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ATTACK IRAQ?
doron <doron@computerfinearts.com>
Fw: Washington State AFL-CIO Opposes Iraq War & Patriot Act
Fred Heutte <phred@sunlightdata.com>
MSNBC.com report on bin Laden tape
honor <honor@va.com.au>
Combative recontextualization
Phil Duncan <PDuncan@aggregatestudio.com>
The Erosion of the American Dream
Oliver Grau <Oliver.Grau@culture.hu-berlin.de>
war is approching, Iraq Forum on globevisions
"editor - globevisions" <micmol@globevisions.com>
NSW police to set up secret protest watch centre
Phill Orwell <aquios@roystonvasey.co.uk>
Declaration of War
John Harford <thefragment@thefragment.com>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:07:12 -0400
From: doron <doron@computerfinearts.com>
Subject: ATTACK IRAQ?
No !
Stand up and be heard >
http://www.computerfinearts.com/dialoque/attackiraq/
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Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:07:52 -0700
From: Fred Heutte <phred@sunlightdata.com>
Subject: Fw: Washington State AFL-CIO Opposes Iraq War & Patriot Act
Via my friend Wes Brain...
Resolution Against the War,
Attacks on Civil Liberties and
Cuts in Public Services
Resolution #6
Adopted by the Washington State Labor Council at its August 19-22, 2002
Convention in Spokane, Washington.
WHEREAS, President Bush's ever-expanding "war on terrorism" has been
cynically used to justify a $48 billion hike in next year's military budget,
bringing it to $383 billion, in addition to the $15 billion bailout of the
airline industry and $25 billion in tax refunds for corporate America; and
WHEREAS, Congress is forcing union members and other working and poor people
to pay for this war drive and subsidize corporate profits by raiding the
Social Security Trust Fund and cutting funding for economically distressed
states and vital government programs such as subsidies for low income
housing and services to the homeless; and
WHEREAS, the billions spent on armaments, domestic repression and bailouts
could be better used to provide re-training programs and jobs to the 800,000
workers across the nation who lost their jobs after September 11th, and to
plug the $50 billion deficit in state and local budgets that has resulted in
a major loss of union jobs and cuts in essential socials services such as
fully staffed libraries, education, quality public transportation with
reliable access services to the disabled, providing clean water and air,
healthcare and treatment for the mentally ill; and
WHEREAS, in the aftermath of September 11th over 1,000 immigrants were
imprisoned in detention centers, thousands of airport workers (many of them
immigrants of color) were fired simply because they were not citizens, and
Muslims, people of Middle Eastern descent and other immigrants suffered
increased violence sparked by racial profiling by the INS and FBI; and
WHEREAS, the federal "USA PATRIOT" anti-terrorism act and similar state
measures undermine labor's right to organize and fight anti-immigrant
attacks and other union-busting tactics by expanding the government's
ability to detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, to conduct telephone
and internet surveillance and secret searches, and to define people engaged
in political protest as "domestic terrorists;" and
WHEREAS, the national AFL-CIO's uncritical support for this profit-driven
war has derailed labor opposition to increased military expenditures,
corporate subsidies and government spying and provided political cover for
Democrats to jump on the anti-terrorism bandwagon;
WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO's support for the war has led to the callous
withholding of solidarity from labor's working class and poor allies in
other countries who are suffering and dying as a result of this conflict;
therefore, be it
RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council expand its efforts to
defend civil liberties by taking the following actions and urging the
AFL-CIO to do the same:
- ---Campaign for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act and defeat of similar
"anti-terrorism" measures in state legislatures;
- ---Pressure local and state law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with FBI
spying on political, union, and anti-globalism activists or comply with INS
harassment of Arabs and other immigrants and people of color in the U.S.;
- ---Demand the immediate release of the hundreds of Middle Eastern, Arab and
other immigrants who are still being detained without due process and/or
legal justification; and be it finally
RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council urge the AFL-CIO and its
affiliates to oppose the U.S. government's open-ended "war on terrorism" and
participate in rallies, marches and other activities to pressure President
Bush and Congress to stop the war and redirect money from corporate handouts
and the military budget to assist laid-off workers, restore and expand
public services, and promote global justice by providing humanitarian and
economic aid--administered by unions--to our brothers and sisters in other
countries.
