and it has the smell of the Roman Senate, as we come up on the last days.

[seemslikeadream]

http://12.170.145.182/Video/?ProgramID=1079

BRIAN LAMB, HOST, Q&A: Chalmers Johnson, when you wrote the last line of ”The Sorrows of Empire,” you said this, ”feeling such a reform nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.” I get a sense you might even be writing your next book named, ”Nemesis.”

CHALMERS JOHNSON, AUTHOR: The third book is done and it’s called, ”Nemesis.” The subtitle is, ”The Last Days of the American Republic.” It’s to say I don’t see the wait out any longer. That the Congress – or that the separation of powers has clearly broken down; the President has achieved virtually anything he might’ve wanted to do in that area. I don’t think the political system will save us. The military could conceivably take over; they’ve threatened this but I don’t think so for reasons that I think are pretty obvious, above all, the fact that no enlisted – only enlisted men have been convicted in the prison torture scandals, none of the officers. The result is that within the armed forces today, enlisted men are extremely sensitive to illegal orders, saying, you’re going to take the rap for it, not us. There’s no more illegal order than to take over Congress, so the officers I just don’t think believe innocent men would follow their orders today, so my wife keeps saying to me, come up with something optimistic and I come up with bankruptcy. Its – that looks like it might be the thing that will bring the republic to an end.

LAMB: You know that there are people watching right now that say that guy’s a wacko. I mean that’s an extreme of it but it’s like the conspiracy theorists and all that …

JOHNSON: ... If you and I were having this conversation in say, 1985 and I said to you, four years from now the Soviet Union will disappear. You’d have thought that’s not really a reliable analyst. Well, it’s gone. It’s disappeared. Its – Russia today is a much smaller place than the Soviet Union was. Empires go very, very rapidly and we’re getting extremely overextended; really very serious thin ice. It’s reported and this is not terribly novel with me, right now and a lot of people know this, understand it and are worried about the trend of event.


http://12.170.145.182/Transcript/?ProgramID=1079




DEAD BECAUSE OF A LIE

[Bucky]

1. "The military could conceivably take over; they’ve threatened this"

No, they haven't. The Pentagon bureaucrats pride themselves on following the orders of the civilian government. We may or may not be in the last days of the Republic. But Johnson is implying the officer corps is game for a coup. They're not. This is delusional.

If democracy is at risk, it's a problem of decay, of continued weak performance by the legislative branch, and the dangerously undemocratic ideology of privatization of governmental functions. But don't stick this on the military--they're holding up their end of the relationship.

[seemslikeadream]

2. now remind me again

who blew the whistle on the loose nukes?




DEAD BECAUSE OF A LIE

[seemslikeadream]

3. Naming Names at Gitmo

Naming Names at Gitmo
By TIM GOLDEN

Well into the night of Sunday, Jan. 2, 2005, lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz sat alone at his desk in the headquarters of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, consumed with a new project.

He often worked late. From the time Diaz enlisted in the Army as a 17-year-old high-school dropout, hard work had been his ticket. He had earned his college degree while serving as an artillery sergeant and then completed law school a semester early, driving a mail truck on the weekends. In 10 years as a Navy lawyer, his performance evaluations had been outstanding. As his six-month tour at Guantanamo neared its end, his stint as the deputy legal adviser there looked like more of the same.

But the task that absorbed Diaz that night in January was taking him down a different path. Sitting at a secure desktop computer, he printed out page after page of classified information, pulling each batch from the printer in case anyone wandered by. When he was done, Diaz had assembled a document 39 pages long. In tiny type, it listed names, prison serial numbers and other information for each of the 551 men who were then being held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay.

