Only The Truth Can Burn Through The Fog

A Letter From ... Madison, Wisconsin:

It's been five years, and the fog of war that settled over our nation has never really lifted

It was the first day of spring and the day after the U.S. attacked Iraq. Madison was blanketed by a fog that was as depressing as the day, and we were out of our minds with anger and despair. It was late, but we drove to the Capitol Square to join the vigil we thought would still be there. But when we arrived, candles in hand, the fogged-in Square was virtually deserted. We met a woman carrying a homemade sign. She asked if we knew where the demonstration was. We wandered around for a while, looking for other people. Way up in the one of the top floors of the Inn on the Park, drunks high on booze and war fever saw the sign, leaned out of a window, and shouted "Fuckin' liberals!" and "Go back to France!" That's what they saw, just three more cheese eating surrender monkeys.
...

Five years later [...] the fog of war has settled in like a miasma of bad faith and moral bankruptcy. When the Cold War ended and peace threatened to break out, back when people still talked about a "peace dividend," the first President Bush forestalled the threat of peace with the first Gulf War. His son put the Forever War on a footing that now seems as permanent as the Cold War once appeared to be. The Republican presidential candidate justifies torture and says the conflict may last 100 years or more, and even the Democratic contenders hedge their withdrawal proposals with caveats and conditions that suggest anything but a quick withdrawal. Public opinion has turned against the war without really turning toward peace. We're still wandering around, lost in the fog, while the madness continues.

And that's why we have to keep telling the truth.

Because only the truth can burn through the fog.

Tell The Truth -- Tell Me Who's Been Spyin' On You!

You wouldn't want to miss this piece by Alyssa Giachino in The Villager, but please don't tell anybody you heard about it from me:

Police spied on many local groups during convention

With the public release of more than 600 pages of surveillance notes by the New York Police Department last week, organizations that protested at the 2004 Republican National Convention confirmed their suspicions that dozens of nonviolent groups were being monitored.

Some reacted with outrage, saying civil liberties were trampled on and that public expression of political dissent is under attack. Others were gleeful, feeling vindicated that their paranoia about infiltration proved valid.

Then there was the reaction of civil rights attorney Ronald Kuby, who said he is deeply offended that his name was not included.

Poor Mr. Kuby. At least his name has now been mentioned on a very prestigious blog -- not!

But the damage had been done:

“My street credibility has been seriously compromised,” Kuby said sarcastically. “Am I not a greater threat to national security than LL Cool J? Have I not protested the war more loudly than Alicia Keys?”

Kuby was referring to the surprising appearance of several household names in hip-hop and R & B in the police documents, which also listed Russell Simmons and Jay-Z, all of whom were invited to participate in the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network concert that was scheduled during the R.N.C.

Speaking of "No Big Surprise", they didn't have me on their list either.

Many of the organizations that participated in organizing activities related to the R.N.C. were aware of police surveillance, and even joked during planning meetings about the presence of undercover police or federal agents.

“It’s interesting to see hard proof, hard copies,” said Nancy Kricorian, director of the New York chapter of the antiwar group Code Pink, which is mentioned numerous times in the police documents. “Because you can have your suspicions. It’s kind of affirming to see the evidence.”

Although Kricorian was not surprised that Code Pink was mentioned in the documents, she said, “That doesn’t make it right.”

Right or not, is it not inevitable?

“For women whose immigration status is an issue or for women whose communities have contentious histories with the police, the fear of police surveillance might make them think twice about participating in political organizing or in showing up at a demonstration,” she said. “That is why there are civil liberties protections against this kind of spying — the spying itself has a chilling effect on organized dissent.”

Which is exactly why they do it! No?

It is unclear which elements of the surveillance program may have violated civil rights. Police say much of the material was collected from Web sites and listservs, and many of the planning meetings were open to the public.

“Some information is not solely based on Internet stuff, and that is of questionable legality,” Kuby said. “There has to be some kind of criminal predicate to investigate political activity.”

There may be questions about information learned off the Internet, but regardless of legalities, it should be clear that organizing an effective secret political resistance group using the Internet is not possible.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which together with The New York Times, sued the city to obtain the police records, has called the surveillance program “broad, clumsy and often unlawful.” The monitoring of the diverse groups that participated in events around the R.N.C. equated political dissent with violence, the N.Y.C.L.U. said.

Nonsense! The monitoring of diverse groups shows that this administration -- this Rove-Bush-Cheney-RNC administration -- sees all dissent as dangerous, violent or not. As well they should. When you're lying as much as they are, and implementing a set of policies as vicious and evil as their legislative agenda, all forms of dissent -- especially those containing the truth about what you're doing -- are very dangerous indeed.

