make you think there is pure good, and pure evil, but there is neither. There are shades of every type, people who appear holier than holy, people who appear uncaring and menacing, but there is no binary state for people. Oh, right, except for the very binary and invisible man in the sky who loves and cares for us unconditionally, but will send us to hell if we don’t follow exactly what he says. That would be a dictatorship of the worst kind, it follows you into death, and there is no way to ever escape from it.
Religious beliefs are simply ways for our pathetically small brains to deal with the immense complexity, size, and conditions which existed before the scientific method. The scientific method allows us to look at the physical world, and the only world that does exist to our perception, and determine the laws that govern it. Why does religion fight that? Why don’t they want to know that their “god” made a spherical world instead of a flat one…. Why not “know” that he set off the most massive explosion ever recorded 15 billion years ago? There is a problem with religions, and that is that in order to be true, they say that they must be infallible. This is a problem when you consider how many revisions to science, which relies on precise observations and theories tested ad nauseam until given credence, we have had that blew away things we thought we knew and understood… We are but small, several million year evolved beings, on a standard astronomical object, hurtling through space without a fully developed understanding of why “this” “is”.
Within my lifetime, I don’t think we’ll be any closer to truth, but something tells me that for the rest of my life, I will hear religions spouting off their deity, whom I must genuflect in front of, and beg forgiveness from, because I am wicked for “being”. Our “purpose” if we have one, is to love all of our fellow human beings and support them in their quest toward love and happiness, peace and prosperity, and destroy anything, man or entities setup by man, to stop this from happening. The people who run your country don’t care for the child in Iraq who has been orphaned by this war, they don’t even really care about you or me, just enough to get our vote. We need to change that. Right now. We need to get mad and we need to rattle up this power structure that has held sway in this country for the past century. As Utah Phillips said, “I realized right then, I knew that it was all wrong, and it all had to change, and that that change had to start with me.”
I’m gonna finish off with a quote that ended a movie I saw recently, which I think anyone reading this should take the time to watch… Zeitgeist. Very moving documentary about the fucked up power structure setup at this time. Highly recommended by the entire writing crew of this site. The second is by one of our founding fathers…
The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly colored and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question, is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey - don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because, this is just a ride…’ And we… kill those people.
‘We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.’ Just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn’t matter because: It’s just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money that we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.
– Bill Hicks
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. … God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
–Thomas Jefferson writing to William Stephens Smith, 1787
Comments
3 Responses to “I don’t know how to say this…”
Leave a Reply
Let me admit from the get-go that I didn’t read the *entire* post. But, I wanted to share a few thoughts.
First of all, there are, in fact, sections of the Geneva Conventions which are a bit “quaint”. For instance, much of the section on the financial resources of POWs is tied to pay scales from the early 20th century (”Prisoners ranking below sergeants: eight Swiss francs.”) While it is ridiculous for Gonzales to say that the US should ignore the Geneva Conventions for “enemy combatants”, you should realize that there is truth to the idea that the Geneva Conventions could use some updating.
I completely agree with you that this administration has brought us into some scary new territory in its attempt to extend the power of the executive. However, impeachment is not likely to succeed, and would not fix anything anyway. What will fix something is to elect a new president who cares about the rights afforded to us by the constitution and can rescind all those executive orders. Congress could take action if the president actually carried out any of those orders. Congress could also close the purse strings on the Iraq war, but they let the President win that last game of chicken.
Incidentally, I’m rather scared about what will happen when we leave Iraq, but that’s another discussion…
Now for some religion stuff. I’m sorry, but I have to pick apart some of your parody of religion
I, too, have issues with the concept of Original Sin. However, I have come to think of it as a description of human nature. As we struggle through life we constantly battle the competing wills of logic and emotion. What we want is often different from what we think would be best for ourselves. However, it would be wrong to assume that religion is just about supressing our desires. I think it is more about helping us identify which desires will bring us lasting joy, rathering that a fleeting happiness.
If that were the case, then Christians would be forced to believe that *everyone* goes to hell, since no one is perfect. You should remember (as should many of the Bible-thumping Christians that are causing your angst) that Christ preached to the sinners (let’s face it, one of his most devout followers was a whore). Christianity is about offering a way out of darkness, not about sending people to hell.
[...] this started off as a reply to a comment I received on a posting of mine… here… but I couldn’t stop my fingers or brain from typing/thinking… So, here we go [...]
[...] is another in a series of Executive Orders/NSPDs/HSPDs that make me feel scared.. Is there a real reason to be afraid? I [...]