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The 2006 mid-term elections were supposedly about real change. Instead
we have the same sell-out political hacks doing what they've done since
2000-which amounts to propping up an illegal and massively criminal
administration that has placed all the power in the filthy hands of our
self-appointed Decider. Between signing statements and the whole series of
rogue executive orders that created the torture policies, the data mining
files on all Americans and the ever-growing massive spying programs that
date from 2001 to the present-this nation's internal policies are
unrecognizable as being anything like what was once American life. We may
as well dissolve the congress and courts and save some money: because all
the power now resides within the executive!
This illustration above was done in 2002, and the only change in the
situation, now five years later, is a 'democratically controlled'
congress: yet they have proven to be even more compliant than the
previously 'republican' body was. Some of the major differences now are
that torture and eavesdropping are not only commonplace but quasi-legal,
and we no longer have the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The
National Guard from the fifty states has been nationalized, the treasury
has been emptied, protest against the war in Iraq has been outlawed and
our personal holdings can be seized without notice, at the whim of the
Commander-in-Chief. All of this is supposed to make America and Americans
safer in this time of war. The right of the citizens to question the
actions of their government no longer exists-and nothing the Decider does
can be against the law, because the Commander-in-Chief has decided that he
and he alone shall determine what is legal and what is not.
The above is all true. And before this writing: Spying on Americans
without a warrant was a felony, and the government admits that they have
illegally spied upon millions Americans, millions of times since 2001-yet
because of the failure of the congress to Outlaw this outrageous
behavior-no charges will be filed against government agents or the
administration.
The "new" legislation even lets the phone companies and the
telecommunications companies off the hook for cooperating in collecting
and storing all this information: sort of an advance pardon for failing to
question any of the government's secret directives to them.
The United States has become a secret-stealth-state where nothing that
this government does can be revealed to the public they are charged with
protecting. That's one hell-of-a-way to run a country that is supposed to
be a global example, "With liberty and justice for all." And
because the congress and the courts have rolled over for the
administration throughout this nightmare: the public will need to become
very creative if we are ever to take back the powers that both the
congress and the courts have given away, to what has become the
Dictatorship that used to be a presidency. (1)
Some of the provisions in the most recent Executive Order include this:
"Essentially, in this Executive Order the President is assuming
unbelievably vast powers to simply sidestep normal criminal or civil
procedure, and to operate quite explicitly on the basis of guilt by
anticipation, guilt by pre-emption, guilt by association and guilt for any
reason in the mind of the decider. There is literally no limitation on
authority, except that the person's actual physical being is unaffected.
However, a person so designated by this Order could be rendered into a
non-person literally instantaneously. They could be stripped of every
asset, have every financial or commercial opportunity denied to them.
Worse, this literally creates a power to shun. Anyone who employs this
person, who hires them, who pays them for work, lends them money to tide
them over, who rents them an apartment, or allows them to sleep on the
couch, who drops them a few coins as they panhandle would be liable to
becoming subject to this order. The only protection would be to fire this
person, to not hire them, to not pay them, to not lend them money, evict
them from your apartment, kick them off the couch, and look away if you
see them begging on the street.
If the potential implications of this make you think of Jews in Nazi
Germany, think again. The Jews pre-war had it good compared to the
potential of this. The most disturbing thing is that this Executive Order
need not be actually used. Consider it as a weapon of intimidation. Most
Americans are not rich. Most people live in apartments, they may have a
house that the bank owns, they may have a car they're making payments on,
they struggle with credit card debt, live pay check to pay check. We all
live in these little islands of stability that can be so easy to
disrupt." (2)
The entirety of this increasingly intrusive farce is due to the massive
failure by the Neo-Cons when they attempted to create a permanent state of
fear: "a national nightmare" which they designed in order to
have something that we must all be "protected" from. Their
fumbling ineptitudes and their criminal creations are still being used to
give the appearance of a national perpetual fear. This they have called
"the War on Terror" which is a concoction from which only they
can protect the public. But the public has grown weary of these
exaggerations and projections, to the point that a new and even more
deadly event may soon be coming our way. . . The history of this
three-part quagmire is called "The Power of Nightmares." (3)
Thankfully, this may bring us all to the final chapter for these
failures that we call politicians-after which maybe we can all begin to
get back to life and the living of it!
Jim Kirwan
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