Notes from Peter

2002-12-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

>PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED FOR TAKING PICTURES OF VICE
>PRESIDENT'S HOTEL!
>
>An amateur photographer named Mike Maginnis was arrested on Tuesday in
>his home city of Denver - for simply taking pictures of buildings in an
>area where Vice President Cheney was residing. Maginnis told his story
>on Wednesday's edition of Off The Hook.
>
>Maginnis's morning commute took him past the Adams Mark Hotel on Court
>Place. Maginnis, who says he always carried his camera wherever he
>went, snapped about 30 pictures of the hotel and the surrounding area -
>which included Denver police, Army rangers, and rooftop snipers.
>Maginnis, who works in information technology, frequently photographs
>such subjects as corporate buildings and communications equipment.
>
>The following is Maginnis's account of what transpired:
>
>As he was putting his camera away, Maginnis found himself confronted by
>a Denver police officer who demanded that he hand over his film and
>camera. When he refused to give up his Nikon F2, the officer pushed him
>to the ground and arrested him.
>
>After being brought to the District 1 police station on Decatur Street,
>Maginnis was made to wait alone in an interrogation room. Two hours
>later, a Secret Service agent arrived, who identified himself as
>Special Agent "Willse."
>
>The agent told Maginnis that his "suspicious activities" made him a
>threat to national security, and that he would be charged as a
>terrorist under the USA-PATRIOT act. The Secret Service agent tried to
>make Maginnis admit that he was taking the photographs to analyze
>weaknesses in the Vice President's security entourage and "cause terror
>and mayhem."
>
>When Maginnis refused to admit to being any sort of terrorist, the
>Secret Service agent called him a "raghead collaborator" and a "dirty
>pinko faggot."
>
>After approximately an hour of interrogation, Maginnis was allowed to
>make a telephone call. Rather than contacting a lawyer, he called the
>Denver Post and asked for the news desk. This was immediately overheard
>by the desk sergeant, who hung up the phone and placed Maginnis in a
>holding cell.
>
>Three hours later, Maginnis was finally released, but with no
>explanation. He received no copy of an arrest report, and no receipt
>for his confiscated possessions. He was told that he would probably not
>get his camera back, as it was being held as evidence.
>
>Maginnis's lawyer contacted the Denver Police Department for an
>explanation of the day's events, but the police denied ever having
>Maginnis - or anyone matching his description - in custody. At press
>time, the Denver PD's Press Information Office did not return telephone
>messages left by 2600.
>
>The new police powers introduced by the USA-PATRIOT act, in the name of
>figh ting terrorism, have been frightening in their apparent potential
>for abuse. Mike Maginnis's experience on Tuesday is a poignant example
>of how this abuse is beginning to occur. It suggests that a wide range
>of activities which might be considered "suspicious" could be suddenly
>labeled a prelude to terrorism, and be grounds for arrest.
>
>We will continue to post updates to this story as we learn them.
>
>2600 Magazine
>P.O. Box 752 Middle Island, NY 11953
>Telephone: 631-751-2600
>Fax: 631-474-2677
>

2002-12-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

Eric Leser | New York Correspondent
LE MONDE | 24.12.02 | 12h35
Such a mark of distrust with regard to the federal government is without precedent. Town councils of about thirty American cities among which Chicago (Illinois), Tampa (Florida), Berkeley (California), Santa Fe (New Mexico), Flagstaff (Arizona) or Fairbanks (Alaska) voted for resolutions requiring the respect of fundamental freedoms.
And an about sixty other localities should follow in the next weeks, announced the New York Times of December 23.
This step is before any symbolic system. It could at most justify the refusal by the local police forces to cooperate with the federal Office of investigation (FBI) or the immigration department (INS). But it is revealing of a faintness on the means used by the Bush administration to fight the terrorist threat on the American ground.
Traumatisés by the sudden discovery of their vulnerability, the Americans were ready, last year, to sacrifice a share of their freedom and their civic rights in exchange of more than safety. Increasingly many, they start to regret this choice. "Us avonc believed with a certain naivety that we were comfortably safe from any form of intrusion in our private life and attack to our fundamental freedoms. It was an error ", underlines Stewart Baker, former adviser for the national safety of president Bill Clinton. "There is an increasingly strong concern on the way in which the government acts to protect us from terrorism. One notes a disproportionate use of the capacity without concern of the private life of the citizens ", adds Elliot Mincberg, legal person in charge for People for the American Way, an association whose vocation is the protection of the Constitution.
"TO BENEFIT FROM THE CIRCUMSTANCES"
During more than twenty years, the information agencies and the FBI were seen prohibiting the espionage and the monitoring of the American citizens. "That had even ended up entering the culture of the services of safety" , underlines Mr. Baker. But the Bush administration and its Minister for justice, John Ashcroft, consider these rules antiquated and being able even to facilitate the terrorist activities on the American ground. They systematically undertook to make them disappear. "They benefitted from the circumstances to obtain what they always dreamed, in particular with Patriot Act", Mike Godwin is indignant, of the Center for the democracy.
One month ago, a Court of Appeal being based on this "patriotic law" , voted in the weeks following September 11, 2001 to reinforce the means of fight against terrorism, authorized listenings of citizens in the absence of any supposed criminal activity. "From the moment when, for example, the government declares that somebody is a" enemy combatant ", it can indefinitely maintain it in prison without showing it, without him to give the possibility of seeing a lawyer and without making it pass in front of a judge ", explains Nadine Strossen, president of American Civil Liberties Union. This organization, become the black animal of John Ashcroft, does not cease gaining new members. They are today more than 330 000.
But the combat of the defenders of fundamental freedoms is difficult. The change of the police methods is done in discretion. "If it is decided that the fear of terrorism justifies the abandonment of our elementary rights to the private life, the least of the things is to discuss it. We cannot accept that that is done in our back ", is indignant Cindy Cohn, of the foundation for the electronic border.
AN IMMEDIATE PROFILE
For the specialists in the Internet and information, the part is already played and lost. In 2003, the new administration responsible for the safety of transport will start to use a data base drawing up an immediate profile of the passengers of the airline companies in order to identify the potential suspects. The identity, the routes passed, the methods of payment, the origin, the marital status of the travellers will be in a gigantic data base.
It is nothing beside the project over five years baptized "total data-processing Vigilance" (Total Awareness Information), whose direction was entrusted to the ex-admiral John Poindexter. This former adviser for the safety of president Ronald Reagan in 1985 and 1986 was one of the figures of the scandal Iran-Countered, a plot intended to help the guerrilla antisandinist financially, in Nicaragua. The Bush administration entrusted to him the responsibility for an information processing system worthy of "Big Brother" of George Orwell. It should make it possible to cross the whole of the data bases of the country, those of the Social security, the credit cards, the FBI, the local police forces, the driving licences, the bank accounts, the hospitals, the insurers, the army, the companies of telephone... The objective is to detect the unusual behavior of terrorists in power.
SPRINKLED SPRINKLER
By provocation, defenders of freedoms decided to give to Mr. Poindexter a first impression of "total data-processing Vigilance" . They published on Internet its electronic address, that of its residence, its personal telephone numbers. They gave images by satellite of its house in the suburbs of Washington and the charts showing where it is located.
They even created a forum on line in order to collect all information on the activities from day to day of Mr. Poindexter. Blow, the biography of the former admiral suddenly disappeared from the site of the Pentagon just like the majority of information presenting on Internet the project Total Awareness Information. Even its Latin currency "scientia is potentia" (knowledge is the capacity) and its logo, a maconnic pyramid with a terrestrial sphere in its center, were unobtrusive.
This kind of guerrilla on Internet can lend to smiling, but is not likely any to block the administration. Besides this one intends to launch another project of great width: the control of the Internet. It will be necessary for that to force the suppliers of access to connect itself to a central system of monitoring. The proposal is at the end of a report/ratio baptized "national Strategy to make safe the cyberspace". It should be made public at the beginning of 2003.

2002-12-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

Headline: A 'silver bullet's' toxic legacy

> Byline: Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

> Date: 12/20/2002

>

> (KHARANJ, IRAQ)The rusting tanks are gathered in Iraq's southern
> desert

like an

> open-air exhibit of the 1991 Gulf War.

>

> But these are not just museum pieces. This still radioactive

> battlefield - and the severe health problems many Iraqis and some US

> Gulf War veterans ascribe to it - may also be an omen of an unsettled

> future.

>

> As American forces prepare to take on Iraq in a possible Gulf War II,

> analysts agree that the bad publicity and popular fears about depleted

> uranium (DU) use in the first Gulf War, and later in Kosovo and

> Afghanistan, have not dented Pentagon enthusiasm for its "silver

> bullet." US forces in Iraq will again deploy DU as their most
> effective

> - and most controversial - tank-busting bullet.

>

> War seems more imminent as the White House indicated late this week

> that the decision for war could come by late January.

>

> But this bleak desert just north of Iraq's border with Kuwait and
> Saudi

> Arabia offers a window on the human impact nearly 12 years after a

> toxic stew of DU, chemical agents, pesticides, and smoke from burning

> oil wells poisoned this war zone. Few suggest that a new war, if it

> involves Iraqi armored resistance, will have any less of an effect.

> "Nobody thinks about what is going to happen when the shooting stops,"

> says Robert Hewson, editor of the London-based Jane's Air-Launched

> Weapons. "The people who are firing [DU] will demand that they have

> it...they will not want to go to war without it. The primary driver

> will always be the mission and getting the job done."