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Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:14:00 +0000
From: honor <honor@va.com.au>
Subject: MSNBC.com report on bin Laden tape
hi all,
thought some nettimers may find this interesting.
best
honor
from: "jOhn pace" <earthplod@hotmail.com>
to: fibreculture@lists.myspinach.org
><http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15176>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15176
>
><snip>
>
>Powell used the existence of this tape, and the words he claimed bin Laden
>had said on it, to further tie Saddam Hussein to international terrorism.
>He claimed bin Laden was clearly establishing a connection between himself
>and Hussein on the tape, beyond all question. "This nexus between
>terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction,"
>said Powell, "can no longer be looked away from and ignored."
>
>The actual tape, played and translated live on every major cable news
>channel, told a very different story. Osama bin Laden swore vengeance
>against America if Iraq was attacked, and demanded that the Muslim world
>stand in solidarity with the Muslim people of Iraq. In very clear words,
>Osama bin Laden told the people of Iraq to rise up against both American
>aggression and against "socialist" Saddam Hussein. If the translations
>that were provided were reliable, there is no ambiguity in bin Laden's
>words on the matter. So much, it seems, for Powell's case that Hussein and
>bin Laden are working together.
>
>And this is where it gets interesting.
>
>An MSNBC.com report on the bin Laden tape carried the following sentence:
>"At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and oust
>Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader." This clearly
>confirms the clarity of mind Osama bin Laden displayed in regard to Saddam
>Hussein, and conforms to the recorded message heard by millions and
>millions of people around the world.
>
>Less than twenty minutes after this report appeared on MSNBC, that
>sentence was deleted from the report. A few intrepid Internet news
>junkies, including myself, preserved what is called a 'screen-grab' of the
>original article before it was scrubbed. The version of the article
>currently in existence has replaced the text above with this far more
>benign text: "The taped statement reflected Saddam, a secular leader, but
>made it clear that Saddam was not the immediate target." A similar story
>line, bereft of the portions describing bin Laden's wish that Hussein be
>killed, has appeared in virtually every mainstream news media report on
>the matter.
>
>The manner in which this story unfolded brings forth a number of serious
>questions.
>
>First of all, questions must be asked regarding Colin Powell's motives in
>this. The recording heard by the world diverged significantly from the
>spin Powell put on it before the Budget Committee. Osama bin Laden did not
>state an alliance with Saddam Hussein, but with the Muslim civilians in
>Iraq who will bear the bloody brunt of any American attack. In fact, bin
>Laden told the Iraqi people to rise up against Hussein. This is not the
>way allies deal with each other.
>
>Why would Powell go to such lengths to stretch the glaringly obvious truth
>in this matter? He is already suffering from a deficit of credibility in
>the aftermath of the plagiarism scandal that is currently rocking Tony
>Blair's administration. Powell stood before the UN last week and praised a
>British intelligence dossier that contained cut-and-pasted pages and pages
>of an essay, with all spelling and grammatical errors intact, written by a
>postgraduate student from California. The data was years out of date,
>flat-out contradictory in several key areas, used without the student's
>awareness, and yet was offered as an up-to-the-minute assessment of Iraqi
>weapons capabilities.
>
>This, in combination with Powell's obviously skewed interpretation of
>Tuesday's bin Laden recording, forces us to call into question every
>single word he and the Bush administration have said on the matter. The
>question of whether Saddam Hussein has ties to al Qaeda terrorism and
>Osama bin Laden can be put to bed now, it seems, alongside the tatters and
>shreds of honor and dignity formerly enjoyed by the Secretary of State.
>
>More ominously, why would a news network like MSNBC so obviously haul
>water for the failed allegations of the Bush administration? Events happen
>in seconds on the internet, but merely scrubbing uncomfortable sentences
>from articles cannot stop the tens of thousands of readers who are wise
>enough now to save the evidence before it evaporates in a cloud of silicon.
