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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (29172)	10/16/2002 2:59:07 PM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

Dems Roll Over, Film at 11. As in a paranoid novel by Don DeLillo, it all comes together in the end. The Democrats can't stand up to Bush on Iraq because they're afraid of looking soft on terrorism and Saddam Hussein--but they can't change the subject and attack the Republicans on the economy because they're part of the problem too. After all, last year they went along with Bush's "stimulus" plans to revive the economy through tax cuts only slightly less generous than those proposed by Bush. They're implicated in the corporate implosions and accounting scandals: Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe made nearly $18 million by selling Global Crossing stock before it crashed; Joseph Lieberman, who was supposed to be leading the post-Enron cleanup as chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, actually headed the 1993 opposition to tighter accounting rules that helped pave the way for the meltdown. And it was the Clinton Administration that laid the groundwork for WorldCom by deregulating the telecommunications industry. Reliance on soft money and huge donors makes it hard to play the class card now--not that ex-candidate and champion fundraiser Robert Torricelli didn't try. Just in case the Dems might be tempted to show signs of independent life, the media are ready to stomp all over them with combat boots. Al Gore was widely slammed as cynically seeking advantage for making a speech opposing the rush to war, but by the media's own logic, which is that pro-war is the politically safe position, he was as bold and selfless as a samurai. Jim McDermott and David Bonior, a k a "the Baghdad Democrats," who went to Iraq and called for the return of weapons inspectors, were described by Cokie Roberts on Morning Edition as looking "like they've been taken in by Saddam Hussein"--because they appeared on TV with the backdrop of Baghdad behind them. The media have seriously underreported protests around the world (1.5 million across Italy; 200,000-400,000 in London, ignored by the New York Times, unlike a pro-fox-hunting rally it covered earlier that week) and across the country. The October 6 Central Park rally was not, as the Times reported, "several thousand" people. It was 20,000 people--that's a lot. And so it is that narrow political calculation, combined with the media echo chamber, gives us the phenomenon of politicians hot for war even as polls show that the voters want to wait, find out more, get support from the United Nations and from other nations. Years and years of letting the right define the debate and establish its tactics have brought Dems to the pass that 84-year-old Senator Robert Byrd, who regrets voting for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 and whose main cause in life has been to move as much of the federal government as possible to his home state of West Virginia, is the major voice speaking truth to power. * * * But then, the antiwar movement too has some tricky terrain to negotiate. In his LA Weekly column and in the Los Angeles Times Marc Cooper mounted a characteristically energetic double-barreled attack on the antiwar movement for lacking human sympathy for the victims of 9/11, not giving America credit for anything good, underplaying the badness of Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, continuing to bemoan the invasion of Afghanistan when it actually turned out pretty well, and letting itself be represented by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, anti-imperialist hard-liner and co-chair of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic. I don't think the antiwar movement right now is as monolithic as Cooper makes out or as numerically insignificant either (see Liza Featherstone's rather more optimistic report in this issue). Iraq isn't Afghanistan redux. But in any case, it's hard to imagine the means by which the movement could purge itself of the people Cooper dislikes. Isn't it the nature of ad hoc coalitions that they bring together wildly disparate factions with different reasons for supporting the same limited goal? If Ralph Nader can bond with Phyllis Schlafly to fight Channel One, and Cooper himself could pen valentines to John McCain because this warlike reactionary's primary run struck him as a challenge to the two-party system (right--who's going around the country stumping for every Republican running? but I digress), surely there's room enough in the peace movement for all sorts of people who oppose invading Iraq for a broad, and contradictory, spectrum of reasons. Besides, those anti-imperialist hard-liners work like Trojans. That said, the extremely unsympathetic nature of the enemy presents a potential problem for the antiwar movement. Who can regret that the Taliban is gone? Who will mourn Saddam Hussein? As for Al Qaeda, the day the left lets itself appear to be defending Muslim fundamentalists as challengers of American hegemony--albeit by slitting the throats of schoolgirls, murdering writers, arresting partygoers, stoning rape victims and crashing passenger planes into office towers full of ordinary working people--is the day American hegemony starts to look like a good idea. thenation.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (29172)	10/16/2002 11:17:39 PM
From: ManyMoose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 59480