Civil liberties attorney Martin Stolar said the documents are “just the tip of the iceberg,” and other kinds of surveillance likely took place that the public is still unaware of. Dozens of groups appear in the files, including Not In Our Name, Kensington Welfare Rights, New York City Anarchist Tribes, United for Peace and Justice, Grandmothers Against the War and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, as well as the magazine High Times.

“These organizations that are not talking about anything criminal end up in police files,” Stolar said. “That’s of concern because it harks back to the old days when they used to keep files and dossiers on organizations and groups that did nothing illegal but had dissenting opinions.”

However, he also said, “Unless you’ve been sleeping through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you are kind of aware of [police surveillance]. It’s to be expected.”

Unless you've been sleeping? Unless you've been sleeping under a rock!! And yet so many people appear to have been doing just that very thing!

The surprise seems to lie in the detail with which the police recorded the minutiae involved in coordinating multiple organizations.

“The whole thing was surprising because it’s such a bizarre waste of resources,” Kuby said. “There are real terrorists who want to kill all of us; none of them made it on the list. For every Depends-wearing granny using a walker that is being followed by the police, there is some loonzy kazooney jihadist that is going unmonitored.”

Wrong! Right! Right! Wrong! Right! and Wrong again!! Score three out of six for our friend Kuby there.

It's not surprising at all. It is a bizarre waste of resources. There are indeed real terrorists. Some of them may want to kill a lot of people, but nobody wants to kill us all! Kuby may be right to say no terrorists got on the list, but it was very wrong and very dumb to equate the number grannies against the war (of whom there are doubtless a great many) to the "loonzy kazooney" jihadists, of whom there are relatively few, especially if we don't count those who were motivated and trained in their "personal jihad" by "trusted associates" who just happened to be working for the FBI, or the NYPD.

Street cred ain't what it used to be, Sir Kuby. Sorry about that, sir!

John Penley, a longtime Yippie activist, criticized the lack of transparency and local input into the monitoring program, and said the Police Department has likely overreached its authority by expanding into states other than New York, and even outside of the United States.

“The N.Y.P.D. has now expanded to an international intelligence-gathering service,” he said. “You can see how easily they can overstep their boundaries, and there is apparently no civilian oversight. As history tends to show, police departments tend to abuse things like this.”

Yep. That's what they do.

Aron Kay, better known as the “Yippie Pie Man,” is named multiple times in the police documents, where he was identified as an “eccentric activist” who was “calling for like-minded activists to target President Bush for a ‘pie in the face’ attack during his appearance at the RNC.”

Some may think such a gesture would have been perfect. I happen to agree with them.

The Villager appears to have fans in the N.Y.P.D., as one of the documents mentioned that “Local media reports quote Kay as stating that denial of camping permits in New York City Parks could potentially incite violent protest action.” An article had appeared in the Feb. 25, 2004, issue of The Villager in which Kay was quoted saying that a denial of the Yippies’ request for a camping permit for Tompkins Square Park “May cause a problem; it may cause a riot.” Kay subsequently said he had only intended to invoke 1968’s Chicago Riots, rather than current events, and regretted having made the comment.

It's always unfortunate when historical parallels go unnoticed. Or when historical allusions go unchecked. Or when comments require to be regretted.

Note that it didn't matter whether a protest or a protest group were violent or non-violent; the super spies spied on everybody:

St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, which provided meeting space for planning activities and meals for thousands of protesters during the R.N.C., is named in the police documents, as well.

Reverend Frank Morales said, “It is immoral, potentially illegal and inappropriate” for the police to monitor peaceful meetings inside a church. “St. Mark’s has traditionally championed the right of protest but also the importance of the ethic of nonviolence,” he said.

So, ... How free is freedom of speech? And what happens if you speak freely through a battery-powered amplifier?

Geoffrey Blank, who earned notoriety for using a battery-powered megaphone without a permit in Union Square, said he is “exuberant” that the documents were made public.

He plans to use the references to him as evidence that the police targeted him for arrest during the R.N.C. In October 2006, Blank was convicted on two counts of resisting arrest and one count of using amplified sound without a permit, all from incidents in 2004.

“I remember the police following me, so it’s not like this is some mystery to me,” he said. “I was saying [during the trial] these charges have nothing to do with resisting arrest. These charges are just a smokescreen for silencing me because of what my message was because I was outspoken against Bush, against the war in Iraq.”