There was no question of the government’s desire to keep the information secret. Six months earlier, the Supreme Court rocked the Bush administration by upholding the Guantánamo prisoners’ right to challenge their detention in habeas corpus proceedings. But the administration fought on, taking the narrow view that while the detainees might have been granted their day in federal court, they still had no “legal rights” — and specifically no right to counsel. Pentagon officials said that they were withholding the prisoners’ names for their own safety. But keeping the names secret made it harder for volunteer lawyers to file petitions on the prisoners’ behalf and for critics to dispute official claims that virtually all the men were terrorists.

Diaz’s indignation at the government’s policies had been building since he arrived at Guantánamo. He did not doubt that there were dangerous men there. But he had come to believe that the Pentagon was misrepresenting how the detainees were treated and the threat some of them posed. As a lawyer, he found the recalcitrance of the White House indefensible. The Supreme Court had spoken. Why couldn’t the administration go before a judge and show why these men should be held indefinitely and without charge? “I feel like I’m on the wrong side,” he confided to a couple of the lawyers who were representing Guantánamo prisoners.



DEAD BECAUSE OF A LIE

[terisan]

6. and if the President orders that they shut down Congress ?

To whom would such an order go? and what would he do?

Dick Cheney tried to shut down Congress using the anthrax attacks in 2001 as a reason. He said that he and Bush would then consult with the leadership on what was needed from Congress. Trent Lott agreed. Daschle, Gephardt, and Hastert refused;many others did also.

[aquart]

7. And which general would they agree to let lead them?

And who else would allow our depleted, exhausted, BITTER army to rule us? And which army is that? The National Guard of New York is going to take over the country? When they get home?

JESUS, THIS IS STUPID, ILL-THOUGHT-OUT PARANOID CRAP.

We have so many more real problems to waste our paranoia on.

[seemslikeadream]

10. The poster has not read the whole interview

[Swamp Rat]

13. Do you work for the Pentagon? The Joint Chiefs of Staff?

How do you know, for a fact, this is "delusional" thinking?

"But Johnson is implying the officer corps is game for a coup. They're not. This is delusional." - Johnson may be wrong, but you spoke with such authority that it made be think you are somehow privy to information at the highest levels of government.

[seemslikeadream]

4. ”Blow Back,” called the costs and consequences of American empire

JOHNSON: My publisher called to talk about it and we, by then, figured out that it was a terrorist incident. We’d seen the attacks on both towers but – and we talked about it. I discussed it with many other people around the country, in that same day. The question being, who were the terrorists? It hadn’t crossed our minds yet that they were Islamic terrorists. The date stood out September 11th. September 11th, 1973 is a date known to everyone in Latin America. That’s when the CIA under the orders of Richard Nixon overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and brought in one of the most odious figures in the history of American foreign policy, namely, General Augusto Pinochet, so, we first thought maybe Chileans; maybe Okinawans; maybe Greeks, probably, the most anti-American democracy on earth. They will never forgive us for the regimen of the Greek colonels put in to power by the CIA until the colonels went too far and got themselves thrown out; any number of people in Central America from the 1980’s. You could – the list is extensive. It could be Guatemalans. It could be Indonesians. We, after all, overthrew the government of Indonesia or helped overthrow it and brought in General Suharto, so that our support for dictators has been legendary. We used to call for Dan Marcos (ph). I mean the first President Bush referred to him as a great democrat. Well, he certainly was anything but that. So that it – we were interested. The – certainly, I did not believe that we should have made it. Once – they’re trying to see this at once as a clash of civilizations. I don’t think it was. My own – I believe we’ve handled it miserably. I believe we’d have been much better off if we had treated it as the way we would approach organized crime. That is, attacks on innocent civilians, building cases that would stand up in court; focusing on who did it, since we knew who did it and going after them instead of this, again, war of choice. So many of our wars are wars of choice in which arguably the world couldn’t possibly have been worse off if George Bush and Dick Cheney had never heard of Iraq.

LAMB: Going back to the publisher though, some people’s misfortune turned out to be your fortune, didn’t it?