>
>These deletions display a manifest breach of faith on behalf of MSNBC, and
>call to mind issues surrounding the conflict of interest that are inherent
>in the ownership of this network. MSNBC, along with NBC and CNBC, are
>owned by the corporate giant General Electric. GE is one of the largest
>defense contractors on the face of the earth, and will, bluntly, be paid a
>king's ransom in the event of a war. Following this line of questioning
>leads to some dark corners, indeed. How often is the data being
>manipulated by the corporate-owned media? Are we to rely solely on the
>nimble fingers of keyboarded citizens to get to the heart of the matter?
>
>A report appearing later on Tuesday on MSNBC.com served to refute the
>claims of collusion between bin Laden and Hussein. "Although Powell sought
>to characterize the tape as a concrete link between al-Qaida and the Iraqi
>government," the MSNBC.com report read, "White House officials
>acknowledged later to NBC News that it did not. Powell did not know it had
>not been broadcast when he spoke to the committee and was 'a little on the
>front of his skis,' a government source said." These lines were buried
>deep within the report.
>
>By Wednesday morning, this text had been completely removed from the article.
>
><snip>
>
>William Rivers Pitt is the author of two books – "War On Iraq" (with Scott
>Ritter), and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003
>from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, Mass.
>
>Scott Lowery contributed research to this report.
_______________.play
<honor@va.com.au> <http://www.radioqualia.net>
+44 (0)20 76841859
_______________.work
<honor.harger@tate.org.uk> <http://www.tate.org.uk/audiovideo/>
ph: +44 (0)20 74015066
"perhaps attention acts on information the same way gravity acts on mass:
attraction begets attraction and a positive feedback loop is formed"
http://electricsheep.org/
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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 15:45:36 -0800
From: Phil Duncan <PDuncan@aggregatestudio.com>
Subject: Combative recontextualization
The following is from:
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YDL4XZ1WDJ3ZECRBAEZSFEY?type=worldNews&storyID=2294634
A senior defense official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity,
also said foreigners who have arrived in Baghdad to volunteer as "human
shields" at key Iraqi sites may be considered war combatants rather than
innocent civilians.
...
Foreign "volunteers," including some from Europe who drove from London,
arrived in Baghdad this month and have begun to take their places at Iraqi
installations to serve as human shields in the hope of warding off attacks.
The senior defense official said, "I'm not a legal expert, but you
certainly could argue that since they're working in the service of the
Iraqi government, they may in fact have crossed the line between combatant
and noncombatant."
- -end quote-
It seems the US senior leadership is facing up to the challenge posed by
the international peaceful protesters, offering the war mongering corporate
coalition an opportunity to think twice about bombing the shit out Baghdad,
in typical form. By declaring humanitarian efforts "combatant," the US
Hawks have posited any kind of relief aid as "enemy" and therefore fair
game as cannon fodder. What's next? Does this precedent mean that the Red
Cross and Crescent are also fair targets?
Why is it not surprising that this tactic comes out of the same end of the
machine that also accuses the Iraqi administration of, "violation of the
fundamental principle that civilians and civilian objects must be protected
in wartime."
Perhaps it is true that we despise in others those things about which we
hold ourselves in contempt...
- -pause rant-
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Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:48:55 +0100
From: Oliver Grau <Oliver.Grau@culture.hu-berlin.de>
Subject: The Erosion of the American Dream
The Erosion of the American Dream
It's Time to Take Action Against Our Wars on the Rest of the World
by GORE VIDAL
http://www.counterpunch.org/vidal03142003.html
This is a transcript of Gore Vidals's March 12 interview on Dateline, SBS TV
Australia.
MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, welcome to Dateline.
GORE VIDAL: Happy to have crossed the dateline down under.
MARK DAVIS: In the past few years, you have shifted from being a novelist to
principally an essayist or, in your own words 'a pamphleteer'. It's almost
the reverse of most writers' careers. Why the shift for you?