>

> DU is made from nuclear-waste material left over from making nuclear

> weapons and fuel. American gunners used 320 tons of it in 1991 to

> destroy 4,000 Iraqi armored vehicles and swiftly conclude victory.

>

> But the invisible particles created when those bullets struck and

> burned are still "hot." They make Geiger counters sing, and they stick

> to the tanks, contaminating the soil and blowing in the desert wind,
> as

> they will for the 4.5 billion years it will take the DU to lose just

> half its radioactivity.

>

> Unaware of the risks, two shepherds earlier this week relaxed on the

> ground as their sheep picked at scrub grass near one tank. Similar

> tanks struck by DU during the Gulf War were deemed a "substantial
> risk"

> and buried by US forces in Saudi Arabia or a low-level radioactive

> waste dump in the US.

>

> Pentagon spokesmen said yesterday that US troops are being given no
> new

> DU protection training for any Iraq campaign. In the mid-1990s, US

> troops were required to wear full protective suits and masks within 50

> yards of a tank struck with DU bullets. Those rules, based on Nuclear

> Regulatory Commission safety guidelines, were dramatically revised in

> the late 1990s.

>

> In most cases, the rules now say, any face mask is sufficient.
> Pentagon

> officials note their policy has been "inconsistent," but admitted in

> 1998 that their "failure" to alert soldiers to the risks before the

> Gulf War resulted in "thousands of unnecessary exposures." The latest

> rules, a US Army spokesman said yesterday, "reflect the most current

> ... data regarding DU."

>

> Critics charge that the official downplaying of DU's dangers keeps the

> magic bullet in the arsenal, while thwarting DU-specific compensation

> claims by Gulf War vets.

>

> The Iraqi battlefield will be "very dangerous" in the aftermath of a

> new war, says Asaf Durakovic, a former chief of nuclear medicine at a

> veteran's hospital and head of the private Uranium Medical Research

> Center. In the peer-reviewed journal "Military Medicine" last August,

> he published results that 14 of 27 ill Gulf War vets had DU in their

> urine nine years after the war.

>

> Testifying before Congress in 1997, Dr. Durakovic predicted DU will

> ensure that "battlefields of the future will be unlike any...in

> history," and "injury and death will remain lingering threats to

> 'survivors' of the battle for ... decades into the future."

>

> Though DU clearly enhances the chances of victory, some say the price

> is too high. Risks are difficult to quantify, but US military and

> expert reports indicate DU can be a hazard that may cause cancer, and

> that total soil decontamination is impossible.

>

> British troops deploying to Kosovo in 1999 were sent out with full

> suits and masks, and told to use them "if contact with targets damaged

> by DU ammunition is unavoidable." A report commissioned by the US Army

> on the eve of the Gulf War found that "no dose [of DU particles] is so

> low that the probability of effect is zero." Another report by the

> British Atomic Energy Agency used an estimate of 40 tons of DU to

> create a hypothetical danger level, and predicted that that amount of

> DU - one-eighth of what actually was fired - could cause "500,000

> potential deaths."

>

> "I don't think we know if DU can be used safely, and until we know

> that, we shouldn't use it," says Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with

> Washington's Center for Defense Information. "The military's mindset
> is

> clear: 'This is war, war is hell...the guy who shoots first wins, and

> he hits them with everything he has.'"

>

> In the US, every aspect of DU creation, use, and disposal is strictly

> controlled. The US Army alone has 14 licenses to handle the substance.

> Disposal requires burial in low-level radioactive waste dumps;

> particles must be mixed with concrete and encased in two barrels.

>

> But when it comes to fighting armor, no substance can match DU
> bullets,

> denser than lead and self-sharpening. They burn through armor on
> impact

> and are cheap. US gunners love them and say DU saves lives on the
> front

> line.

>

> This graveyard of tanks shows why. DU burns so hotly into its target

> that a targeted tank's own ammunition ignites, causing a blast that

> often rips the turret right off the top of a tank. In the process,

> however, the DU round aerosolizes into a lethal dust that emits alpha

> particles.

>

> Though alpha particles have a limited range of a quarter-inch or so,

> they pack a punch 20 times more powerful than beta or gamma radiation,

> and can lodge easily in the body if inhaled or ingested. Many US vets

> believe DU may also be a key factor in Gulf War syndrome, the set of

> symptoms for which the Veteran's Administration has already provided

> compensation for nearly 1 in 4 vets.

>

> Iraqis say DU is a major cause of the severe health problems such as

> cancer and birth defects that they graphically show are surging in

> southern Iraq, though they do not have the clinical capability to link

> DU to health problems.

>

> "No one wins in war, everyone loses, and Basra will again be a great

> battlefield," says Thamer Ahmad Hamdan, an orthopedic surgeon in
> Basra.

> In 1998, when visited by the Monitor, he had one box of x-rays

> depicting grotesque abnormalities. "Now it is boxes," he says. "We
> will

> remember the Americans used this again, that it was killing miserable

> people. Hopefully, they are not going to do it."

>

> Iraqi doctors say poverty, malnutrition, and poor water and sanitation

> are key to current health problems, along with DU and chemical

> exposures, and trauma from the last war. Jawad Khudim al-Ali, director

> of the cancer ward at Basra's Saddam Teaching Hospital, says pre-war

> cancer rates have increased 11-fold; the mortality rate 19-fold.

>

> While US war planners in the Gulf War and in campaigns since have
> taken

> great care to minimize civilian casualties, the longterm impact of DU

> is tough to define. And the reviled Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein may

> limit concerns of civilian suffering, analysts say. "I don't think

> there is a consensus in this country about whether war is the right

> thing to do," says CDI's Hellman. "But there is a consensus that
> Saddam

> is right up there with Satan on the evil-people-in-the-world list. And

> therefore, whatever methods of warfare are going to bring him down,
> and

> safeguard American troops in the process, is going to be acceptable
> [to

> Americans]."

>

> "If [fallout on civilians] was a serious consideration," concurs

> Hewson, of Jane's, "we would not be contemplating a major land battle

> in Iraq. At the levels where this stuff is being planned, no tears are

> being shed for those people."

>

> Abdulkarim Hussein Subber, a gynecologist at the Basra Maternity and

> Children's Hospital, has three photo albums full of images of

> unimaginable birth defects that he claims are six times more prevalent

> today than before the Gulf War.

>

> "We have become very familiar with these cases," Dr. Subber says,

> adding that numbers have leveled off since expectant mothers began

> using ultrasound to detect - and terminate - severe cases. "The
> problem

> is [our patients] are afraid of being pregnant again, because of the

> fear of malformations," Subber says. "The problem is the pollution
> from

> the war."

>

>

>

>

>

> (c) Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights
> reserved.

>

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2002-12-23T17:56:00.000-08:00

for those who have asked me why, since i think the projected war in Iraq mt bring about some good, I nevertheless cannot support giving Geo.Bush a blank check...and for those who ask me why, given my reluctance to support that war, i could not join the peace demonstrations in berkeley, wherein the US is depicted as the Evil Empire... this excellent article by George Packer is as good an explanation as I could give. I'm not a "liberal hawk," but I have come to feel i can never again support any leftism which does not
contain the idea of liberallism. Some of these people (like George Packer)
I met once or twice, some (like Michael W) I've known for years & years. Their terms may not always be my terms. But their worries are my worries. Jeremy

ulysses@dnai.com

The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq

December 8, 2002
By GEORGE PACKER

If you're a liberal, why haven't you joined the antiwar movement? More to the point, why is there no antiwar movement that you'd want to join? Troops and equipment are pouring into the Persian Gulf region in preparation for what could be the largest, riskiest, most controversial American military venture since Vietnam. According to a poll released the first week of December, 40 percent of Democrats oppose a war that has been all but scheduled for sometime in the next two months. So where are the antiwarriors?

In fact, a small, scattered movement is beginning to stir.
On Oct. 26, tens of thousands of people turned out in San Francisco, Washington and other cities to protest against a war. Other demonstrations are planned for Jan. 18 and 19. By then an invasion could be under way, and if it gets bogged down around Baghdad with heavy American and Iraqi civilian casualties, or if it sets off a chain reaction of regional conflicts, antiwar protests could grow. But this movement has a serious liability, one that will just about guarantee its impotence: it's controlled by the furthest reaches of the American left. Speakers at the demonstrations voice unnuanced slogans like ''No Sanctions, No Bombing'' and ''No Blood for Oil.'' As for what should be done to keep this mass murderer and his weapons in check, they have nothing to say at all. This is not a constructive liberal antiwar movement.

So let me rephrase the question. Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war?

The answer to this question involves an interesting
history, and it sheds light on the difficulties now
confronting American liberals. The history goes back 10
years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This
war changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would do it.

Many of them had cut their teeth in the antiwar movement of
the 1960's, but by the early 90's, when some of them made
trips to besieged Sarajevo, they had resolved their own
private Vietnam syndromes. Together -- hardly vast in their numbers, but influential -- they advocated a new role for America in the world, which came down to American power on behalf of American ideals.