JOHNSON: Oh, no doubt about that and it’s an unfortunate statement. I mean that is, my publisher, Henry Holt (ph) (INAUDIBLE) is down on West 18th Street. That’s getting fairly close to ground zero and my publisher’s a lovely woman; she says, I’m getting out of here but the – it turns out that the first book I published, ”Blow Back,” called the costs and consequences of American empire.

[seemslikeadream]

5. WHO ON EARTH DOESN'T HATE US?

Chalmers Johnson


http://12.170.145.182/Transcript/?ProgramID=1079

[Peace Patriot]

11. Interesting item you point out--9/11/73, the U.S. overthrow of Chile's democracy

and the horrors that followed. I've been following events in South America, and have noted that Donald Rumsfeld* recently came out of the closet on his plans for the overthrow of current democracies in South America (the ones with the oil/gas--Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia), while those folks down there are moving as fast as they can to strengthen their democracies, their sovereignty and their alliances with each other for control over their own resources, economies and governments.

There are certainly many connections between the two 9/11's. A woman who was tortured, and whose family members were tortured and killed, by Pinochet, is now president of Chile--socialist Michelle Batchelet. A man who has strongly opposed torture and other fascist policies by the U.S.-installed junta in Argentina--Chavez ally Nestor Kirchner--has been president for two terms in Argentina, throughout the Bush Junta here, and his wife, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, was just elected president, and has already been the target of Bushite covert ops, and has publicly defied the Bushites that no pressure or dirty tricks on their part is going to change Argentina's friendship with Venezuela and the Chavez government.**

Throughout South America, a vast change has occurred, with leftist governments that oppose U.S. domination elected in Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil and Nicaragua, with the Bolivarians in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador leading bold new initiatives on regional self-determination and independence, such as the Bank of the South. These countries also happen to be especially rich in oil, gas, minerals and other resources.

Indeed, Rumsfeld could not be clearer that Corporate Resource War II is under way, and the new theater of war is South America. I'm proud to say that this was my first guess as to what Rumsfeld would be up to, in his "retirement," and I predicted it here at DU. I saw all the signs long ago, in my study of South American events and issues and Bush/corporate predator policy there, which has been rather "under the radar" as Oil War I proceeded in the Middle East.

We still don't know who was really behind 9/11/01. The unprecedented NORAD/AF standdown that day, and many other strange facts and vacancies in the official story, raise serious suspicions of insider help. One thing is clear--the operatives were not Iraqis. They were Saudis, a country with extremely close ties to the Bush family and the current Bush Junta. Also, Bush I virtually created, and funded, Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and the current Bush Junta is protecting that group (and also the A.Q Khan nuclear proliferation network), by proxy, in their support of a true dictator in Pakistan. I also think it more than likely that the arrests and torture of SOME Al Qaeda operatives has been selective, and has been aimed at COVERING UP Bushite treason re 9/11. This is likely why the torture tapes were deep-sixed. (I don't for one minute believe that Bushites do anything to "keep us safe." Their motives are greed, power and covering up their many crimes.)

There are similarities to the fall of the Roman Republic, but there are also significant differences. One of them is the American people, who are far more committed to democracy and far more potentially powerful than the "plebes" of Rome. Since circa 1 AD, the Declaration of Independence has occurred. The Enlightenment. The Bill of Rights. The American Revolution, and many other revolutions. The concept "one person, one vote." The defeat of slavery. The defeat of nazism. The recovery from the Great Depression, due in large part to the socialist policies of the "New Deal." The labor movement. The great communist revolutions (failures as democracies, but successful at spreading notions such as worker ownership of the means of production, equality among people, and workers' rights--a significant challenge to predatory capitalism, that resulted in socialist gains in democratic systems). The civil rights movement, and all sorts of egalitarian movements. The creation of the United Nations. The unprecedented nuclear disarmament treaty. The anti-war and anti-Draft movement of the 1960s. And much else.

