09-11-01
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN NOW
DEATH TO AMERICA
DEATH TO ISRAEL
ALLAH IS GREAT
The note addressed to the Democratic leaders read:
09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT
We've had a massive disconnect regarding the anthrax attacks. It's no small issue that real anthrax spores were mailed to prominent Americans. Reviewing this period in history is like wandering through the looking glass. Biological weapons of mass destruction are used in an attack on our media and Democratic leaders and we still have no official answers to he attack. Bush even mocks the victims to their face at the annual dinner of the Radio and Television News Correspondents Association, when he joked about "not finding WMDs" to justify the war in Iraq. The media found WMDs in their mail, for crying out loud. If those WMDs can't be traced to Iraq, then who do they trace to?
In whose version of reality is biologic weapons of mass destruction used against high-profile Americans -- the major media and the United States Congress -- and the investigation is allowed to fester for six years without explanation. In whose version of reality does this not signal at least a massive cover-up on the part of the Bush administration? "Those weapons of mass destruction have to be somewhere," said Bush. Indeed they do.
Earlier this year Patrick Leahy commented that government officials may know more about the source of the anthrax than has been disclosed: "I think there are people within our government — certainly from the source of it — who know where it came from. And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from." The anthrax in Daschle's and Leahy's offices was identical in DNA to a strain originating at the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Leahy is at least claiming the government knows the source of the anthrax and they aren't coming forward. In whose version of reality is this not clearly a cover-up -- a conspiracy, even?
Six years after the initial shock, with no answer as to who terrorized Congress, "anti-terrorist laws" are becoming MORE aggressive toward citizens, not "terrorists. " We're now being asked to co-create a new reality where there's no such thing as "privacy". This isn't a strategy to combat terrorism, it's page three from a business plan for security company that has a no-bid contract. Get the people to accept a new reality where there is no privacy, and "security companies" will feed at the trough for evermore.
Corporate interests are enjoying MORE ability to write legislation and citizens don't even get a seat at the table -- we are ceasing to exist. Our so-called "privacy" is a burden to the security apparatus which apparently has no checks and balances, because even with Democratic control of the House and Senate, the Homeland Security apparatus and the war economy are still calling all the shots.
Here's a motivational poster I'd like to see: It's "one person one vote, not one dollar one vote." I've considered my own graphic treatment:
We need to scream this from the rooftops, metaphorically, of course.
"Convince the monkeys to build their own cage and they'll call it home."
It's against "this remarkable tableau" that "torture" has become the meme of the day. The national conversation about torture didn't make much sense to me until I realized that torture is terrorism. You become what you behold.
Torture isn't just aimed at the individual in the interrogation cell -- it's broadcast to the whole world in order to send the message that "resistance is futile." Have you ever heard a neo-con object to the discussion of torture? No, they want our torture program to have wide exposure. When torture is employed against innocent individuals with no access to court, lawyers, family, or even the charges against them, the message is "don't get on our radar. Don't speak. Don't move. Don't piss off the wrong warlord, or you'll wind up in a Guantanamo Detainee Camp." Secret prisons, extraordinary rendition (kidnappings), and the establishment of a surveillance state are all forms of terrorism that are aimed directly at us. "You have nothing to worry about, if you're not a terrorist" is a notion as terrifying as the existence of these forms of terror.
Naomi Klein discusses the difficulty of dealing with reality under the stress of shock treatment and relates it to economic and political policy in her book, "The Shock Doctrine." Interestingly, when she puts the two together it's under the heading "Torture As Metaphor" where she writes:
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