Against the liberal hawks there were two opposing
tendencies. One was conservative: it loathed the idea of
the American military being used for humanitarian missions
and nation building and other forms of ''social work.''
This was the view of George W. Bush when he took office,
and of all his key advisers. The other opposing tendency
was leftist: it continued to view any U.S. military action
as imperialist. This thinking prompted Noam Chomsky to leap
to the defense of Slobodan Milosevic, and it dominates the narrow ideology of the new Iraq antiwar movement. Throughout the 90's, between the reflexively antiwar left and the coldblooded right, liberal hawks articulated the case for American engagement -- if need be, military engagement -- in the chaotic world of the post-cold war. And for 10 years of wars -- first in Bosnia, then Haiti, East Timor, Kosovo and, last year, in Afghanistan, which was a war of national security but had human rights as a side benefit -- what might be called the Bosnia consensus held.

But on the eve of what looks like the next American war,
the Bosnia consensus has fallen apart. The argument that
has broken out among these liberal hawks over Iraq is as
fierce in its way as anything since Vietnam. This time the argument is taking place not just between people but within them, where the dilemmas and conflicts are all the more tormenting. What makes the agony over Iraq particularly intense is the new role of conservatives. Members of the Bush administration who had nothing but contempt for human rights talk until the day before yesterday have grabbed the banner of democracy and are waving it on behalf of the long-suffering Iraqi people. For liberal hawks, this is painful to watch.

In this strange interlude, with everyone waiting for war,
I've had extended conversations with a number of these Bosnian-generation liberal intellectuals -- the ones who have done the most thinking and writing about how American power can be turned to good ends as well as bad, who don't see human rights and democracy as idealistic delusions, and who are struggling to figure out Iraq. I'm in their position; maybe you are, too. This Bosnian generation of liberal hawks is a minority within a minority, but they hold an important place in American public life, having worked out a new idea about America's role in the post-cold war world long before Sept. 11 woke the rest of the country up. An antiwar movement that seeks a broad appeal and an intelligent critique needs them. Oddly enough, President Bush needs them, too. The one level on which he hasn't even tried to make a case is the level of ideas. These liberal hawks could give a voice to his war aims, which he has largely kept to himself. They could make the case for war to suspicious Europeans and to wavering fellow Americans. They might even be able to explain the connection between Iraq and the war on terrorism. But first they would need to resolve their arguments with one another and themselves.

In my conversations, people who generally have little
trouble making up their minds and debating forcefully
talked themselves through every side of the question.
''This one's really difficult,'' said Michael Ignatieff,
the Canadian-born writer and thinker who has written a biography of the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin along with numerous books and articles on human rights. No one in recent years has supported humanitarian intervention more vocally than Ignatieff, but he says he believes that Iraq represents something different. ''I am having real trouble with this because it's not clear to me that containment has failed,'' Ignatieff told me. This kind of self-interrogation ends up with numerous arguments on either side of the ledger. Here's how I break down the liberal internal debate.

For War

1. Saddam is cruel and dangerous.

2. Saddam has used
weapons of mass destruction and has never stopped trying to develop them.

3. Iraqis are suffering under tyranny and sanctions.

4.
Democracy would benefit Iraqis.

5. A democratic Iraq could drain influence from repressive Saudi Arabia.

6. A democratic Iraq could unlock the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.

7. A democratic Iraq could begin to liberalize the Arab
world.

8. Al Qaeda will be at war with us regardless of what we do
in Iraq.

Against War

1. Containment has worked for 10 years, and inspections
could still work.

2. We shouldn't start wars without immediate provocation
and international support.

3. We could inflict terrible casualties, and so could
Saddam.

4. A regional war could break out, and anti-Americanism
could build to a more dangerous level.

5. Democracy can't be imposed on a country like Iraq.

6.
Bush's political aims are unknown, and his record is not reassuring.

7. America's will and capacity for nation building are too limited.

8. War in Iraq will distract from the war on terrorism and swell Al Qaeda's ranks.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and
fear. Fear generally proves stronger than wish, but it
leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue. Caution
over Iraq puts liberal hawks, who are nothing if not
moralists, in the psychologically unsettling position of defending a status quo they despise -- of sounding like the compromisers they used to denounce when it came to Bosnia. Fear means missing the chance for what Ignatieff calls ''a huge prize at the end.''

But wish makes a liberal hawk sound like a Bush hawk,
blithely unconcerned about the dangers of American power.
The liberal hawk is a liberal -- someone temperamentally
prone to see the world as a complicated place.

This dilemma is every liberal's current dilemma.

The
Theorist

After last year's terror attacks, Michael Walzer, the
author of ''Just and Unjust Wars,'' among other books, published an article in the magazine he co-edits, Dissent, called ''Can There Be a Decent Left?'' Walzer harshly criticized leftists whose first instinct was to blame American policy for Sept. 11 and who refused to see the need for a war of self-defense against Al Qaeda. The article threw down an angry marker between the pro- and anti-interventionist left, and it drew heated attention to a 67-year-old political philosopher with a far-from-confrontational manner.

A year later, Walzer finds himself an ambivalent opponent
of war in Iraq. Al Qaeda simplified things in favor of
armed action; Iraq presents nothing but complication. ''The uncertainties right now are so great,'' he told me as we sat and talked at a cafe in Greenwich Village, ''and the prospects, the risks, so frightening, that the proportionality rule forces you the other way. And with a lot of other things going on -- suspicion of this government of ours, anger at the automatic anti-Americanism of people here and other places. It's all mixed up.''

Walzer is a strong advocate of multilateral action, and he faults the administration and its European allies for bringing out the worst in one another, American bellicosity and European complacency pushing the logic of events toward a war he says he doesn't believe is justified yet. The just-war theory requires that a threat be imminent before an attack is started. Since this is not yet the case with Iraq, an American war there wouldn't meet the criteria.

None of this means that Walzer is rallying opposition at teach-ins. In the 1960's, he was willing to join an antiwar movement that he says he knew would strengthen the hand of Vietnamese Communists ''because I thought they'd already won. I would not join an antiwar movement that strengthened the hand of Saddam.'' And yet he can't imagine one that doesn't. The nature of the enemy makes it almost impossible to be outspoken for peace, a dilemma that has created what he calls ''a kind of silent majority, a silent antiwar movement.'' Walzer's position offers cold comfort, for it ends up with Saddam still in power. ''It leaves me unhappy,'' he says.

The Romantic

These days, Christopher Hitchens sounds anything but
unhappy. His militant support, first for the war with Al
Qaeda and now for a war in Iraq, has led him to break quite publicly with former comrades. He has vacated the column he wrote in The Nation for the past 20 years and has said harsh things about the ''masochists'' of the anti-American left. Hitchens's apostasy has generated nearly as much attention on the left as the war itself, but over a three-hour lunch in Washington, his position struck me as more judicious than its print version.

Hitchens agrees with the ''decent skepticism'' of liberals
who distrust the administration's motives, but he has
decided that hawks like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz aim to use a democratic Iraq to end the regional dominance of Saudi Arabia. If this is the hidden agenda, Hitchens wants to force it into the open. He compares Saddam's Iraq with Ceausescu's Romania in 1989: it's going to implode anyway, and America should have a hand in the process.

In 1991, Hitchens was too suspicious of American motives to support the first gulf war -- a hangover, he says, from his days as a revolutionary socialist -- but on a visit to northern Iraq at the end of the war, he rode in a jeep with Kurdish fighters he admired who had taped pictures of the first George Bush to their windshield. It was a minor revelation. ''I'm not ashamed of my critique of the gulf war,'' he says, ''but I'm annoyed by how limited it was.''

Since then, Hitchens has steadily warmed to American power exercised on behalf of democracy. When I suggested that since Sept. 11 he has gone back to the 18th-century, when the struggle between the secular liberal Enlightenment and religious dark-age tyranny created the modern world, Hitchens readily agreed. ''After the dust settles, the only revolution left standing is the American one,'' he said. ''Americanization is the most revolutionary force in the world. There's almost no country where adopting the Americans wouldn't be the most radical thing they could do. I've always been a Paine-ite.''

British pamphleteer for the American revolution -- Hitchens
has updated the role for Iraq. His relish for war with
radical Islamists and tyrants (''You want to be a martyr?
I'm here to help'') sounds like the bulldog pugnacity of a British naval officer's son, which he is. It also suggests a deep desire, and a romantic one, to join a revolution -- even if it's admittedly a ''revolution from above.'' ''I feel much more like I used to in the 60's,'' he says, ''working with revolutionaries. That's what I'm doing; I'm helping a very desperate underground. That reminds me of my better days quite poignantly.'' Hitchens has plans to drink Champagne with comrades in Baghdad around Valentine's Day.

The Skeptic

''Revolution from above'' was Trotsky's
mocking phrase for Stalin's use of the Communist Party to collectivize the Soviet Union. It implies coercion toward a notion of the good. David Rieff, whose book ''Slaughterhouse'' condemned the failure of Western powers to intervene in Bosnia, compares revolution from above to Plato's idea of ruling Guardians. What they share, says Rieff, is a desire to pursue utopian ends by undemocratic means.

''I always thought there was more in common between Human Rights Watch and the Bush administration than either would be comfortable thinking, because they both are revolutionaries -- in my view, quite dangerous radicals. They believe that virtue can be imposed by force of law and force of arms. Christopher has the same view with his sense that a democratic alternative can be imposed by force of arms in the Middle East.''

Unlike Hitchens, an Englishman who ''liked the United
States enough to have concluded when I was about 16 that
I'd been born in the wrong country,'' Rieff is an American
who grew up with a European education, traveled the world
as a teenager and always looked askance at the notion of America as either savior or Satan. As an empire, America is neither better nor worse than other empires -- but to expect it to behave like Amnesty International is foolish. The difference between Bosnia and Iraq, Rieff says, is the difference between supporting democracy and imposing it. The former was a moral imperative as well as a strategic one; the latter is hubris. With Iraq, this hubris is leading to ''a hideous mistake.'' ''I accept everything that the Bush administration says about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein,'' Rieff says, ''but I do think it's a revolution too far.''