This history resonates within us. It is not easily overcome, and, although the fascists and their rigged voting machines and their war profiteering corporate news monopolies, have tried their best to disempower the great progressive American majority, and to extinguish our democratic traditions, I think their victory is temporary and pyrrhic.

They have destroyed our economy and looted us blind, and have damaged many institutions. But they have not built anything. The Bushites--and their Democratic Party colluders--have not laid any foundation for imperial rule (what followed, for several centuries, after the fall of the Roman Republic itself). They've even wrecked the army! (--a mistake the Caesars never made!). We might become the world's biggest "Banana Republic," but we are NOT headed TOWARD becoming a great imperial power (as Rome was under the Caesars). I think we have a good chance at restoring democracy here when there is nothing left to loot. The Caesars did not loot ROME. They looted Gaul!

Our "Caesars" may have fantasies of looting THEIR "Gauls"--the Middle East, South America--but they are finding much better organized and savvy resistance in both regions, and they furthermore are hated throughout the world, both by leaders and peoples in countries with comparable power, and by smaller countries who are allying with each other against the U.S. bully (notably in South America, where the resistance is peaceful and democratic).

I think what we have here is nothing so grand as the fall of the Roman Republic. For one thing, Bush is no Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius (great military leaders, great administrators and builders, loved by the "plebes"--not to mention highly literate men). Nor is Cheney. They are looters and brigands, and the front men for international corporate predators, with no loyalty to the American people. Neither have the congresses they have engineered, with fear, bribery, and stolen elections, been great anythings. The cause of Brutus and cabal (slayers of Julius Caesar) was "the old republic" (equality among the ruling class), but Julius Caesar was a very popular leader, and his assassination brought great discredit on the Roman Senate, among the common people--the poor and middle classes. The Senate never recovered, and the republic was gone forever. But it was succeeded by some of the great leaders of Rome, several of the emperors, with the Roman Empire at the height of its power in the next centuries, and lasting for almost five more centuries.

The American Republic has been in serious decay, on both scores--the presidency and congress--beginning in the Reagan era, and American democracy (the power of the people within the republic) has been in parallel decline over the same period. The government has now been taken entirely out of the control of the people, or even the influence of the people, by a thorough-going fascist coup in the voting system, which is now run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite electronic voting corporations. The 'counting' of our votes has become a privatized, secret, corporate activity. It is no longer in public control. And the whole of this coup--and who it has put in power, both in the White House and Congress--is in the service of global corporations and war profiteers.

This is a unique situation--and a rather unique "fall." It is really the overthrow of the American people--as a democratic force, and as a sovereign people--rather than the overthrow of representative government, as embodied in Congress, which "fell" long ago, to corporate/war profiteer lobbyists, the filthy campaign contribution system, and the powerful corporate news monopolies.

As long as the people had transparent vote counting, the potential to correct the system still existed, and, furthermore, even corrupt presidents and congress members had to pay SOME attention to the peoples' interests, for fear of a revolt by the voters. With non-transparent, corporate-controlled vote 'counting,' they can now be completely deaf to the interests of the majority, without consequences. They can happily serve their corporate masters, put "guards" on their doors, and ignore the rest of us. And that is exactly what our "leaders" in Congress are doing, since the electronic voting coup--and what Bush/Cheney have done all along (who were not elected in 2000, under different electoral circumstances, and were certainly not re-elected in 2004, with non-transparent vote 'counting.' In fact, the people threw them out, but they stayed in power anyway, by means of nobody being able to verify the vote, and corporate news monopoly and Democratic Party leadership collusion in that coup).