GORE VIDAL: Why the shift in the United States of America, which has obliged
me --since I've spent most of my life marinated in the history of my country
and I'm so alarmed by what is happening with our global empire, and our wars
against the rest of the world, it is time for me to take political action.
And I think anybody who has the position, has a platform, must do so. It's
also a family tradition. My grandfather lost his seat in the Senate because
he opposed going into the First World War. And he won it back 10 years later
on exactly the same set of speeches that he'd lost it. So, attitudes change,
attitudes can be changed but, now, I am not terribly optimistic that there
is much anyone can do now the machine is set to go. And, to have a major
depression going on, economic, really, collapse all round the world and
begin a war against an enemy that has done nothing against us other than
what our media occasionally alleges, this is lunacy. And I have a hunch
- --I've been getting quite a bit around the country --most people are
beginning to sense it. The poll numbers are not as good as the Bush regime
would have us believe. A great...something like 70% really only wants to go
into war with United Nations sanction and a new resolution. I would prefer,
however, that we use our constitution, which we often ignore, which is
- --Article 1 Section 8 says, "Only the Congress may declare war. The
President has no right to go to war and he is Commander-in-Chief once it
starts."
MARK DAVIS: Over the past 40 years or so, you've written about the
undermining of the foundations of the constitution --liberty, human rights,
free speech. Indeed, you've probably damned every administration throughout
that period on that score. Is George Bush really any worse?
GORE VIDAL: No, he certainly is worse. We've never had a kind of reckless
one who may believe --and there's a whole theory now that he's inspired by
love of Our Lord --that he is an apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to
Heaven while the rest of us go to blazes. I hope that isn't the case. I hope
that's exaggeration. No. We've had...the problem began when we got the
empire, which was brilliantly done, in the most Machiavellian --and I mean
that in the best sense of the word --way by Franklin Roosevelt. With the
winning of World War II, we were everywhere on Earth our troops and our
economy was number one. Europe was ruined. And from that, then in 1950, the
great problem began when Harry Truman decided to militarise the economy,
maintain a vast military establishment in every corner of the Earth.
Meanwhile, denying money to schools but really to the infrastructure of the
nation. So we have been at war steadily since 1950. I did a...one of my
little pamphlets was 'A Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace' --how that
worked. I mean, we've gone everywhere --we have the Enemy of the Month Club.
One month, it's Noriega --king of drugs. Another one, it's Gaddafi. We hated
his eyeliner or something and killed his daughter. We moved from one enemy
to another and the press, the media, has never been more disgusting. I don't
know why, but there are very few voices that are speaking out publicly. The
censorship here is so tight in all of the newspapers and particularly in
network television. So nobody's getting the facts. I mean, I spend part of
the year in Italy and really, basically, what I find out I find out from
European journalists who actually will go to Iraq, which our people cannot
do or will not do, and are certainly not admired for doing so. We are in a
kind of bubble of ignorance about what is really going on.
MARK DAVIS: Well, is the pamphlet the only viable option for voices of
dissent at the moment?
GORE VIDAL: Well, it's a weapon. I suppose one could --Khomeini had a
wonderful idea, which made him the lord of all Iran. When the Shah was on
his way out, Khomeini flooded Iran with audio recordings of his voice, very
cheaply made in Paris, and they were listened to by everybody in Iran --it's
too late for that sort of thing for us. There are ways of getting around
official media and there are ways of getting around a government which is
given to lying about everything, and the people eventually pick up on it,
but things are moving so swiftly now.
MARK DAVIS: You charge what you call the 'Cheney-Bush junta' with
empire-building but hasn't America always been an empire and isn't this
junta just a little bit more honest about it? They aren't shy in proclaiming
their belief that America has something worth exporting?
GORE VIDAL: I prefer hypocrisy to honesty any time if hypocrisy will keep
the peace. No, we have had an imperial streak from the very beginning, but
it didn't get going until 1898, when we picked a war with Spain because we
had our eye on Spanish colonial possessions, specifically the Philippines,
which got us into your part of the world --into Asia and, from that moment
on, we really were a global empire. And then, by the time of the Second
World War, we'd achieved it. It was all ours. No, what is going on now is
kind of interesting. We've never seen anything like it. There's a group of
what they call neo-conservatives --most of them were old Stalinists and then
they were Trotskyites and then, finally, they are neo-conservatives now.