The Secularist

During the Congressional debates on the war resolution, it
was just about impossible to hear an argument in favor of
the administration without the words ''Munich'' and ''Chamberlain.'' The words ''Tonkin'' and ''Johnson'' were far rarer, which tells you something about the relative acceptability of World War II and Vietnam -- appeasement and quagmire -- as historical precedents. I wanted to ban all analogies, because they always seemed to be ways of avoiding the hardest questions. But the analogies are hard-wired, and Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, is right to say that Americans of the postwar generation ''have operated with two primal scenes. One was the Second World War; one was the Vietnam War. And you can almost divide the camps on the use of American force between those whose model for its application was the Second World War and those whose model for its application was the Vietnam War.''

For Wieseltier, whose parents survived the Holocaust, the primal scene is American power helping to end evil. Shortly before I met him at his Washington home, Wieseltier had seen a TV documentary with rare footage of the gassing of Kurds by Saddam's army -- a reminder of a primal scene if ever there was one. But that was in 1988, when America failed to intervene. Today, American and British pilots in the no-fly zone are preventing the very genocide that Wieseltier feels would justify an invasion.

Wieseltier is a secular liberal in the classical sense. He
says he believes that the separation of religion and power marked a violent rupture with the past. This rupture created a new and universal idea of freedom and equality -- one that Islamic societies around the world have not yet been ready to face. Sept. 11 was a cataclysmic ''refreshment'' of this idea, after years in which only money mattered. But terrorism should not turn liberals into simple-minded missionaries; being a secular liberal means accepting that the world is a difficult place. ''Democracy in Iraq would be a blessing, but it cannot be the main objective for embarking on a major war,'' Wieseltier says. ''If there is one thing that liberalism has no time for, it's an eschatological mentality. There is no single, sudden end to injustice. There's slow, steady, fitful progress toward a more decent and democratic world.''

Wieseltier says he believes that Saddam's weapons and
fondness for using them will probably necessitate a war,
but unlike some other editors at The New Republic, he is
not eager to start one. ''We will certainly win,''
Wieseltier says, ''but it is a war in which we are truly playing with fire.''

The Idealist

Paul Berman's book ''A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968'' traced a line from the rebellions of the 1960's to the nonviolent revolutions of 1989. It is essentially a line from leftism to liberalism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the great ideological battles of the 20th century seemed to have ended: liberal democracy reigned supreme.

Then came Sept. 11, which, Berman argues in a coming book called ''Terror and Liberalism,'' showed that, as it turns out, the 20th century isn't quite over yet.

''The terrorism we face right now is actually a form of totalitarianism,'' Berman told me in his Brooklyn apartment. ''The only possible way to oppose totalitarianism is with an alternative system, which is that of a liberal society.'' So the war that began on Sept. 11 is primarily a war of ideas, and Berman harshly criticizes Bush for failing to pursue it. ''We're going into a very complex and long war disarmed, in which our most important assets have been stripped away from us, which are our ideals and our ideas. He's sending us into war with one arm tied behind our back.''

Berman argues for a war in Iraq on three grounds: to free
up the Middle East militarily for further actions against
Al Qaeda, to liberate the Iraqi people from their dungeon
and to establish ''a beachhead of Arab democracy'' and
shift the region's center of gravity away from autocracy
and theocracy and toward liberalization. In other words,
war in Iraq has everything to do with the war on terrorism,
and the dangers of an American military occupation that
might not be seen by everyone in the region as
''pro-Muslim,'' though they worry Berman, don't deter him.

Perhaps the boldest intellectual move he makes is to claim
a liberal descent for these ideas -- connecting the fall of
the Berlin Wall, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sept. 11 and Iraq. This lineage, Berman claims, is represented not by George W. Bush but by Tony Blair, ''leader of the free world.'' Bush has presented the wars on terrorism and Saddam as matters of U.S. security. In fact, Berman says, they are wars for liberal civilization, and the rest of the democratic world should want to join. It doesn't bother Berman to hear conservative hawks at the Pentagon like Paul Wolfowitz talking similarly. ''If their language is sincere,'' he says, ''and there is an idealism among the neo-cons that echoes and reflects in some way the language of the liberal interventionists of the 90's, well, that would be a good thing.''

But Berman, unlike Hitchens, doubts their sincerity. And in
the end, Berman can't support the administration's war
plan, ''because I don't actually know -- I believe that no
one actually knows -- what is the actual White House
policy.'' So he is left in the familiar position of intellectuals, with an arsenal of ideas and no way to deploy them.

one chilly evening in late November, a panel discussion on
Iraq was convened at New York University. The participants
were liberal intellectuals, and one by one they framed reasonable arguments against a war in Iraq: inspections need time to work; the Bush doctrine has a dangerous agenda; the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East is not encouraging. The audience of 150 New Yorkers seemed persuaded.

Then the last panelist spoke. He was an Iraqi dissident
named Kanan Makiya, and he said, ''I'm afraid I'm going to strike a discordant note.'' He pointed out that Iraqis, who will pay the highest price in the event of an invasion, ''overwhelmingly want this war.'' He outlined a vision of postwar Iraq as a secular democracy with equal rights for all of its citizens. This vision would be new to the Arab world. ''It can be encouraged, or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you're doing if you crush it.'' Makiya's voice rose as he came to an end. ''I rest my moral case on the following: if there's a sliver of a chance of it happening, a 5 to 10 percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it.''

The effect was electrifying. The room, which just minutes earlier had settled into a sober and comfortable rejection of war, exploded in applause. The other panelists looked startled, and their reasonable arguments suddenly lay deflated on the table before them.

Michael Walzer, who was on the panel, smiled wanly. ''It's
very hard to respond,'' he said.

It was hard, I thought, because Makiya had spoken the
language beloved by liberal hawks. He had met their hope of avoiding a war with an even greater hope. He had given the people in the room an image of their own ideals.

2002-12-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

December 20, 2002
Quo Vadis, Karl?
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN

The day after the Republican triumph in the midterm elections, a jubilant Trent Lott held a celebratory press conference. "Let's roll!" he exulted. (Good taste is not one of Mr. Lott's strong points.)

Six weeks later, we have to ask: Roll where (aside from Baghdad)? The storm that has broken over Mr. Lott's head is justified. But it may also reflect buyers' remorse: post-election polls suggest broad public unease about where Mr. Lott's party is taking us.

It's not even clear what the Bush administration wants to accomplish now that it has full control. Until now the administration has been all politics and no policy; John J. DiIulio tells us that there is a "complete lack of a policy apparatus," that all decisions are made by the political arm. For the past two years domestic policy has consisted of little more than checking off the boxes on a wish list drawn up circa 1999.

Meanwhile, as problems that weren't anticipated in 1999 have arisen, the administration has done as little as possible, as late as possible.

This has been true even in the areas where George W. Bush gets highest marks from voters. Remember that the administration repeatedly rejected calls for a homeland security agency, changing its mind only when Coleen Rowley went public with tales of intelligence failures. And a growing chorus of critics say that hardly anything real has been done to make the country safer.

Similarly, the administration tried to prevent any independent inquiry into what went wrong on Sept. 11, and how to avoid future attacks. Then, when he could no longer avoid an inquiry, Mr. Bush did his best to undermine that inquiry's credibility by choosing Henry Kissinger, of all people, to head it.

And then there's corporate reform. At first the administration opposed doing anything. Then, after WorldCom blew up, it agreed to a modest reform bill — only to undermine the bill's credibility both by trying to renege on promises to provide the Securities and Exchange Commission with adequate funds, and by pressuring Harvey Pitt not to choose a real reformer to head a crucial new panel.

Finally, there's economic policy. Fears that the economy would suffer a "jobless recovery" similar to that of the first Bush administration are no longer hypothetical: over the past year G.D.P. has grown, but employment has continued to shrink, and the risk that the U.S. will slide into a Japanese-style pattern of slow growth and deflation no longer seems remote.

Again, the response has been to do as little as possible. As Congress failed to agree on an extension of unemployment benefits — which means that 800,000 families will be cut off on Dec. 28 — the administration simply stood on the sidelines. Last weekend, too late to help those families, Mr. Bush finally spoke up in favor of an extension, but failed to say whether he favored the merely cosmetic House plan or the more serious Senate plan; those who follow the issue know that this makes all the difference.

Will things improve now that there's a new economic team? John Snow seems to be Paul O'Neill without the charm. Stephen Friedman will probably be more vigorous than his predecessor; The Washington Post reports that one of Mr. Bush's frequent complaints about Larry Lindsey was that he didn't get enough physical exercise. But Mr. Friedman will have plenty of time to work out; it has been made clear that his duties as economic adviser don't include actually giving any economic advice.

Meanwhile, if the trial balloons floated by the administration are any guide to the forthcoming "stimulus" package, it will consist of more items from the checklist: making the tax cut permanent, reducing taxes on dividends. Nice stuff if you make more than $300,000 a year and have a net worth in the millions, but pretty much irrelevant to the actual problems of the economy — except the long-run deficit, which will get even worse. It seems that Karl Rove and his merry band of Mayberry Machiavellis are still calling the shots.

It may be that the bad few weeks the administration has just had were the result of random events. But I think the public is finally waking up to the fact that the people in the White House know a lot about gaining power, but not much about what to do with it.