The date of the coup was October 2002--the passage of the so-called "Help America Vote Act"--in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, but very much under the radar of the American people, by collusion of the Democratic Party leadership, until after the obviously stolen 2004 election. A great citizens' movement has sprung up against it, since then, and is fighting a mighty battle, county by county, state by state, to reverse this coup, and restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

And this is what I mean by the American people providing the most significant difference from conditions during the fall of the Roman Republic. Our tradition of democracy, and the sovereignty of the people, is much harder to kill than was the Roman tradition of equality among the ruling class through institutions like the ancient Roman Senate. It is deeper, wider, more long-lasting, and lodged as a passionate flame in many more hearts, than was the Roman Republic. Our fascists/corporatists can rip up the Constitution, but they can't rip the memory of democracy and the rule of law from peoples' souls. It represents a permanent and revolutionary change in human consciousness, and therefore it is revivable and restorable, and, in my opinion, WILL be restored, although we may have some difficult times ahead, while we do it.

-------------------

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

Discussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x323889

Venezuela, Argentina Accuse US of Smear Campaign
December 13th 2007, by Chris Carlson
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3001

[seemslikeadream]

12. ....

:hug:

[annabanana]

14. Yet another essay that should be in your Journal, Peace Patriot!

History and Civics will be taught in hedge schools by candlelight. I don't think that American Patriots will let the American Dream die and vanish without a trace.

It may have to live through a long twilight.

[Peace Patriot]

16. Okay, I put it in my journal. I find the Roman Republic/Empire parallels haunting.

And I've thought more about the parallel to the later part of the story, AFTER the great emperors--the famous "decline and fall of the Roman Empire" that occurred in circa 500 AD. This was the period during which the early Christians, the real ones, were systematically anathematized and purged, and their gospels burned, and the ascendance of fascist males who called themselves "patriarchs," who cemented an institutionalized "church" with state power (power of the Roman emperor), and created a dogmatic and intolerant church, that put prison bars around the human mind and soul, and was especially hostile to women and to Goddess worship. What followed was one thousand years of darkness and misery, and ignorance and social immobility, throughout Europe, Scandinavia, England/Ireland, north Africa and most of the Middle East--with the exception of the great Persian and Islamic learning centers, which were, despite great scholars and public works, not happy places for the poor, with social immobility and tyranny by the rich their biggest flaws.

What was lost throughout Europe was the egalitarianism of ancient Roman culture, which was based on what was, essentially, Roman secularism. Despite their many "gods," Romans were essentially secular, tolerant of differences, multicultural, and very practical, and created a vast civilization that incorporated many advances from Greek civilization (particularly Greek medicine, science and philosophy), and added to that Romans' extraordinary organizational skills, a vast new transportation system (Roman roads), protection for travelers, a comparatively fair legal system (the 'rule of laws not men' significantly advanced), acknowledgment of the rights and sovereignty of the "plebes" (the poor and middle classes, who had a VOTE in Roman affairs). Education was widespread at all levels of society. Leaders and persons of learning and ability in conquered provinces could become Roman citizens (though they may never have visited Rome, they were protected by Roman law and entitled to Rome's protection). And although Rome practiced slavery, it was not based on racial hatred. Slaves were often highly skilled, including highly literate and educated, and were often beloved members of families, and slaves could buy their way out of (or be bought out of) slavery. It was not the racist and socially immobile institution we have seen in our own and some other cultures. The slaves in the rural areas (ag workers) had the hardest lot--but were no worse off than the serfs in the Middle Ages (essentially owned by the lords and barons of the land). And the slaves in Rome often led privileged lives, and could acquire considerable power. Greek doctors, scholars and teachers were initially "slaves" of the Romans who conquered them. And most Roman slave owners were careful with this highly valued "property" and did not routinely brutalize slaves.

This is not to say that Rome's conquests were civilized or fair. They were bloody awful. My own ancestors--the Kelts and the Gauls--suffered tremendously from Rome's warfare. However, once Rome conquered a region, and set up systems to satisfy its own needs for raw materials, food, tribute and land, it was a relatively benign ruler, and local people benefited from all of the above (roads, transportation, fair laws, local religions and customs largely respected, education, social mobility, and "Pax Romana"--Rome keeping the peace among potentially bloody-minded tribes and against invaders).