They preach openly and they're all over the war department as we used to
call it, the Defence Department. Mr Wolfowitz is one of their brains and
they write really extraordinarily frightening overviews of the United States
and the rest of the world that we, after all, have all the military power
that there is and let's use it. Let's take the Earth. It's there for us.
They're talking glibly now about after they get rid of Saddam --which they
think is going to be a very easy thing to do --well, Iran is next. One of
them, not long ago, made a public statement --"It's time we really had
regime change in ALL the Arab countries." Well, there are 1 billion Muslims
and I don't see them taking this very well, and if a smallish place like
wherever it was ultimately can produce so many suicide bombers, 1 billion
Muslims can take out the whole United States or western Europe. I would
always opt for peace, as war is always a mess. But I was in a war which the
junta, Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, did everything possible to avoid being
involved in --Vietnam. Cheney when asked, as he became vice--president, they
said, "Well, why didn't you serve your country at the time of Vietnam?" and
he said, "Well, I had other priorities." I'll say he did. Those of us
who...we are the one group, the World War II veterans, we are a shrinking
group obviously, but we are the ones that are the most solidly against the
war. The people who stayed out of Vietnam, the rest who have never known
war, are just gung--ho for other people to go fight. They, themselves, don't
do it. But there is a split here between those who've had a bit of
experience of the world and of war and the others who are mostly interested,
certainly the junta, as I call them, in Washington, they're all in the gas
and oil business. People ask me, "Are you saying there's a conspiracy?"
- --because that's the word where everybody starts laughing. It means you
believe in flying saucers. "No," I said, "I'm going to change the world." We
won't say it's a conspiracy that all the great offices of state are occupied
by gas and oil people --the President, the Vice-President, National Security
Adviser --it's not a coincidence. "It's a coincidence," and everybody smiles
- --that's a nice word --"Oh, yes, of course, it's a coincidence" that they
are running the government and getting us into a war in oil-rich places."
MARK DAVIS: Well, Bush has claimed that the American belief in liberty will
deliver a free and peaceful Iraq, even with the stench of oil in the air,
George Bush probably can deliver that --a free and peaceful Iraq that is.
Isn't there a legitimate case to be argued that there's a greater good at
work here?
GORE VIDAL: There is no greater good at work. We cannot deliver it. Only the
Iraqis can deliver that. You don't go in and smash up a country, which we
will do, and gain their love so that they then want to imitate our highly
corrupt political system and, on the subject of democracy --I happen to be
something of a student of the American constitution --it was set up in order
to avoid majority rule. The two things the founding fathers hated were
majoritarian rule and monarchy. So they devised a republic in which only a
very few white men of property could vote. Then, to make sure that we never
had any democracy at work at the highest levels of governance, they created
something called the electoral college, which can break any change that
might upset them. We saw what happened in November 2000, when Albert Gore
won the popular vote by 600,000, he actually won the electoral vote of
Florida, but a lot of dismal things happened and denied him the election. So
that's what happened there. So for us to talk about a democracy that we are
going to translate into other lands is the height of hypocrisy and is simply
foolish. We don't invent governments for other people.
MARK DAVIS: The American virtues of individual liberties, although viewed by
many people with some cynicism, are still meaningful to people around the
world. It's interesting to note the support that America is getting from the
former eastern bloc European nations --Rumsfeld's "new Europe". The American
message still resonates with them, doesn't it?