2002-12-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

Published on Thursday, December 19, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Americans Revolt in Pennsylvania - New Battle Lines Are Drawn
by Thom Hartmann

The good citizens of Pennsylvania have done it again.

Back in 1776, they hosted at Liberty Hall in Philadelphia a gathering of people radicalized by the predations of the East India Company. The world's first multinational corporation then held a virtual stranglehold on commerce and politics in North America, and brazenly used British troops as its enforcers. On the first week of December, 1600, when she created the East India Company, Queen Elizabeth I became the first CEO monarch, and by 1776 King George II was following in her footsteps with his sizeable holdings in and open advocacy of corporate rule.

The American colonists were offended by the idea they should be vassals of a corporation and a kingdom that supported and profited from it. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly stated that humans were born into this world endowed by their Creator with certain rights, that governments were created by humans to insure only humans held those rights, and "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…"

Stating flatly that "it is their right, it is their duty," to alter their government and thus claim their unique human rights, 56 men defied the East India Company and the government whose army supported it by placing their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, saying, "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Thus began America's first experiment with democracy.

The first week of December of that same year, Thomas Paine wrote in a pamphlet he published a few weeks later that, "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered… What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

Exactly 226 years later, another small group in Pennsylvania also met in early December to sign a document that claimed the same right - their duty - to alter their government in a way that would restore the democracy the original Founders were willing to fight and die for. The democratically elected municipal officials of Porter Township put their signatures to an ordinance passed unanimously on December 9, 2002. It reads, in part:

"A corporation is a legal fiction created by the express permission of the people…;

"Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court justices to include corporations in the term 'persons' has long wrought havoc with our democratic processes by endowing corporations with constitutional privileges intended solely to protect the citizens of the United States or natural persons within its borders;

"This judicial bestowal of civil and political rights upon corporations interferers with the administration of laws within Porter Township and usurps basic human and constitutional rights exercised by the people of Porter Township; …

"Buttressed by these constitutional rights, corporate wealth allows corporations to enjoy constitutional privileges to an extent beyond the reach of most citizens;

"Democracy means government by the people. Only citizens of Porter Township should be able to participate in the democratic process in Porter Township and enjoy a republican form of government therein;…"

And then, with an audacity and willingness to take on overwhelming multinational corporate power similar to that displayed by the Founders, the elders of Porter Township said that "Corporations shall not be considered to be 'persons' protected by the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania within the Second Class Township of Porter, Clarion County, Pennsylvania."

It became the law of that land five days later.

In 1773, the East India Company had claimed the "right" to participate in the political processes of England and, with wealth and power greater than the average citizen, got passed for themselves a huge tax reduction on tea and an overall tax rebate so large they could undersell and wipe out their small Colonial competitors. The response of the entrepreneurial colonists to the Tea Act of 1773 was the Boston Tea Party revolt against that transnational corporation, setting the stage for the Declaration of Independence and the beginnings of what Lincoln called "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Similarly, in 2000, one of the largest sludge hauling corporations in the United States sued Porter Township, claiming that as a "person" the corporation had rights equal to the citizens of the township, and therefore they couldn't "discriminate" against the corporation under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, which was passed after the Civil War to free the slaves.

Porter Township, supported by a coalition including the Pennsylvania Farmers Union, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, The Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, the United Mine Workers of America, Common Cause, the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), and other pro-democracy groups, fought back. They bluntly asserted that - as it was from the founding of this nation until the bizarre Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court case in 1886 - only humans are entitled to human rights in their community.

In the law they passed on December 9, 2002, they explicitly said, "The judicial designation of corporations as 'persons' grants corporations the power to sue municipal governments for adopting laws that violate the purported constitutional rights of corporations. For example, in September 2000, Synagro Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against Rush Township (Centre County) Supervisors, forcing the Township to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to defend its health-related sewage sludge testing ordinance against claims that the ordinance violated the corporation's constitutional rights."

The implications of this are staggering. For example:

Before 1886, it was a felony in most states for corporations to give money to politicians or otherwise try (through lobbying or advertising) to influence elections. Such activity was called "bribery and influencing," and the reason it was banned was simple: corporations can't vote, so what are they doing in politics? Their concern is making money, and they don't need clean air to breathe or fresh water to drink; leave them to making money and leave the administration of the commons to We, The People.

Before 1886, it was a crime in most states for corporations to own others of their own kind. The need to keep corporations from becoming so large that they could usurp democracy was so clear to the Founders that Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would have banned "monopolies in commerce," restricting each company to performing a single purpose, making it responsible to its local community, and barring it from owning other corporations. The amendment didn't pass because everybody at the time knew that the states already had such laws in place.

Before 1886, only humans had full First Amendment rights of free speech, including the right to influence legislation and the right to lie when not under oath. Now corporations have claimed that they have the free speech right to influence public opinion and legislation through deceit, and a case based on a multinational corporation asserting this right is poised to go before the Supreme Court as you read these words. That corporation reserves the right to fire and even prosecute human employees who lie to it, however.

Before 1886, only humans had Fourth Amendment rights of privacy. Since then, however, corporations have claimed that EPA and OSHA surprise inspections are violations of their human right of privacy, while at the same time asserting their right to perform surprise inspections of their own employees' bodily fluids, phone conversations, and keystrokes.

Before 1886, only humans had Fifth Amendment rights against double jeopardy and the right to refuse to speak if they'd committed a crime. Since 1886, corporations have asserted these human rights for themselves: the results range from today's corporate scandals to 60 years of silence about the deadliness of tobacco and asbestos.

Before 1886, and following the Civil War, only humans had Fourteenth Amendment rights to protection from discrimination. Since then, corporations have claimed this human right and used it to stop local communities from passing laws to protect their small, local businesses and keep out predatory retailers or large corporations convicted of crimes elsewhere.

Porter Township has fired the first shot in the New American Revolution with this first binding law denying corporate personhood. It's a revolution that will be fought not with guns but in the courts, in the voting booths, and on the battlefield of public opinion. (Far from harming corporations, returning human rights solely to humans will lead to an entrepreneurial boom in America - only a small handful of very large corporations abuse these rights to deceive people, hide crimes, or make politicians violate the will of their own voters. The millions of ethical corporations will thus be freed from the tyranny of the few while democratic government will be returned to its citizens.)

As Thomas Paine - another Pennsylvania resident - wrote on that 1776 December night and published 2 days before Christmas, "Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it."

Thom Hartmann is the author of "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporation Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," a book containing a version of the above ordinance customized for each of the 50 states. www.unequalprotection.com. He holds the copyright to this article, but grants permission for reprint in print, web, and email media as long as this credit is attached.

2002-12-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

NORTH KOREA
MoveOn Peace Bulletin, International Edition
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Susan V. Thompson, Editor
susan.thompson@moveon.org
Leah Appet, Editorial Assistant
leah@moveon.org

Read online or subscribe at:
http://www.peace.moveon.org/bulletin.php3#sub

CONTENTS

Introduction: A High Stakes Game
One Link: North Korea Threat Part of US Regional Strategy
Background
Axis of Evil
Nuclear Weapons Program
Implications
Credits
About the Bulletin

INTRODUCTION: A HIGH STAKES GAME
In 1994, the US and North Korea reached the brink of war when it was discovered that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons. The crisis was averted by the Agreed Framework negotiated by the Clinton administration, which had North Korea promise to stop developing nuclear weapons in exchange for two nuclear reactors, fuel oil aid, and improved relations.

Now North Korea has admitted to having a weapons program once again, after being presented with evidence of North Korean nuclear activities by US envoy James Kelly. The result has been global shock and confusion about North Korea's motives. South Korean representatives have framed the admission as part of North Korea's willingness to improve ties with the outside world. Other analysts believe that it is part of a traditional North Korean tactic of creating a crisis in order to force talks, and that North Korea may be using its nuclear capacity as a bargaining chip--as something to be exchanged for improved relations with the US or for aid. For its part, the US has declared that the admission makes the 1994 agreement null and void, dismissing the North Korean perception that the the US had already broken several of its own promises under the agreement, including the building of two nuclear reactors in North Korea by 2003.

The UN's nuclear monitoring body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has issued a call for North Korea to admit weapons inspectors as soon as possible. However, the action cannot be enforced by the IAEA. It must be enforced by the UN Security Council, which is currently focused almost exclusively on Iraq. Even though the Bush administration and several of its allies have opted to stop shipping fuel oil to North Korea as a retaliation for the weapons program, there is still no talk of forcing inspections; nor has the US said that it is considering military retaliation if North Korea does not comply.

Considering the stance the US government is taking against Iraq, the relative disregard of the North Korean threat is raising questions about whether US foreign policy is inconsistent, or even hypocritical. The Bush administration is considering taking pre-emptive military action against Iraq based only on the unproven suspicion that Iraq has or could develop chemical and nuclear weapons; yet it seems unwilling to threaten any military action against North Korea even after North Korea has admitted to having a weapons program. North Korea also has an "evil dictator" who treats his people extremely poorly, and appears on the US list of countries that support terrorism, yet there is little talk of "regime change" for North Korea. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, has said that, "Not every policy needs to be put into a photocopier."

But what's the real reason that North Korea isn't high priority? It could be because Iraq has oil, a resource which North Korea lacks. Or it could simply be that the US has already committed so many diplomatic and military resources to an attack on Iraq that it's virtually impossible to back down and focus elsewhere at this point.