Wow! "Using amplified sound without a permit" is a crime? All those years I played in rock bands we never had a permit -- not once!! Is there a new law or something? And is it retroactive?

In other words, how much trouble am I potentially in, here. And furthermore, is there a category for "Satire without a Permit"?

Robin Eublind, an actor with Billionaires for Bush, a satirical street theater group [photo], said the multiple appearances of his group in the police documents is part of the Billionaires’ nefarious strategy to dampen the impact of other protest groups.

“We’re trying to usurp their media hit on the revelation of surveillance,” he said, adding that the Billionaires thrive on media attention.

“There’s no such thing as bad press or bad surveillance when you’re media whores,” he said.

Truth-Teller Lou Dobbs Under Attack For Alleged Hate Speech

Kurt Nimmo reports:

“A Jewish group is calling for the firing of an outspoken CNN anchor, Lou Dobbs, after he accused advocates for illegal immigrants of using propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany,” reports the New York Sun. “Mr. Dobbs has crossed the line between responsible television commentary and hate-speech propaganda of his own. Keeping him on the air is essentially sanctioning by CNN -- which is why we’re asking CNN to remove Dobbs from his very public platform,” complained Gideon Aronoff. “Comparisons to Nazis -- especially in this day and age -- are abhorrent.”

Au contraire, Mr. Aronoff! Comparisons to Nazis -- especially in this day and age -- are particularly relevant. But apparently irony rules the day, and relevance is fast becoming "quaint".

For instance, is it not supremely ironic that a representative of a Jewish group -- who presumably would want us to remember always what the Nazis did and how they did it -- would now tell us that mere "comparisons" to Nazis are "abhorrent"? It goes to show just how far we've fallen through the looking glass, especially when, as Nimmo points out,

it is perfectly legitimate to compare Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler and the Iranian government to a gaggle of Nazis. Dobbs made the mistake of saying something hurtful—never mind the truth of his statement—against a government protected minority group.

And that's not to mention the obvious and entirely overlooked fact that the propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany are well-known, easily detected and more or less ubiquitous in the bizarre culture of fiction and hatred which the criminals who've taken over our country call "the post-9/11 world".

It is no mistake Mr. Aronoff used the words “hate-speech propaganda” in his denunciation. Indeed, in the weeks ahead, as the Senate passes the “Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act,” also called the “Gay Hate Bill,” we can expect additional targets to come under attack for the egregious crime of speaking their minds. Prosecuting preachers and Christians opposed to homosexuality is but the useful veneer of this draconian legislation, as the government, of course, does not give a whit about the supposed rights of homosexuals -- or, in fact, the rights anybody but a small number of bankers and transnational corporations.

Apparently nothing for our pseudo-Christian leaders is Eternal and Everlasting but their newfangled Unholy Trinity of Fiction, Hatred, and Irony.

They've got the churches -- including the church my family attends -- fighting for what they call "freedom of religion", which is supposedly under attack. But the only alleged infringements that they ever complain about seem to revolve around the church's "right" to discriminate against homosexuals. No other aspect of religious freedom seems to be an issue for these people, who would never dream of allowing their church to be "used" for "political" purposes (such as, perhaps, a protest against a whole series of unprovoked amd unjustified wars) despite the undeniable fact that the instructions "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal" feature much more prominently in the Bible than anything it has to say about homosexuality.

And so the truth-twisters who now run our country have managed to turn the opponents of hatred -- as well as its practitioners -- against the Bill of Rights. How long can a former republic divided against itself remain standing?

Meanwhile, the irony continues unabated, as Nimmo points out.

“In calling for Dobbs to be kicked off the air for simply using an analogy about Nazi Germany, the Jewish group are behaving like Nazis themselves, attempting to chill free speech and create a climate where nobody is allowed to say anything in case it offends someone,” notes Prison Planet. “Since Don Imus made an ignorant off-hand comment about a black female basketball team, enemies of free speech everywhere have crawled out of the woodwork in an attempt to exploit the controversy and silence anyone who dares challenge political correctness or simply makes a statement that some would consider controversial.”

In the case of Dobbs, however, it is not simply controversy, as the anchor strikes at the heart of the concerted effort to reduce the American worker to carefully engineered pauperism and usher in a New Serfdom through open borders and ongoing currency devaluation.

Not to mention his longstanding efforts on behalf of electoral-system sanity, as chronicled in detail here.

It is really quite remarkable Lou Dobbs was allowed to righteously complain for so long on CNN’s dime about open borders and illegal immigration.