GORE VIDAL: They're not clued in to what sort of country the United States
is. They've certainly found out what kind of country the Soviet Union was
and they didn't like that one bit and they associate us with their relative
liberation. That's all. What we're really about they don't know. They
believe the propaganda. They believe the media, which is constantly going on
about democracy and freedom and liberty and the greatest country on earth
and so on and the only thing wrong in the world is there are EVIL people who
hate us because we are SO good. Well, I don't know how anybody can buy this
line, but people do. People are not very well informed. The well-informed
countries --western Europe --know perfectly well what our game is. General
de Gaulle took France out of NATO because he suspected that we were in the
empire--building business, and he didn't want to go along with it yet,
simultaneously, France remained an ally in case there was a major war with
the Soviets. I don't think we should take too seriously those eastern
European countries. In due course, they will wake up, as Turkey did, that we
are dangerous.
MARK DAVIS: Well, unlike Iraq, indeed any members of the 'axis of evil',
Americans can change their government with some drawbacks, they can express
their opinions. On the eve of a war, whatever Machiavellian benefits might
accrue to the US, isn't there still moral weight in the voice of America,
given its history as a democratic force over the past century?
GORE VIDAL: I spoke to 100,000 people two weeks ago in Hollywood Boulevard,
down the hill from where I'm speaking to you now. There were 100,000, lots
of police, many helicopters overhead which, as the speaker got up, would
lower themselves to try and drown your voice out. The press did not record
that there were 100,000 people. They said, "Oh, 30,000 perhaps. That might
be an exaggeration," they said. Unfortunately for them, the 'Los Angeles
Times', generally a fairly good paper, had a long shot from La Brea where I
was speaking on a stage straight up to Vine Street, which was a mile or two
away, and you saw 100,000 people, so their very picture undid them. What I'm
saying is the censorship is very tight. Don't think we're a free country to
say anything we want. We can say it, but it's not going to be printed and
you're not going to get on television. One of our great voices for some time
now for peace in the world is Noam Chomsky. I've never seen his name in the
'New York Times' in any context other than linguistics of which he's a
professor at MIT. We go totally unnoticed. I can do a pamphlet and it's the
Internet that gets it to people. So I can sell a couple of hundred thousand
copies of a pamphlet. No word of it will appear in the 'New York Times'. To
my amazement this time, they actually put it on their bestseller list.
Generally, they won't do that. I can't tell you how tightly controlled this
place is and it's beginning to show, because talk radio and so on --I've
done a lot of that lately --the questions you get, the people are so
confused. They don't know where Iraq is. They think Saddam Hussein, because
he's an evil person, deliberately blew up the twin towers in Manhattan. He
didn't. That was Osama bin Laden or somebody else. We still don't know
because there has been no investigation of that, as Congress and the
constitution require. So we are totally in the dark and we have a president
who is even in a greater darkness, who's totally uninformed about the world,
leading us into war because, because because.
MARK DAVIS: Well, the defence of American civil liberties has been a
consistent theme of yours, most vocally in recent months, in response to the
Patriot Act and the new Homeland Defence Agency. But it would seem that
Americans don't share your views in any significant numbers. Why not?
GORE VIDAL: They do. What I do is quite popular. Now, mind you, we're not
much of a reading country, but we certainly watch a lot of television. You
can pick up a tremendous audience across --you know, millions of people have
been marching. If you read the American press...
MARK DAVIS: And yet there's been very little political response to the
establishment of those agencies or the very dramatic constitutional changes
that have been made in the Patriot Act. We're not really hearing a strong
movement, not from the Democrats, not in the media. There is a certain
acquiescence.
GORE VIDAL: Well, we don't hear it because they're part of it. You know, we
have elections --very expensive ones and very corrupt ones. But we don't
have politics. We made a trade-off somewhere. This was after Harry Truman
established the national security state, and suddenly television came along
and elections cost billions. It cost $3 billion to elect Bush. That's a lot
of money. And it was a campaign almost without issues except personalities.
Nothing was talked about. Nothing was talked about going to war as quickly
as possible, which of course obviously was in his mind. So you have a
country that is not political, without political parties. There are
movements of people, which go largely unrecorded. There are eloquent voices
out there, but you don't see them in print, you don't hear them on the air.