However, it's more likely that emphasizing North Korea's threat while not aggressively pursuing military action against the country is serving US strategic interests. How? According to several analysts, the US hopes to use the threat from North Korea as a tactic to push through the building of controversial missile defense systems in the area. Such missile defenses would help contain the growing threat from China, the one country that is developing enough economic and military strength to compete with the US. This is a much more appealing strategy for the US than directly attacking North Korea, which has its own army of 1.2 million and a strong alliance with nuclear capable China.

By admitting that it has a uranium-enrichment program, it appears that North Korea has quite literally called America's bluff. It remains to be seen how the rest of the game will play out.

ONE LINK: NORTH KOREA THREAT PART OF US REGIONAL STRATEGY
Journalists and pundits often complain that North Korea's motives are hard to understand. We can guarantee that after reading this article, you will have an excellent grasp on the current situation in North Korea. It provides a clear and comprehensive explanation of the strategies being played out in the region, including the relationship between North Korea, Japan, China, and the US, specific US plans for missile defense systems in the area, and why the broken promises of the 1994 Agreed Framework may have prompted North Korea to admit to having a nuclear weapons program.

From the article: "The Bush administration may not be interested in removing North Korea from the threat list. A perceived North Korean threat is necessary to justify building the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system, intended to counter China's growing military and political power. With China's economy growing at seven percent, it is only a matter of time before it dwarfs Japan in power and strategic influence. This worries sectors of Japan's government, especially the military establishment, and also concerns the Bush administration, who do not want to see U.S. regional power and economic interests threatened by China. Since neither the U.S. nor Japan are willing to admit to building the new missile system to counteract a Beijing threat, North Korea is currently being used as the primary reason for creating the TMD in Japan."

Includes a map.
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=920

BACKGROUND
Basic information about North Korea (Note: North Korea is actually called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK.)
http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcnorthkorea.htm

Read this "letter from Pyongyang" for a look inside this secretive and totalitarian country. According to the author, "The one thing that brings foreign diplomats and international organizations to North Korea is nuclear weapons, or at least the threat of nuclear weapons. Without a nuclear program North Korea would be seen as nothing more than a tiny, sparsely populated, hermit kingdom with a totalitarian regime. Although it is starving, there would be little outcry and little attention would be paid. But with a nuclear program in place, North Korea can command the attention of the world, or at least those parts of it willing to trade aid for nonproliferation." Although this letter was written in August, the author accurately predicted that a resumption of the nuclear program would come soon: "The nuclear deal’s problem is that oil deliveries are far behind, construction of the reactors is delayed, and the Bush administration is unwilling to work constructively with Pyongyang, so there is now a greater chance that Kim Jong Il will resurrect the nuclear program for political purposes."
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2002/ja02/ja02anonymous.html

This is an excellent article which traces the military and diplomatic maneuvers between North Korea and the US from 1950 until the last presidential election. The main point of the article is that cooperative threat-reduction works with North Korea. Apparently, North Korea has been trying to reduce its enmity with the US since the '80s; it was a misreading of North Korean strategy that almost led to war in 1994, since the country actually only acts in response to US actions in a sort of tit-for-tat diplomacy. If the US makes a concession, North Korea does so as well. The author warns that although the advisors in the Bush administration regard cooperation with disdain it is the only way to end any threat from North Korea. As he says, "The way to eliminate the nuclear, missile, and conventional threats from North Korea is to put an end to enmity."
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/15/sigal-l.html

"AXIS OF EVIL"
In his State of the Union address shortly after the events of Sept. 11, President Bush named North Korea as part of his controversial "axis of evil" along with Iraq and Iran.

According to Foreign Policy in Focus, the "axis of evil" remark was part of a general tendency to ostracize North Korea despite the country's attempts at cooperation. This may be part of the larger plan of using North Korea as an excuse to develop the US military plans for the region, which include building controversial missile defense systems in South Korea. Even though this report was written in February 2002, before the reported nuclear weapons admission, it predicted that 2003 would be the breaking point for US-North Korea relations.
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/asia2002_body.html#korea

A month after calling North Korea part of the "axis of evil," President Bush traveled to South Korea and laid the blame for lack of peace between North and South Korea on North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. While Bush supported South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine policy" of attempted reconciliation with North Korea, for which Kim received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, he also said that the policy isn't working.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0221/p06s01-woap.html

North Korea is also listed as a supporter of terrorism by the US government; this site explains why.
http://www.terrorismanswers.com/sponsors/northkorea2.html

NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM
In October, US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly visited North Korea on the first diplomatic US mission to the country since Bush's infamous "axis of evil" speech. According to the US, when Kelly confronted North Korea with evidence that it had been engaging in nuclear activities, North Korean officials admitted that they had indeed been conducting a uranium-enrichment program. The admission stunned the international community.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/nkorea021017_nuclear.html

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) provides information on North Korea's current weapons status, which includes an outline of the Agreed Framework that North Korea has apparently broken, as well as a general history of North Korea's weapons status.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/nuke/index.html

In retaliation for North Korea's reported admission, in November the Bush administration and its allies in the region announced their decision to stop vital fuel oil aid to North Korea. President Bush demanded that North Korea end its program but stated that there are no plans for military action against North Korea. Unfortunately, the fuel oil aid will be cut off just before the North Korean winter.
http://news.beststar.com/ll/english/1235486.shtml

Reportedly, during Kelly's visit, North Korea said it would end its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a visit from President Bush, the signing of a non-aggression treaty, a peace accord, and the lifting of all economic sanctions (although this article focuses mainly on the visit from President Bush.) According to Kelly, "If North Korea thinks that the United States will agree to a new framework because it has broken the Agreed Framework, then it is totally mistaken."
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/4623390.htm

While North Korea has admitted to having a nuclear weapons program, no one is sure whether the country has admitted to actually possessing nuclear weapons. The difference in interpretation relies on one syllable of a Korean news report. Amid international debate, a recent announcement from North Korea claims that the original statement was that they are entitled to have nuclear weapons, not that they already have them.
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=353576

There is a difference between having some enriched uranium and producing an actual bomb, according to respected nuclear physicist Frank Barnaby. According to Barnaby, "A programme could just be a few people thinking about it."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992938

The UN is already calling on the country to accept inspections. On November 30th the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear-monitoring arm of the United Nations, called on North Korea to abandon any nuclear weapons program it may have and accept a senior inspecting team. The statement issued by the agency said that North Korea's claim that it was entitled to nuclear weapons violated its agreements under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. However, no deadline was issued, and the agency has no enforcing powers--any enforcement would need to be done by the UN Security Council.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/11/30/1038386354809.html

North Korea has rejected the call to admit inspections. The US continues to emphasize that it will seek a diplomatic solution.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/12/10/international0859EST0511.DTL

Interestingly, Pakistan may have aided North Korea with its nuclear weapons program back in the '90s, by exchanging its enriched uranium technology for North Korean missile technology. The Bush administration may even have known this and kept quiet about it once Pakistan became its ally in the "war on terrorism."
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/4356687.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

IMPLICATIONS
In a very clear and useful article, CNN lists the "dramatic steps" that North Korea has taken over the past year in an attempt to improve relations with the rest of the world. According to the article, these include:

Creating a capitalist-style "special administrative region" of Sinuijiu on the Chinese border.
Reconciling with neighbor South Korea through talks and the building of railway lines.
Admitting the abduction of Japanese citizens during the 1970s and early 80s, which has helped create trust between the two countries as Japan has worked on normalizing relations with North Korea.
According to CNN, the final goal of North Korea is to end tensions with the US, by using its nuclear weapons program as a bargaining chip--i.e., North Korea will end its nuclear weapons program if the US will normalize relations.
http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/10/22/nkorea.perspective/
The reported admission of nuclear weapons capability by North Korea could potentially cause two problems for the US. First, "that a new crisis might erupt on the divided and heavily armed Korean peninsula, where 35,000 US troops are stationed. It has been described as 'the most dangerous place on Earth.' " Second, "that the restrained US reaction will lead to accusations that America operates double standards in its dealings with Iraq and North Korea, making the search for a tough United Nations resolution against Saddam Hussein even trickier." The difficulty in pursuing a direct policy in this case is compounded by the difficulty that analysts are having understanding North Korea's motives.
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=343666

This great article makes the valuable point that the general double-standard of the US is at play in the situation with Korea; namely, that the US is allowed to have weapons of mass destruction, and its allies are as well, but countries that do not support the US are not allowed to have such weapons.

"President Kim Jong Il of North Korea has obviously failed to comprehend that only those countries sanctioned by America and its close allies are permitted to develop nuclear weapons in this unipolar world. Other nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan, are tolerated as long as they keep their policies in line with those of Washington.

Still, all is not lost as North Korea is not Iraq, does not have oil and further, does not have its sights on Washington's de facto protectorate, Israel. It may, therefore, manage to escape the Bush administration's list of potential targets for enforced regime change."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14421

CREDITS
Research team:
Dean Bellerby, Joanne Comito, Anna Gavula, Keiko Hatch, Russ Juskalian, Maha Mikhail, Vicki Nikolaidis, Kim Plofker, Ben Spencer, Ora Szekely, and Sharon Winn.

Proofreading team:
David Taub Bancroft, Madlyn Bynum, Carol Brewster, Melinda Coyle, Nancy Evans, Anne Haehl, Mary Kim, Dagmara Meijers-Troller, and Alfred K. Weber.