Perhaps the most brilliant institution the Romans created--besides their legal system--was the Alexandria Library in Egypt, repository of virtually all knowledge in the vast empire, which contained at least 700,000 manuscripts, gathered from the Mediterranean and far into Asia. Here, scholars from every religion, and from every school of thought, including many secular philosophies, and from every country, could proceed with their work, unmolested by government censorship or interference. It was the first "university." Not that Romans were ever very censorious (until the emperors became 'Christians'). They were not. But Alexandria (also influenced by the Ptolemaic kings--Greeks and Macedonians, descended from Alexander the Great's generals--who stressed tolerance) was especially notable as a city of learning and unfettered inquiry. And the destruction of the Library--and murder of its last philosopher, a woman named Hypatia--by the 'Christian' patriarchs, for me marks the true "fall" of the Roman Empire. The date, 415 AD. This was 50 years before the fall of the last emperor of the west. But the moral, legal and intellectual failure that it represents, so typical of the 'Christian' patriarchs' rule for the next thousand years, signifies the death of a culture, which often precedes the death of a government or political system.

There are some bitter ironies for those of us with Keltic blood. For the one culture that Rome had no tolerance for--and utterly smashed and destroyed--was the Druid culture in England and Wales, and in some areas of "Gaul" (the west). (They never got to Ireland.) The Druids did not write anything down. It took young Druid students twenty years to memorize all that the Druids knew--of astronomy, medicine, metallurgy, navigation, literature, history, music, philosophy and other fields of knowledge. So, in effect, with every Druid skull that the Romans bashed in, a portion of the "Alexandria Library" of the Druids was destroyed. Their brains were their Library. And probably the best thing that could have happened, as to the preservation of remnants of Druid culture, was the fall of the Roman Empire, which resulted in Rome's abrupt abandonment of the British Isles. The oral culture then experienced a revival--which has come down to us as the Arthurian legends and their underlying Keltic "myths," which no amount of 'Christian' missionizing, or Viking or Norman invasion, has ever been able to extinguish.

Further, the Irish and the Welch held out for centuries, for a gentler form of Christianity, that mixed Keltic and early Christian beliefs. It was called Pelagianism, and was eventually deemed a "heresy" by the patriarchal Roman church (and stamped out). Pelagian monks lived poor lifestyles, among the people, and were as much "magicians" (Druids, healers) as they were Christians. They were undogmatic, and egalitarian. And they worshiped nature. The early Keltic saints were more Pagan than Christian. They were the last people to attempt to peacefully combine the old and new religions. And I believe that Hypatia, in Alexandria, was of a similar mind, and was the leader of a movement to combine Greek philosophy with early Christian beliefs, in a peaceful, common religion. (She was a "Pagan"--a neoplatonist--but was also the beloved teacher of many Christians, including Christian bishops of the non-patriarchal variety. Her primary interest was mathematics, but, in those days, mathematics was a religion, or, in any case, a spiritual endeavor.)

It was these true Christians, the Pelagians, who preserved western culture, in their rocky hovels on the west coasts of Ireland and Wales, penning their fabulously beautiful manuscripts--replete with innumerable Pagan nature symbols--while western Europe fell into chaos, upon the disintegration of the Roman Empire.

The new South American leftists have taken to calling us "the Empire." And they certainly have reason to feel something like the Kelts, and Druids, and Pelagians who suffered from both the secular and 'christian' Romans. And, from what I have learned in study of the new South American left, they are the true democrats, the inheritors of our most progressive and egalitarian beliefs--those little (and not so little) "third world" countries out there, at the edges of our Empire. And a most interesting thing is happening in this remarkable revolution--they are taking Christianity seriously, and it's NOT the Roman model. It is the egalitarian, nature-loving Pelagian model--a combination of indigenous wisdom with "love thy neighbor" and "give all you have to the poor, and follow me." People like Donald Rumsfeld (WaPo, 12/1/07) and the editors of the Wall Street Journal find this very aggravating--South Americans GIVING AWAY OIL PROFITS to the poor. And they are, for sure, out to smash it to pieces, and re-impose fascist/corporate (Roman) rule. They will not succeed. The South Americans are onto them, and are creating strong alliances of resistance amongst themselves, and strong institutions of resistance, such as the Bank of the South and independent regional trade groups. And they are putting us to shame, as to democratic ideals and the "Christian values" that our society is supposedly built upon.