MARK DAVIS: Well, one of those voices is one of your contemporaries, Norman
Mailer. He wrote recently that, after a long life, he's concluded that
fascism, not democracy, is the natural state and that America as a nation is
in a pre-fascist era, a mega banana republic increasingly dominated by the
military. Is it a view that you share?
GORE VIDAL: I have those days, yes, such as Norman is having. But I am more
deeply rooted in the old constitution with all of its flaws and in the Bill
of Rights with all of its virtues. That was something special on Earth and
Jefferson was something special on Earth when he said that life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness --nobody had ever used that phrase in the
constitution before or set that out as a political goal for everyone. So,
out of that came the energies of the United States to have made it the
number one country in the world and the most inventive and the most
creative, and then the Devil entered Eden and we ended up with an Asiatic
empire, and a European empire, and a South American dependency and we are
not what we were. The people get no education. I call it 'the United States
of Amnesia'. I've written now is it 12 books I think, doing American history
from the Revolution up to the Millennium. They're very popular because they
don't get it in school and they don't get it from the media. So people do
read my books. But there should be more by other people too. It is a
terrible thing to lose your past, particularly when you had such an
interesting one, as we did. In the 18th century, we had three of the great
geniuses of the 18th century all living in this little colonial world of 3
million people. We had Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. These were
extraordinarily wise men and understood the ways of the world, and they gave
us a very good form of government. No, it was not a liberal government. It
was a very reactionary one. But it was the 18th century --1787 was when the
constitution was written. It was as advanced as the human race had ever got
at that time in devising a republic. To have lost that and to have lost all
memory of it --we've been having a big argument about we've got "In God we
trust" on the money. Well this is over the dead bodies of Thomas Jefferson
and the other founders, most of whom did not believe in God and wanted to
keep Church and State separate. Every American seems to think, "In God we
trust" was put on the money by George Washington. Well, it was put on there
by Dwight Eisenhower in trying to get some southern votes, Baptist
preachers.
MARK DAVIS: Well, you're one of America's harshest cultural and political
critics and yet you write and clearly talk very romantically about the
republic. You've documented those ebbs and flows where you believe it's
verged from its founding principles. In the broader sweep, what is the state
of America today?
GORE VIDAL: Adrift, but adrift toward war, and it's a war that we can't win.
I suppose we can blow up Baghdad but I think, when that starts, if that
happens, we can count on retaliation from 1 billion Muslims and who knows
what other? We are opening up --I don't know, a Pandora's box --it's as if
we're opening a tomb and God knows what will come out of it. This is
dangerous country. This isn't just ordinary colonial aggression --a European
power that wants to take over Panama, something like that. This isn't it at
all. First of all, they're proudly talking about a cultural and religious
clash between Christianity and Devil's work. Well, that's very dangerous and
very stupid. And I don't know how you win that one.
MARK DAVIS: Well, there are definite echoes of the 1950s in America today.
Some of the loudest critics of that shift are also products of that era
- --yourself, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller. Where are the young Vidals, the
young Mailers, the young Millers?
GORE VIDAL: One of the things that happened, although we don't have much of
an educational system for the general public --the writers of the Second
War, all except a few like the three that you've just named went into the
universities to teach. Eisenhower in a rather great speech when he left
office --he warned against the military industrial complex, which he said
was taking over too much of this nation's money and life. A part of it that
is never quoted --he said, in effect, that "The universities and learning
will be hurt the most because, because when places of learning and
knowledge, investigation are dependent upon government bounty, subsidies,
for their very lives --which we were doing, we were giving everything to the
science department to develop weapons, well that also went for the
humanities, the history department too, the English department. We have a
whole generation of school teachers and they're not very good school
teachers. Some of them are very talented writers, but they're quiet. They
don't want to rock the boat. They want to keep their jobs. They saw in the
'50s --what happened if you got associated with radical movements. You lost
your job and they weren't easy to find. Now, they're quiet as could be.
MARK DAVIS: Is the '50s back, or are the 1950s back with us?
GORE VIDAL: Well, nothing repeats itself except human folly, so no. I do
feel an energy across the country --this may be because I go to energetic
groups --that are fighting their own government, but they're going to lose
because the government is now totally militarised and ready for war --a war
they can't really sell to the rest of the world, but they're going to do it
anyway. This is something new. We've never had a period like this and it was
- --to somebody like me, who is really hooked into constitutional America
- --this is incredible. We cannot trust the Supreme Court after their
mysterious decisions on the election of 2000. We have no political parties.
We've never had much of them --I mean the Democrats, the Republicans. We
have one party --we have the party of essentially corporate America. It has
two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican. So in the
absence of politics, with a media that is easy to manipulate and, in the
hands of very few people with interests in wars and oil and so on, I don't
see how you get the word out, but one tries because there is nothing else to
be done.
MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, thanks for joining us on Dateline.
GORE VIDAL: Thank you.
Gore Vidal is the author of two excellent pamphlets on 9/11 and Bush's wars:
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and, most recently, Dreaming War
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Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:25:06 -0500
From: "editor - globevisions" <micmol@globevisions.com>
Subject: war is approching, Iraq Forum on globevisions
issue 4.3
war is approching fast, do you have a personal point of view on the matter
you want to share or simply say out loud?
please, be our guest, the Irak Forum, in the Smiling People of Iraq page, is
open to everybody
more pictures and more stories: Semana Santa, the celebrations for the Holy
Week in Andalucia, Spain, by Paco Feria
enjoy
Michele Molinari
Iraq Forum: http://www.globevisions.com/english/iraq/iraq.htm
Semana Santa:
http://www.globevisions.com/english/semana_santa/semana_santa.htm
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Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:02:31 -0800 (PST)
From: Phill Orwell <aquios@roystonvasey.co.uk>
Subject: NSW police to set up secret protest watch centre
hmmm... this cant be good
- ------------------
NSW POLICE SET UP PROTEST WATCH CENTRE
New South Wales police have set up a 24-hour centre to monitor anti-war
activity across the state.
The centre, to be based somewhere in Sydney's CBD, will also focus on public
places where there are large gatherings of people.
Acting New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione refuses to say how
many police resources will be put towards it but does say it will be open for
the duration of the war.
"We'll make a decision based on what we see unfolding in the coming weeks and
months," he said.
Following the Prime Minister's commitment of troops yesterday, the Federal
Government said Australia's security alert level would remain unchanged, but Mr
Scipione says police have decided that arrangements in New South Wales need to
be strengthened.
"The operations centre will co-ordinate all of our anti-war demonstrations and
we'll monitor them from that location and we'll ensure we're there and standing
by ready to deal with any issue that might arise at any time during the day or
night."
New South Wales Police Minister Michael Costa will meet senior police today to
discuss how to best protect potential targets.
"We do have experience based on the history of potential attacks on mosques and
synagogues, we had that the last time there was a conflict," he said.
"Every time there is some heightened tension in the region we do put our police
on alert to ensure there are some sorts of patrols around those sorts of
institutions."
But anti-war protesters say they are very concerned their activities are set to
be monitored.
Bruce Childs from the Walk Against War Coalition says it appears to be a change
of heart by police and could lead to demonstrations being treated the same way
as terrorist threats.
"We've had an excellent relationship with the senior traffic police," he said.
"I've attended meetings of all the public departments, the state government
departments presided over by the Premier's Department's officer and they've all
been very positive discussions so I'd be very worried about any over-reaction
of state police in this security area." - ------------------
to see the original article go to the ABC web site:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-19mar2003-24.htm
_____________________________________________________________
Get your Royston Vasey email address --->
http://www.roystonvasey.co.uk/
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Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 11:23:16 -0500
From: John Harford <thefragment@thefragment.com>
Subject: Declaration of War
See you at the detention center.
Declaration of War:
http://www.thefragment.com
- --oOo--
thefragment@thefragment.com
http://www.thefragment.com/ - visual/multimedia
http://www.eccentre.net/ - sound art
"Surrealism, as I envisage it, asserts our absolute nonconformism so
clearly that there can be no question of claiming it as witless when the
real world comes up for trial." - Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto
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