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2002-12-11T12:12:00.000-08:00

Annie Lamott, SALON MAGAZINE
Dec. 10, 2002

| Boy, it's good to be back. You haven't seen me here much
since my last column, in July of 1999. What happened was, I wrote another
novel. It took two and a half years to write (and much of the material
debuted here at Salon), and then nine months to get it published. People who
want to get published think that publication will give them self-esteem, and
peace of mind, make them feel whole and redeemed. But it's a fantasy, like
thinking that marriage, or weight loss, or money will make you well. You only
look forward to publication and touring the first two times. Then, even
thinking about it is like anticipating periodontal work. It's like weeks and
weeks of labor, waiting to see if your baby book will look like the next
Alice Sebold, or a goat. My publication date was the last day of September,
and I began a national book tour, for much of the five weeks before the
recent election. I did readings, during which I tried to cheer people up,
help them laugh and feel less alone, and trick them into buying my book. And
everywhere I went, when people asked what I was going to do next, I said that
I was going to write for Salon again, and do anything I could to help the
Resistance.

Is there a resistance? you may well ask. Well, maybe it's not quite as
organized or heroic as the French Resistance -- yet. But the plates of the
Earth are shifting. Do you know a single person who supports any of this
administration's policies, in any way at all? I mean, besides your relatives?

People around the country were so scared, and hungry for hope, and for some
reason I seem to have a lot of it, most of the time. If I can get through
these times with my crabby sense of humor and blundering grace, you probably
can too. If we survived one George Bush, we can survive them all. I have hope
because the peace march here was so huge, and because Nancy Pelosi is
terrific. And somehow, Kissinger's appointment to head the investigation into
9/11 is so hilarious that it has given me a new lease on life. You really
gotta love the guy. How many of us could have kept our cool if our boss
referred to us as "the Jew," as in, "Haldeman, get the Jew on the phone." How
many of us could have lived in this country so long, and still sound so
convincingly like Boris Karloff?

So I shared this hope of mine everywhere I went. Hope is costly, as Augustine
said, but not as costly as giving up. And I learned once again that almost
anything is worth doing, as long you get to end up back at home.

My tour began in New York City, with a radio interview for a huge audience. I
waited through the introduction like a dog about to play catch. "Well!" the
host asked finally. "Writing takes a lot of creativity, doesn't it."

"Yes!" I replied enthusiastically. "Quite a lot! How true!"

The next day I did an interview for an important NYC literary radio station
that I had longed to be on. The host said he had read "Bird by Bird" and
"Operating Instructions" a dozen times each, but he must have read the
versions where they took out all the references to my sobriety. Because there
I was, in my golden retriever eagerness to please, with a man who, right off
the bat, offered me a Scotch. "Oh, no thanks," I said nicely, and then
reminded him that I'd quit in 1986. "Sorry, sorry," he said, but at the end
of the show, on air, he offered me tranquilizers as an enticement to be on
his show again. "Valium!" he enthused. "Or Xanax. Or both!" And then he
closed the show by announcing, "You are a delightful little creature."

I was in New York for four or five days, and waited to see if I would get
reviewed by the Times. This is my ninth book and I have never gotten a daily
review in the Times -- not that I am bitter. Nope, nope, nothing could be
further from the truth. It's just that I secretly believe that if Michiko
Kakutani likes your work, it means you are a real writer, and you will be
happy and and wealthy and stable forever. The one little problem with
Michiko, though, is that if she doesn't like your book, she will kill you --
cut your head off with a surgical knife, and play hacky-sack with it until
she grows bored. Then, maybe in the last paragraph, she'll pour acid on it.

So that's definitely a downside.

But there's a book in front of me opened to the page where it says, "There is
One who has all power," and it does not mention Michiko Kakutani. Honest --
I'm looking right at it. But it can sure feel like she does. She's like the
great and glorious Wizard of Oz, and most writers feel terrorized by her. It
does not seem to bring them solace when I remind them that she is going to
get a bad seat in heaven. She will probably have to sit in the Mean People's
Room, with Paul Wolfowitz, and Ann Coulter, and they'll mostly have to live
on aerosol cheese products and lavender Necco wafers.

I had recently read three of Kakutani's brilliant, ugly attacks on three
writers I love -- Zadie Smith, Tim O'Brien and John Updike. Listen, I'm not a
psychiatrist, but I'm beginning to wonder if she may have tiny sadism issues.
So, actually, wanting her to review you is like hoping that Wolfowitz will
ask you out on a date. But I waited, and wonderful things happened for my
book, and I waited, and waited. I composed little ditties like, "Michiko, you
bitchiko, you make us all so twitchiko." And when I never got the daily
review, I knew I had dodged a bullet, but I also felt hurt and hysterical,
like Christopher Guest in "Waiting for Guffman," screaming into the phone, "I
hate you, and I hate your ass face."

Finally I got a Sunday Book Review piece that I loved and I felt great. Then
a friend said it was sort of a mixed review, and I got depressed. Then
another friend said it was a terrific review. Then I got some really
sickening treatment on a radio show, and I felt like Snaggletooth doing
Shakespeare onstage. Up, down, up, down, until finally I remembered what a
priest friend said: "It is exhausting to stay at this level of mental
illness. One needs a lot of rest. We're on your side." It helped. I rested,
overate, called my friends.

I was in Colorado when I made the New York Times Bestseller List, and my best
friend, Martin Cruz Smith, who wrote a great novel called "December Sixth,"
was on it that same day. We called each other from our media escorts' cars,
2,000 miles apart; and I can honestly say this was the happiest moment of my
tour. Then, a bad review arrived, and the jungle drums started beating again.
But luckily, in Colorado, I had something else to worry about: a drowning
fish in my hotel room.

It was a nice hotel except that someone had decorated my room with a dying
goldfish in a fishbowl. It swam frantically around the bowl, opening and
closing its mouth, its eyes bugging out as if it had a grape stuck in its
throat. It never stopped circling, gasping, all but clutching at its throat.
Sometimes it got trapped in the plastic vines. It was a nightmare. At first I
referred to it in numerous telephone calls as "the poor little guy." By
dinner the first night, I called him "that fucking fish." I kept hoping it
would die, so I could pour it down the toilet. I thought about flushing it,
alive. They shoot horses, don't they?

Eventually I got to go out and do a reading. I love readings and my readers,
but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of
voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely
someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony. Or they will show a video,
of me at home, alone, in the bathroom. The whistle is always waiting to be
blown, and in some ways, it gets me to do better work. But onstage with a
hundred people watching, it causes me to swing back and forth between
self-abasement and megalomania. It's usually supersonic, like a dog whistle
-- but in a crowd, other dogs might hear.

Being on a book tour is like being on the seesaw when you're a little kid.
The excitement is in having someone to play with, and in rising up in the
air, but then you're at the mercy of those holding you down, and if it's your
older brother, or Paul Wolfowitz, they leap up, so that you crash down and
get hurt. And if it's you holding you down, teasing you, and withholding, and
leaping up, well, where are you going to find any connection and safety?

I usually find it back at the hotel, where there's room service and climate
control, which almost makes up for no kid, no boyfriend, no cat. And no
puttering, which is as close as I get to yoga. The only things you can look
for in a hotel are things you probably left behind. But this time I had to
return to the drowning fish. It was still tearing around the bowl when I got
back, searching for a crumb, gasping for air. I finally called housekeeping.

"I'm very worried about my fish," I said. There was a long pause. "I think
he's hungry. Would it be possible to send some fish flakes up?"

But the fish people had gone home for the night, and I was too embarrassed to
ask for someone to come get the fish. I called a friend. I told him about the
fish, and I started crying, and I finally realized that there were two beings
in the room, and one of us was just fine.

So I did what you can do to help life fill in the holes: I put on my jammies,
ordered crème brulée, arranged my reading material, took a lot of notes,
realized how funny it was going to seem someday, and called a friend.

And the next day I got to come home. Home was a fascinating series of
counterbalances —- back with my family and friends, but blindsided by the
election; grounded by the yoga of puttering, and terrorized by the impending
war. I didn't know quite what to do with myself at first. Then I remembered
what I had told those people who kept asking what I was going to do next: I
was going to work for the Resistance, and do a column at Salon; flex the
muscles of my hope and neuroses, and walk through it again.

2002-12-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

MY WAY OR THE TWO-WAY HIGHWAY.
---------------------------------
by: David Michaelis

As the war approaches inexorably, the divide and polarization between the Arab World and the US increases daily. Beneath the obvious misperceptions about policy goals of the governments involved, lies a gap that has lead to a dialog of the clueless. However this inability to read each others' intentions can be remedied.

One of the hurdles is that only 14% of Americans have passports. Adding to this is a National Geographic survey which revealed last week that more American teenagers knew that the island featured in the last season of "Survivor" on CBS is in the South Pacific than could place Israel on a map.

The Arab world, on the other hand, gleaned most of its information about the US from Hollywood productions seen by satellite in most Arab countries. The UN Arab Development Program has issued a report this year expressing its dismay that only 300 books were translated from English into Arabic for a population of 280 million Arabs. Yet no equivalent report was issued about the fact that about 330 books were translated from foreign languages into English last year for the 285 million Americans. There seems to be an equal lack of literacy on both sides.