LOL! Dogs have redeeming attributes. She doesn't.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (29172)	10/17/2002 7:44:38 AM
From: lorne	Respond to of 59480

ACLU Acts Against Patriot Act The American Civil Liberties Union rolled out a national campaign Wednesday to challenge government anti-terror policies that the group deems undemocratic. Dubbed Keep America Safe and Free, the multimillion-dollar effort was announced by the ACLU at a Washington press conference that highlighted accounts from several peace activists who claimed they'd been singled out by authorities because of their political views. "The Bush administration has presented Americans with a false dichotomy that we must choose between being safe or free," said ACLU national spokeswoman Emily Whitfield. "We're saying there doesn't have to be a choice. We can stay safe and free at the same time." The ACLU has filed 24 lawsuits for civil liberties violations since the Sept. 11 attacks, including several for airline passengers who claim they were kicked off flights or singled out for questioning because of their dark skin. The group will air television spots featuring a close-up of a hand cutting up and re-writing the U.S. Constitution as a voiceover charges Attorney General John Ashcroft with violating the First and Fourth amendments, which guarantee free speech and guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. The ACLU is also actively looking for people who feel they have been "victimized" by the expanded government powers granted by the Patriot Act or Operation TIPS, which encourages the public to report their neighbors' suspicious behavior to the FBI. (The site states that more than 200,000 tips have been filed since Sept. 11.) Several people have already stepped forward alleging government harassment, including: A.J. Brown, a 20-year-old antiwar activist and computer major at Durham Technical Community College in North Carolina. Brown was questioned by the Secret Service after an anonymous tipster called the agency to denounce an anti-Bush poster hanging in her apartment. The poster depicts Bush holding a length of rope over a backdrop of figures hanging by their necks and criticizes the number of death row inmates who were executed during Bush's tenure as Texas governor. Brown was getting ready for a Friday night date when two agents from the Raleigh office and a local police investigator showed up at her doorstep, saying they'd received a report that she had "anti-American" material in her apartment. They had no warrant, so she refused to grant them entry, but opened the door wide enough to let them view the poster, she said. For 45 minutes, they tried to convince her to let them into her apartment, to check if she had any maps of Afghanistan or pro-Taliban material, she said. "I kept saying no," Brown said. "Finally, I was like, 'I think the Taliban are assholes,' and they left a little later. At first I thought they were rounding up activists and incarcerating them; I was scared. After they'd gone, I didn't know whether to scream or laugh my head off." Brown, who refused to give her complete name out of fear of reprisals for her anti-Bush views, will be featured in some of the ACLU commercials. Andrew Mandell, a member of Voices in the Wilderness, a group that protests U.S. sanctions against Iraq. Mandell was questioned by Chicago police and a postal inspector after refusing to use stamps featuring the American flag on a newsletter going out to 4,000 of the group's supporters. "Because of the work we do, we felt some people might be offended by the stamp, so we asked for any stamp but the American flag stamp," said Mandell. The postal worker asked Mandell and a colleague to wait while she got the stamps, then went into a back room to phone the police. Two cops arrived, asked Mandell what he had against the flag, and left after he explained the group's position. The postal worker told Mandell to return for his stamps the next day. When he did, a postal inspector took him into a back room to ask about the group's activities and funding. Additionally, the inspector requested to inspect the mass mailing before it was sent; Mandell acquiesced. "It felt like he had a lot of power to make my life miserable," Mandell said. "I didn't like the potential of the situation." Sarah Backus, the co-coordinator of the Wisconsin chapter of the School of the Americas Watch, a group that accuses the Georgia military school of training Latin American soldiers to commit human rights violations. The group was in the Milwaukee airport on its way to lobby Congress to shut the school down when Midwest Express informed 20 of the 37 members that they were on a "no fly" list and could not board their plane, Backus said. The group -- whose members range from high school students to a nun -- was pulled aside and questioned by a group of sheriff's deputies. The FAA couldn't be reached for instructions on how to handle the situation before the flight, and the airline put the group up at a hotel. They flew out the next morning without incident. Backus said the group was never told why certain members were flagged, although one deputy theorized that it was because they were "protesting America" and another deputy mused that member Jacob Laden's last name was a lot like Osama bin Laden's. "It was like keystone cops," said Backus. "But at the same time it all felt covert and frightening." wired.com