It's also remarkable that he was allowed to complain for so long about the bogus "voting" machines, in my opinion. But perhaps the powers-that-be judged the American public too apathetic to do anything, even if the truth about our so-called "electoral" system were generally known. They may have been right about that.

Nonetheless, as Nimmo remarks, we can

expect prosecutions and witch hunts to commence forthwith, especially against truth tellers.

Especially against truth tellers! There's a good one; Kurt Nimmo cracks me up!!

Isn't suppression of truth tellers the whole point of the exercise? Who else would they mount witch hunts against?

What Would Jesus Smoke? If Talking To Terrorists Constitutes Free Speech Then Why Can't We Hire Them To Protect Our Plantations?

This just in from the Irish Examiner: Controversial terrorism play to take centre stage

Final rehearsals wrapped up today ahead of the Irish premiere of a controversial play about terrorists behind infamous atrocities.

Robin Soans’ Talking to Terrorists is a critically-acclaimed work of documentary theatre drawn from conversations with notorious bombers and their victims.

The title of the play is a quote from the former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam who remarked before her death in 2005 that the only way to defeat terrorists was to talk to them.

Of all the blood-drenched self-serving hypocrisy! The very idea of talking to terrorists is repulsive! And the idea that you can defeat terrorists by talking to them is the most flaked-out moonbat half-baked tin-foiled idea I've ever heard ... well, maybe not ever ... but definitely since the one about the nineteen Arab guys!

Ahem.

Here's how you deal with terrorists: You refuse to deal with them in any way, at least in public. In fact, you make a public display of trying to suppress them; and you sneer at their culture, their religion, their ancestors, and their way of life. But behind the scenes you fund them and arm them and organize them and motivate them and you essentially get them to do the things that you want to do -- or at least want to see done -- but can't be seen doing yourself ...

... if you're a paranoid lunatic half-wit brain-dead liberal conspiracy buffoon!!

IRA Brighton bomber Patrick Magee behind the failed plot to assassinate Margaret Thatcher and the entire British cabinet in 1994 is among those Soans spoke with when writing the show.

Two of his victims, the former UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Norman Tebbit and his wife, who was paralysed and left wheelchair-bound by the bombing, also contributed to the work.

Magee talks about his path to using violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, while Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, explores state terrorism.

State terrorism? Ha! Do you think a former ambassador would know much about state-sponsored false-flag terror? Ha ha ha ha!

He knows a ton! And that's how you know he's a lunatic moonbat conspiracy nutcase wackjob communist.

The guy's a fraud, in other words. A charlatan. A traitor. An al-Q'aeda Appeaser. As we all know, you can never believe a word from those lunatic wacko nutjobs who actually want us to lose the war on terror.

Guys like this, guys who actually know what goes on behind the curtains, are subversive terrorist-appeasers who should all be run out of the country on a rail, except if they are out of the country already, in which case they should be kept out indefinitely if possible -- or else longer!

They have too much knowledge and it clashes with the propaganda in such an awful way! The cognitive dissonance they cause is too much for a free society to bear, so the sooner they STFU the better.

And the same goes for that smartass kid from Alaska who held up his "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner while the Olympic Torch was going by.

Joseph Frederick, a former high school student whose witty observation that the Winter Olympics torch relay passing by his school in January 2002 was akin to a giant bong eliciting religious rapture, is being challenged by his school board that says his un-Godly fun-poking is a sacriledge too far.

Ludicrous? So's our so-called president. But the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case is now before the Supreme Court. And guess who's arguing the pro-censorship side? Kenneth Starr!!

No kidding! Would I kid you about something as serious as this?

As a South Park sketch it would have raised the roof. But Clinton special prosecutor Ken Starr is fighting the good fight for the Bush-backed Juneau High, because as all God-fearin' Christians know There Is Nothing Funny About Jesus.

Ironic times indeed ... and meanwhile, back in Dublin,

A cast of eight will play 29 roles representing people directly affected by terrorism from Belfast, London, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Turkey and the Middle East.

The people interviewed for the play will not be called by their real name on stage, but will be easily identifiable by the places, times and situations they talk about.

... but only by people who know some history, no? Otherwise their identities could be clear as Irish coffee.

But still, it's the perspectives that count, not the names. No?

The production, by the award-winning Calypso Theatre company, previews in Trinity College Dublin’s Samuel Beckett Theatre tomorrow night [March 20] before opening to the public on Wednesday for 12 nights.

The play then moves to The Mill theatre in Dundrum and on to the Pavilion in Dun Laoghaire.

Not likely headed for Broadway anytime soon, or is it?