We, the American people--especially the more perceptive among us--have an uneasy (or even alarmed) feeling of "the worm turning"--some kind of serious failure occurring in our culture. We look at this murderous clown, Bush, and his evil puppetmasters, and we don't recognize ourselves. This is some sort of stupid, degenerate, egocentric "Nero" of the late Roman variety. How did we end up with this? And the utterly hypocritical garbage coming out of his mouth about Jesus--and the hysterical, repressive, rightwing 'christian' minority that he encourages and favors with our tax dollars--makes us angry and sullen. Is this us? Is this what we have degenerated into? Of course, Bush is an artificial imposition on the American people by the corporate-controlled voting machines. But so was Theodosius, in a way--one of the last and worst Roman emperors (the one under whom the Alexandria Library was destroyed), who was imposed upon the citizens of the Empire by the increasingly powerful 'christian' patriarchs of that era.

Our oppressor is the Church of the Corporation. The 'christian' right thing is just a cynical tool they use--to scare us and brainwash us, and to promote the stupidest among us, as a sort of wrecking crew of our democracy (the stupid, incompetent rightwing 'christians' promoted within the Department of Justice being a good example). And I imagine that we feel much like the citizens of Alexandria felt, when these mobs of 'christian' monks, under the control of the local "patriarch," went rampaging through their city, inflicting pogroms on the Jews, and skinning the beloved head of the Library alive, and burning manuscripts. Invaded by alien thugs, whose madness is incomprehensible.

The madness of the slaughter of Iraqis, in the name of gentle Jesus, is incomprehensible. The madness of torture. The loss of basic human decency. The loss of all civilized values. The promotion of stupidity, and incompetence. The ascendance of thieves and liars. How did this happen? Yes, we feel much like those ancient Alexandrians must have felt, as their civilization crumbled around them. But our problem has a more direct and identifiable cause than the madness of God-crazed men. Our problem is the voting machines. Get rid of those Bushite corporate-controlled, non-transparent voting machines, and democracy will start working again, creakily at first but unstoppably. Really. That IS the problem--or, rather, it is the first problem that must be solved, before all the other problems can be addressed.

The fascist/corporate coup of electronic voting, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, is a RECENT coup: October 2002 (passage of the so-called "Help America Vote" Act by the Anthrax Congress), and the fast-tracking of these election theft systems all over the country by 2004. It is a coup that can be, and must be, undone, by citizen effort at the local/state level. "Trade secret" vote counting is not the only thing wrong with our election system, but it is the fatal blow that is entirely blockading change.

Democracy is a brilliant invention. It works. It provides the course corrections for foundering ships of state. And transparent vote counting, with full enfranchisement ("one person, one vote") is the method by which the majority gets together, in a collective action, and 'throws the bums out,' when they become corrupt and traitorous. It was the thing that Alexandrians lacked--full enfranchisement. They had free speech. They had a good legal system. They had a highly educated populace. But, when push came to shove, and the "Pax Romana" failed them, they could not summon the strength and wisdom of the majority to save their civilization. They fell to a minority--the God-crazed 'christian' patriarchs.

Our problem is NOT the decay of our culture. Our culture is actually alive and well, beneath the surface of Corporate Rule. Our problem is that the mechanism for achieving majority rule--and making the course correction that we so clearly need--has been taken away. Restoring it will not solve all problems all it once, but it will BEGIN to solve problems, and that refreshing, revolutionary, renewing vigor will help us catch up with our friends to the south, in re-creating democracy in the "new world."