These numbers should enlighten the ruling elites, business leaders, and media pundits who do not know how and why America is so misunderstood. The richest country on earth is living under a cultural blockade, making its population unable to decode the messages coming from other countries. This "city on the hill" is proving that even an open democracy can be a closed society that resists outside attempts to reach it through peaceful means. A society that believes that it is a role model for all others to follow cannot remain insulated living on an island informed by corporate media products. The 9/11 tremors are felt still today because most Americans saw more films about aliens landing in the US than they ever saw about people living in foreign countries, sharing the same planet with them. Americans have to realize that isolationism on the cultural level leads to "It's my way or the highway" on the international diplomacy level. A peaceful diplomacy is not possible when there is no recognition of the OTHER as a different and legitimate being.

If Americans perceive their mission in the world to be the definers of evil and the authority on how to eradicate it, then dissent becomes unacceptable and the Patriot Act is the only way to go. For foreigners this one country-one voice message, does not sound democratic at all. If citizens choose to send a message "Don't mess with Texas," they should not be surprised that the US remains a lone star in the world. This is a risky, reckless attitude for the most powerful democracy of the 21st century. As Americans ask themselves what they can do for their country, one of the answers should be to listen to the world and recognize that the two oceans are no longer a barrier. Listening to the world means to translate more books, see more foreign films and dialog via the Internet with the world. If Americans choose not to travel, these are the most practical alternatives. To break through this self-imposed cultural blockade, American citizens must rebel against the rating and market driven culture. Since 9/11, anyone who still believes that "What you don't know won't hurt you," lives in a bubble.

Listening to the world and decoding its messages is not a matter of investing $30 billion in national intelligence capabilities. There is a difference between hearing and listening to other societies. The dialog of the deaf usually happens between people who pretend to hear but are not listening, as the ongoing crisis in the Middle East proves on a daily basis. Messages of goodwill in one sign language are sometimes misinterpreted as a threat by the other side. Geopolitical literacy is an essential tool to understand today's complex global realities. American society is at a crossroad and has to change its priorities. The dilemma today is - does American want to be an enlightened and informed Athens on the hill or an armed Sparta?

The clouds of war should not lead to demonization of the Arab World, without any shades of different Mid East colors appearing on American television. Terror tends to dictate an dichotomy of good and evil with new cycles of retaliation being the only mode of communication. The recent internal debate between Bush and some of his supporters about whether Islam is a peaceful religion or a warmongering one is a typical result of this labeling syndrome. The opening of the minds and making other cultures more accessible can happen through computers and television in homes around the nation. The information super-highway goes two ways, so does the international road of diplomacy. Citizens diplomacy and open, fast communication should be the road to travel on. This will dispel the fears that are uppermost in peoples' minds. Fear and ignorance are a sure recipe for demonization, making the faces of the "other" into monsters.

2002-12-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

Letter from Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts, Fall 2002

Dear friends,

One cannot accuse the Bush administration of any lack of clarity
about its vision for global affairs.

This administration understands very well that in terms of military
force the United States stands alone, beyond any conceivable
challenge. And this administration has made it crystal clear that it
intends to use this power to organize the world to satisfy the
demands of the narrow sector of domestic power and privilege that it
represents. In service of the same interests, Bush and company are
quite openly conducting an assault against the domestic population.
They are seeking to impose obedience by undermining civil liberties
and fostering a distorted brand of patriotism that aims at
suppressing democratic debate.

The Bush administration is also breaking new ground in the brazenness
of its contempt for international law and treaty obligations. The
language and processes of multilateralism, international rule of law,
treaties, and international cooperation have been thrown into the
trash heap of history: the Kyoto protocol, International Criminal
Court, arms control treaties, human rights conditionality on U.S.
military aid—indeed any impediment to unconstrained U.S. force and
coercion. Emboldened by their historically unprecedented and rapidly
escalating military hegemony, leading Bush planners make no secret of
their intention to validate the four-word definition that George Bush
Sr. gave to his new world order, "What we say goe"s.

There is only one deterrent to this mad and destructive course—the
people of the United States."

There can be no more urgent task than to speak truth about power—the
destructive power unleashed in the name of all the people of the
United States. Speaking truth about power entails good research and
analysis by U.S. progressives, and it means listening to those
impacted by U.S. power abroad. Truth about power facilitates the
essential organizing and advocacy needed to ensure that the immense
resources of the U.S. can help create a more decent, livable world.

Since 1979 the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, on the
internet, http://www.irc-online.org) has been doing just this. Now
more than ever, the IRC needs your support to continue this important
work, because never before has U.S. power been so widely projected
and unconstrained.

With long experience in U.S.-Latin American relations, the IRC has in
the past year launched its new Americas Program
(http://www.americaspolicy.org). This program is not only critiquing
how the U.S. is wielding its weight in the region—meddling in
domestic politics in Bolivia and Venezuela, supporting
state-sponsored terror in Colombia, funding migrant detention centers
in Guatemala, and pushing its now discredited neoliberal trade
agenda—but is also looking at how citizens are fighting back and
establishing alternatives.

Six years ago the IRC had a vision of creating "a citizen-based think
tank without walls." Today that vision has been realized in the
internationally renowned Foreign Policy In Focus project
(http://www.fpif.org). Over the years, FPIF has demonstrated an
admirable capacity to respond to global affairs crises with expert
analysis based on sound progressive principles. Also, in the past
year I applauded the IRC’s launch of an "Outside the U.S." component
of FPIF, which insures that perspectives from countries impacted by
U.S. policies become part of the public debate.

A new IRC initiative, the Project on the Present Danger
(http://www.presentdanger.org), is a campaign to build support for
international cooperation and law as the proper framework for
managing global affairs. We define the "present danger" as U.S.
unilateralism and U.S. attacks on multilateral frameworks for peace
and security. Over the past six months, the IRC has also covered new
investigative and analytical ground in its focus on the right-wing
front groups and ideologues that are shaping Bush's supremacist
foreign policy.

As a member of the IRC's board of directors—and a long-time fan of
its work—I urge you to make a donation in support of the IRC.

More than ever before, we need groups like the IRC speaking out,
asking hard questions, tabling alternatives, and telling it like it
is.

Sincerely,
Noam Chomsky

-=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-
-=*=--=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=- -=*=-

2002-12-09T10:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.html

They Thought They Were Free
by Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was
the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just
think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it
became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their
government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy,
or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little,
really nothing to do with knowing one is governing.

What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by
little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in
secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the
government had to act on information which the people could not understand,
or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be
released because of national security. And their sense of identification
with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and
reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took
place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even
intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true
patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and
reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the
slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter
and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It
was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was
plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new
situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all,
papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And
on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had
to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been
important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's
energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how
easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to
think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said
my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into
being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for
people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little
men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men,
mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and
never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental
things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with
continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the
machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no
time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by
little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants
to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please
try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political
awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each
step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion,
"regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the
beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what
all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some
day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in
his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary
men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since
it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta
and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one
must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One
must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by
ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here
before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And
everyone counts on that might.

"Your "little men," your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in
principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we
knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better.
Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he
spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the
Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist,
and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a
little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and
then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier,
but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a
Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to
move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the
last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait
for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock
comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or
even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble."
Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just
fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine
uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time go
es on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community,
"everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You
know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted
on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is
not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak
privately to you colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what
do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or
"You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and
you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for
sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the
end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party,
intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or
even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally,
people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or
submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at
meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off
in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in
small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to
yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens
your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to – to
what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you
must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker.
So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will
join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst
act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the
smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if,
let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the
"German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of
course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of
little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to
be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you
did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step
D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them,
all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and
some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby,
saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything,
everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you
live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all.
The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the
shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the
holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the
lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live
in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even
know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now
you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The
system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to
sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a
flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new
level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new
level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new
morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted
five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could
not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you
have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that
was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early
meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others
would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of
hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You
remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are
compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your
principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or
learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the
nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans
became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or
cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He
was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He
was just – a judge. In "42" or "43", early "43", I think it was, a Jew was
tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with
an "Aryan" woman. This was "race injury", something the Party was especially
anxious to punish. In the case a bar, however, the judge had the power to
convict the man of a "nonracial" offense and send him to an ordinary prison
for a very long term, thus saving him from Party "processing" which would
have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But
the man was innocent of the "nonracial" charge, in the judge's opinion, and
so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the
Jew as soon as he left the courtroom.
"
"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience – a case, mind
you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should
have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have
convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had
to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to
acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the "44" Putsch they
arrested him. After that, I don't know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest,
criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the
greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in
public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who
would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever
here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those
who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he
meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to
all uncertainty.
"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it;
so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis
always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war
and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with
it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the
Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun,
still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on
Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

How and why "decent men" became Nazis. Written by an American journalist
of German\Jewish descent. Mr. Mayer provides a fascinating window into the
lives, thoughts and emotions of a people caught up in the rush of the Nazi
movement. It is a book that should make people pause and think -- not only
about the Germans, but also about themselves.

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse.
You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking
occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you
in resisting somehow.

The discrepancy between the kind of society many Germans thought they
were building and the reality of the horror of the Third Reich presents one
of the most intriguing questions of our age. "How could it -- the Holocaust
-- have happened in a modern, industrialized, educated nation ? The genesis
of my interest in the Third Reich lies in my search for an answer to that
enigmatic question.
The excerpt reproduced below is one of the most insightful I have yet
discovered. I share it with you -
Pass it on - Lest
we forget. RCD - Web Host

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them,
all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy.......

***********
You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you
haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do
nothing).
www.thirdreich.net

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2002-12-09T08:41:00.000-08:00