But maybe it should! Can live theatre do what dead newspapers can't? Do we know yet? Has anyone tried something similar?

These are not purely rhetorical questions, BTW. They're real questions that I haven't been able to answer, despite a bit of research, and if you, kind reader, know anything that could help me along in any of these directions, please leave me a comment.

This is how we learn, no?

Ahem. Some of us learn. Ha ha ha.

In any case, this is not the sort of story -- nor the sort of play -- you see every day, so I'll try to keep an eye on the production and the brains behind it -- director Bairbre Ni Caoimh ...

“Generally when he interviewed someone he’d just sit there with them and have a chat, explains Ni Caoimh. “What he puts into the play is little details of their characters that make it awfully interesting. You don’t have a party political broadcast, you’ll have Mo Mowlam there asking her husband to get her a cup of coffee, and their Labrador puppy has just messed up the carpet, so you have all that domestic stuff.

Or there’s a fantastic character, Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He’s one of the strongest advocates of human rights, because when he went to Uzbekistan he realised that there was terrible state terrorism, the state was perpetrating all sorts of things, they were getting all sorts of confessions wholesale from people as a result of torture. The Americans and the Brits were turning a blind eye because of the oil pipeline.

But instead of just telling you that, when Robin met him, this man, who was terribly morally righteous about the state of the world, in his private life he had left his wife for a dancing girl, a belly dancer. So you have this fantastic scene where he’s there talking about all these human rights violations, and you have this woman who’s desperately trying to be interviewed, because she believes she’s an artist, and she’s been misrepresented by the newspapers; so that all through it she’s trying to get her story in, and it is incredibly funny. Yet you’re getting all the other information as well.”

... and playwright Robin Soans.

The playwright believes the work gives a fresh view to what drives those who carry out terrorist attacks.

“Why did I write this play?” asked Soans.

“Because it is so easy to be judgmental and moralistic, but before you make those judgements and take the moral high ground, there’s some more information I would like you to consider, and another perspective I’d like you to entertain.”

More information? Another perspective?

Bring 'Em On!!!

Ahem.

This just in from FOXNEWS: The notorious Chiquita Banana company has admitted that it hired terrorists to provide "security" for its plantations in Colombia, in an arrangement that was in place for years. The punishment? A slap on the wrist.

Following the guilty plea, Chiquita’s Chief Executive Officer Fernando Aguirre announced, “The agreement reached with the [Department of Justice] today is in the best interests of the company.” It is also in the best interests of company executives who for some reason are not facing criminal charges for funding terrorism.
...

In sharp contrast to the Bush administration’s failure to levy criminal charges against Chiquita executives, Denmark’s government announced last week that it had charged seven workers from a local clothing company with funding terrorism because they pledged a portion of the company’s profits from tee-shirt sales to support the radio station of the FARC, Colombia’s largest guerrilla group. Even though no money was actually transferred to the FARC—and even if it had been, the amount would have paled in comparison to the $1.7 million Chiquita paid to the AUC—the seven Danes face up to six years in prison solely for their intent to send funds to a group on the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.

The Bush administration’s proverbial slap on the wrist of a US corporation that provided substantial funding to a group listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization raises serious questions about who is truly being targeted in the war on terror. Evidently, Chiquita’s claims that it was only protecting its operations and employees justified its funding of terrorism in the eyes of the Bush administration.

Indeed, this case appears to set a legal precedent for other US corporations and their executives that are funding, or that decide in the future to fund, terrorist groups. If corporate executives determine that the profits earned sufficiently exceed the likely fine, then it makes good business sense to fund terrorism. In Chiquita’s case, the $25 million fine amounts to a relatively small portion of the company’s more than $200 million in profits earned since the AUC was designated a terrorist organization in 2001. Chiquita’s fine also amounts to less than half of the $51.5 million that the company pocketed from the 2004 sale of its Colombian subsidiary, Banadex.

On the other hand, if an independent US journalist such as myself paid the FARC $1.7 million to ensure my safety while working in rebel-controlled regions, it is difficult to believe that my punishment would only be a fine that amounted to a small portion of my earnings over the past five years. There is little doubt in my mind that I would be charged with funding terrorism and locked away for a good number of years. The Chiquita case is further confirmation that the Bush administration is not a government of the people, but a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.

You can't make up stuff like this! And unfortunately, I don't have to.

[UPDATE]

This post has been supplemented with considerable historical material -- both recent and much earlier. See the comments thread for a lot more. And thanks to ibidem for helping me to flesh out the story behind the scenes.