-------------------------

(And now I will post this one in my journal as well. The Roman Empire certainly provides food for thought.)

[donkeyotay]

8. Bush said Jesus was his favorite philosopher, when it was really Machiavelli

That these neocons chose a philosopher to princes, not elected servants should have been an early clue that it would come to no good. You can't base your principals in tyranny and expect democracy to result. Of course, we know they never believed in democracy - right up to the point of training their pavlovian dogs to say, "it's a republic, not a democracy." Well, there can be no doubt that the founders of our republic expected it to be a representative one, and no matter how far down that road you go, you wind up with a democracy. The neocons do not believe in our inherent right to determine our own affairs. From the start they have believed that seizing power gave them the right to subordinate our public good to their private gain. May they rot in hell for what they have done to our country.

[Peace Patriot]

18. Poor Machiavelli! He is much maligned. I've maligned him myself...

...sometimes using his name to describe the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, although I try to avoid doing that. Machiavelli was responding to a particular situation, in which the Popes and Cardinals were exercising inordinate and corrupting influence on the business of state, which Machiavelli thought should be SECULAR--uninfluenced by the corrupt and hypocritical platitudes of the corrupt and hypocritical Church. He felt that the state should be guided by RATIONAL principles, independent of hypocritical 'christian' principles, and that a secular leader ("The Prince") would create the best and most beneficial government for all citizens, by making his own, independent, rational judgments on how to wield power and how to rule.

This is why Thomas Jefferson admired Machiavelli's writings. They inspired some of Jefferson's notions of SECULAR government--separation of church and state--and he adopted some of Machiavelli's ideas, such as the notion of a citizen militia. Machiavelli put his ideas in the language of monarchy (the 'Prince'), due to his historical circumstances, but his ideas are adaptable to middle class democracy.

Machiavellianism has come to mean cold, calculating ambition, without moral scruple. But that is not what he intended. He intended that a HIGHER moral principle than the Roman Catholic hypocrisy of that era should rule the Prince who rules the state. And that principle is REASON. He was encouraging the leaders of his era to THINK FOR THEMSELVES. He did advise "The Prince" to be ruthless in maintaining power, but when you understand the power of the Church during that period--the power to damn your soul to Hell, to anathematize you, to burn you at the stake--you can grasp why he thought that secular state power had to be ruthless, and also why it had to be somewhat deceptive with regard to a populace who thought that its souls could be damned to Hell by the Church. The goal was GOOD GOVERNMENT, based on rational principles.

And you can almost see Thomas Jefferson's mind turning this over, as he read Machiavelli--and producing the First Amendment. No establishment of religion--a powerful, ruthless, unsentimental, unequivocal severance of the state from religion. Goodbye, Pope! Goodbye, Calvinist preacher-man! Goodbye, witch-burners! Good-bye, religious war! Good-bye, Jesus! (--although Jefferson actually revered Jesus' core teachings; see "Jefferson's Bible").

Thus "the Prince" is converted into "the People," who use their sovereign power, and their revolution, to create something new in the world: a secular state. A state that is forbidden to favor any religion, and cannot be dominated by Popes, Cardinals or Calvinist preachers. A state that must therefore be conducted on principles of tolerance, humanism, the Enlightenment and rational, scientific, clear-headed policy. It was the same fight that Machiavelli was fighting, in the era of princes and monarchs.

[seemslikeadream]

9. The four sorrows of empire are

endless war, loss of liberty, habitual official lying and financial ruin.

[bonito]

15. Kick

[bemildred]

17. Four years sounds about right. nt

[lonestarnot]

19. 2011 then and still lying!

[KoKo]

20. Kick!

[Richard Steele]

21. K&R

[leftchick]

22. There will be a lot of people around the world cheering the US demise

I can't say as I blame them. Chalmers Johnson is my hero. Thank you SLaD!

:hi: