Ch VII, Part 4 (and last)

VII.I Discourse and counter-discourse 6: ‘American interests’

97. In 1997, a right-wing  think-tank called ‘Project for a New American Century’ was founded ‘to make the case and rally support for American global leadership’. Its Internet website95 promulgated a ‘Mission Statement’ including these missions:

In this spirit, they wrote urging President Clinton in 1998 to ‘enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world’, and complained that ‘American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council’. They also issued a 90-page report on ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, which has been called ‘a blue-print for US world domination’ drawn up by ‘chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war’ (Tam Dalyell, longest-serving member of the British Parliament).96

98. Such jingoistic discourse might conjure up the plot for some futuristic Hollywood rule-the-world fantasy, But now in 2004, the list of signers reads like a Who’s Who of the two Bush ‘Administrations’ and their associates: Elliott Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz…as if the think-tank had been physically siphoned into the White House. And they are busily teaching the world how to be ‘uniquely friendly to American interests’, which Bush Jr described to Congress as ‘far-reaching’. Indeed.

99. As a long-standing discursive theme, ‘American interests’ have been extolled for ‘benefiting the international order’ and even guaranteeing ‘survival’, e.g. [2252]. But lately those interests have favoured war and annihilation instead [2253-55].

[2252] Although it may not have the national will again to assume the role of world police- man, the U.S. does have the political and economic power to be one of the world’s peace legitimizers. The cause of international survival may depend on renewed American interest and diplomacy in troubled areas. […] Thus, international American interests benefit both the international order and U.S. security. (After the Bicentennial) www 

[2253] The incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination [will] always defend a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces; […] if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you. (Irving Kristol in the Weekly Standard).

[2254] I’m a war president.  I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. […] In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn’t [sic] serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences [sic again].  People look at us and say, they don’t mean what they say, they are not willing to follow through. (Bush Jr on Meet the Press)97

[2255] International law is like Santa Claus [that only] exists in law school classrooms. In the corporeal world, international law is whatever the United States and Great Britain say it is. (Ann Coulter)98

So when the US (or any of its ruling chickenhawks) threatens another nation with ‘serious consequences’ like an unprovoked ‘shock and awe’ 99 mega-bombing, then it must deliver them or else — Katy, bar the door! — be judged insincere, indecisive, or, worst of all, cowardly (like France, we were told).

100. In theory, the ‘world policeman’ could ‘intervene’ to rescue ‘civilised society’ [2256] on the basis of ‘moral’ and ‘racial superiority’ [2257], but in practice its ‘interests’ seem to have been more tangible [2258].

[2256] Chronic wrongdoing [or] a general loosening of the ties of civilised society may […] ultimately require intervention by some civilised nation [in] the exercise of an international police power. (President Theodore Roosevelt, 1904)

[2257] The day is not far distant when […] the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally. (President William Howard Taft, 1912)

[2258] I was a racketeer for capitalism. […] I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. (Major General Smedley D. Butler of the US Marines)100

101. More recently, such noble ‘causes’ have been defended by the U.S. Army’s ‘School of the Americas’ (SOA), at Fort Benning, Georgia (from 1946 to 1977 in Panama) — now renamed the ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ — which its supporters call ‘an important tool in helping spread democratic values to Washington’s allies in Central America and South America’. According to its website (www.soaw.org), instruction is

[2259] focused on nation-building skills, […] consolidation of the effective democratic governance, respect for the rule of law, and economic development along free market principles.

Some noted graduates seem to have acquired rather special notions of ‘democratic governance’:

[2260] dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. (School of the Americas Watch)www

Instruction relied on some rather special textbooks too:

[2261] a 1992 report declassified by the Pentagon in 1996 revealed the details of a manual used at SOA in the 1980s that advocated tactics such as beatings, false imprisonment, execution, and bounty payments for enemy dead. (Bruce Kennedy, CNN Interactive)www

At least one ‘manual’ is posted on the Internet101  and its discourse conveys a special brand of ‘respect for the rule of law’, e.g.:

[2262] The agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas.

[2263] The employee’s [i.e. captive's] value could be increased by means of arrests, executions, or pacification, taking care not to expose the employee as the information source.

[2264] Familiar clothing reinforces identity and thus the capacity for resistance. […] If the interrogatee is especially proud or neat, […] give him an outfit that is too large and fail to provide a belt, so that he must hold his pants up.

The manual has a ‘Descriptive Bibliography’ of notes and references of CIA-funded studies in psychology and psychoanalysis with titles like ‘Psychic Self-Abandon and Extortion of Confessions’, alongside a ‘Guide’ on ‘Brainwashing’, and a ‘Police Interview pamphlet’ with a ‘sprightly style’.

102. Few Latin American countries have been closer to ‘American interests’ than Cuba, whose direct annexation as a state was predicted by John Adams back in 1783 but was ironically forestalled by US racism [2265]. Intervention in the War of Independence against Spain was seen as just the occasion to ‘clean up the country’ with genocide American style:

[2265] This population is made up of whites, blacks, Asians and people who are mixture of these races, [who] are generally indolent and apathetic [and] possess a vague notion of what is right and wrong. […] The immediate annexation of these disturbing elements into our own federation in such large numbers would be madness, so before we do that we must clean up the country. We must destroy everything within our cannons’ range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the army, […] in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles. (US Under-Secretary of War J.C. Breckenridge in 1897)

The ‘cannons’ range of fire’ must have fallen short. Cuba became an ‘independent republic’, though its ‘Constitution’ incorporated the ‘Platte Amendment’ authorising invasions by the US (with its proper ‘notion of what is right and wrong’) to ‘restore order’, as duly occurred in 1902, 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1933. Annexation would hardly have seemed necessary anyway:

[2266] By the 1950s U.S. corporations owned 80% of Cuba’s land, most of the sugar industry, and all of the public utilities, oil refining, nickel industry, and railroads. (Gary Erb, Rebels and Dollars)www

103. After the surprise victory of the Cuban revolution, US policy reverted to ‘imposing a harsh blockade’ [2265], which is still in force today.  In March, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff forwarded to the US Secretary of Defense (‘Secretary of War’ until 1947) a ‘top secret’ document titled ‘Pretexts to Justify US Military Intervention in Cuba’ and only recently declassified.102 It affords an instructive counter-discourse to the discourse of the ‘world’s peace legitimizer’ [2252], by cynically proposing ‘incidents in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces’, e.g.:

[2267] (1) Start rumours (many). Use clandestine radio. (2) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans). (3) Develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, […] exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, arresting Cuban agents, and releasing prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement. (4) A ‘Remeinber the Maine’ incident could be arranged: Blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. […] Follow up with an air/sea rescue operation to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the nonexistent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation. […] Conduct funerals for mock-victims.

The Kennedy Administration rejected the plan, but would Bush/Cheney have done?

104. Today, ‘American interests’ are hard to distinguish from ‘global interests’, as represented above all by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose policies bear uncanny likenesses to the cynical indifference if not hostility of moneyed interests toward health, safety, and the environment as seen in sections VII.E-G, viz.:

[2268] Oxfam International estimates that, in the Philippines alone, IMF-imposed cuts in preventative medicine will result in 29,000 deaths from malaria and an increase of 90,000 in the number of untreated tuberculosis cases. (Panic Rules)103

[2269] In Africa an estimated 500,000 more children died from the imposed restructuring of their countries’ economies to ensure increased flows of money to external banks, while spending on health care declined by 50 per cent and on education by 25 per cent. (Unequal Freedoms)104

105. Energetic deconstruction and counter-discourse should be duly applied to the discourses of such institutions, who present themselves on their websites in glowing terms. As one of the ‘10 Things You Never Knew’ (a phrase that almost gives the show away — there was nothing to know), the World Bank praises its inroads into the health care market  [2270]. A counter-discourse of close ‘reading’ deconstructs the Bank’s World Development Report titled ‘Investing in Health’ [2271].

[2270] Providing poor people with basic health and nutrition lies at the heart of reducing poverty and promoting economic growth, […] health, nutrition, and population projects in the developing world.105

[2271] On first reading, the Bank’s strategy looks comprehensive, even modestly progresssive. […] But, on reading further, we discover that the key recommendations spring from the same paradigm that has worsened poverty and health levels. Governments must […] ‘foster an enabling environment for households to improve health’ — which really means requiring disadvantaged families to cover the costs of their own healthcare; ‘improve government spending in health’ — means trimming government spending from comprehensive coverage to a narrow selection of cost-effective measures; ‘promote diversity and competition in health services’ — which means turning over to private, profit-making doctors and businesses most of those government services that used to provide free or subsidized care for the poor. […] Loan programmes, development priorities, and adjustment policies have deepened inequalities and added to the poverty, ill health and deteriorating living conditions of at least one billion human beings. (Who Killed Primary Healthcare?)106

106. Still more effective is the counter-discourse on the World Bank’s ‘Country Assistance Strategy’ in a ‘four-step programme’ as described by the Bank’s own former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz :

[2272] Step One is ‘Privatization’ —  which could more accurately be called ‘Briberiza-tion.’ […] National leaders — using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics — happily flogged their electricity and water companies. ‘You could see their eyes widen at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets’. […] Step Two [is] ‘Capital Market Liberalization.’ In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. […] A nation’s reserves can drain in days, hours. […] Step Three [is] ‘Market-Based Pricing’, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water, and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to ‘the IMF riots’ (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas), as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia, the Bolivian riots over water prices, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. […] This economic arson has its bright side — for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices. […] Step Four [is] Free trade, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars, when the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective — and sometimes just as deadly. […] (Greg Palast in the Observer, ‘The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold’)107

The same renowned economist, whose knowledge of the facts is unassailable, pointed out that ‘IMF/World Bank plans’ are devised in ‘secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology’ that ‘undermines democracy’; and worse, ‘they don’t work’, as when ‘IMF structural “assistance” led to Africa’s income dropping by 23%’.

[2273] We have long known that World Bank projects bring environmental catastrophe and suffering on a grand scale. Now we know the projects are economic failures as well. This removes the last shred of justification for the World Bank’s very existence. (Environmental Digest)www

But the ‘plans’ are not ‘failures’ if their real ‘justification’ is to convert whole nations and governments into handcuffed debt-repayment mechanisms, flood their markets with first-world imports, and sell off state industries and public services to multinational corporations at ‘briberised’ or ‘fire-sale’ prices. Slashing health care, dumping toxic waste, and jacking up the prices of food, water, and fuel are all part of the same logic of dressing up economic invasion and servitude in the guise of ‘financial support’, ‘economic growth’ and ‘reduction of poverty’ [2770] — collateral damage, so to speak, like economic cluster bombs waiting to ignite.

VII.J Discourse and counter-discourse 7: The ‘Patriot Acts’108

105. If it seems callous to call the 9/11 attacks a ‘golden opportunity’ for an illegitimate presidency [2274], the administration’s moves to ‘exploit’ it have been callous enough, though the press was initially ‘shy’ about ‘pointing this out’ [2275].

[2274] The events of Sept. 11 shocked and horrified the nation; they also presented the Bush administration with a golden opportunity to bury its previous misdeeds.109

[2275] The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration’s exploitation of 9/11, [now] that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits, and even campaign finance.110

At all events, the ‘administration’ gladly seized the ‘opportunity’ to foist an orgy of radically right-wing legislation upon Congress, maximising secrecy for the government and its agents whilst minimising it for the citizens. In effect, the ‘government’ arrogated to itself sweeping powers of secret surveillance and control, and stipulated that citizens or residents who were ‘unpatriotic’ enough to resist, refuse, or speak out can be fined, imprisoned, or deported (or have their ‘faces slammed into a wall’, 109.2.2).

106. The outcome was the ‘USA PATRIOT’ Act (342 pages), whose title is a monstrously devious and contrived acronym for ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism’ (HR 3162 RDS, 107th Congress).111 The discourse actually says nothing at all about ‘patriots’ and refers to ‘patriotism’ exactly once, namely when

[2276] the Nation is called upon to recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. (Section 102)112

presumptively including those Black and Hispanic Americans who were illegally stripped of their voting rights in Florida (VII.19). A more honest title would be (to ape a post-9/11 threat from Ari Fleischer) the ‘Watch What You Say And Do, Because We Will Without You Knowing It’ Act. It was ‘triumphantly signed into law’ by ‘President’ Bush on October 26, 2001, suspiciously soon (45 days) after the attack, rammed through Congress under unprecedented conditions:

[2277] The act was hurriedly signed into law with  overwhelming  approval within six weeks of the  terrorist  attacks  on  New  York  and  Washington, without  hearings or without  being  marked up by a congressional committee. (Noell Straub in the Progressive Review)www  

[2278] Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas [!]) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act […] before its passage, and no debate was tolerated by the House and Senate leadership. […] Dick Cheney […] publicly threatened members of Congress that if they didn’t vote in favor of it they would be blamed for the next terrorist attack. [Even the far-right columnist] William Safire described the first Patriot Act’s powers by saying that President Bush was ‘seizing  dictatorial control’. (Alex Jones in Infowars)

Surely Cheney’s support in Congress for armour-piercing cop-killer bullets and guns that fool metal detectors (VII.2) should make him the very darling of terrorists. Meanwhile, the veil of maximal secrecy enshrouding the passage coincided with ‘Attorney General’ John Ashcroft’s ‘Memorandum for Heads of All Federal Departments and Agencies’ goading them to stonewall ‘requests for information’:

[2279] When you carefully consider FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions. 

However, some authentic patriots posted the secretive discourse of the ‘Patriot Act’ on the Internet, where it has been analysed by citizens’ advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, at www.aclu.org).

107. Not content with the radical Patriot Act (hereafter Patriot I), the ‘Department of Justice’ (hereafter DoJ, its own acronym) concocted the even more radical ‘Patriot Act II’ (120 pages), whose official title is the ‘Domestic Security Enhancement Act’, dated January 9, 2003 and secretly forwarded ‘for comment’ on January 10 to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and ‘Vice-President’ Cheney,113  but  publicly (and unexpectedly) posted by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) on the Internet on February 7.114 Though stamped for secrecy with ‘confidential – not for distribution’ at the top of every page, it opens with a  revealing ‘Section-By-Section Analysis’ evidently intended as a public or at least congressional advocacy of why previous legislation, including Patriot I, needs to be ‘amended’.

108. I downloaded both discourses and installed them as a mini-corpus in WordPilot to search for significant frequencies and collocations. Admittedly, analysing two strenuous legal discourses of 56,869 words (Patriot I) and 36,664 words (Patriot II) is a daunting challenge under any circumstances, but these two discourses were designed to treat secrecy in secretive language, just in case anyone inside or outside of Congress should essay to read them (cf. 109.3.1). Still, I shall essay to isolate and illustrate some major discursive strategies.

109.1.1. One strategy is to use the term ‘terrorism’ continually or in expansive senses and contexts. If, as we, saw, Patriot I says virtually nothing about ‘patriots’ and ‘patriotism’ (VII.106), it makes 336 mentions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’, plus their various derivatives like ‘bioterrorism’ (but mercifully not ‘food terrorism’).115   In Patriot II, where ‘patriot’ or any derivative occurs exactly zero times (except in the name of the predecessor act), ‘terrorist/terrorism’ occurs 353 times, almost twice the density (at .096%) as that in the much longer Patriot I (at .059 %). Typically, the term clusters within Patriot II in contexts of ‘threatening’ or ‘endangering’ ‘security’, unsubtly reinforcing the message that the threat is real and omnipresent.

109.1.2. The term is strategically expanded for ‘domestic’ activities not ordinarily relating to terrorism, essentially creating a new and broad definition:

[2280] The term ‘domestic terrorism’ means activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion. (802)I

In a literal reading, clause (A) would reclassify as ‘terrorism’ every ‘violation of law’ that ‘endangers human life’, which should include the various death-dealing attacks on worker safety and consumer health that the federal government is so reluctant to prosecute (VII.E-F). By the second and third clauses (B-C), you can qualify as a ‘terrorist’ without doing anything at all, or even ‘intending’ to; you need merely ‘appear to intend’ to do it. Thus, overt ‘acts’ become ‘terrorism’ through the interpretation of the law enforcement agencies or their informants who judge ‘appearances’. For some ‘authorities’, just being a ‘Middle East citizen’ might be probable cause (cf. VII.45):

[2281] Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration  authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars […] under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. (Reuters, 19/12/2002)

109.1.3. Expansive too is having ‘terrorism’ cover ‘intimidating civilians’ (unless the government does), which could include warning them about ‘dangerous chemical companies’, which Patriot II restricts you doing, as we’ll see in [2310]. ‘Influencing the policy of a government’ could include filing a lawsuit for release of White House documents relating to its collaboration with Enron (cf. VII.23).

109.1.4. Elsewhere, the term ‘terrorist’ craftily alternates with ‘consumer’:

[2282] To avoid alerting terrorists that they are under investigation, this provision would prohibit (absent court approval) disclosing to a consumer the fact that law enforcement has sought his credit report. (126)II

Yet even these loose discourses hardly cover acts to which the DoJ is zealously applying the label of ‘terrorism, where no ‘life is ‘endangered’, and no ‘population’ or ‘government’ is being ‘intimidated’ or ‘coerced’, viz.:

[2283] In the first two months of this year, the Justice Department filed ‘terrorism’ charges against 56 people. But an investigation has found that at least 41 of them had nothing to do with terrorism — a point that prosecutors acknowledge. […] The largest group of ‘terrorism’ cases this year was [surprise!] from Texas, where prosecutors have won guilty pleas from Latinos charged with illegally working at the Austin airport. (Mark Fazlollah in Knight Ridder Newspapers) 

[2284] The Justice Department has used many of the anti-terrorism powers granted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to pursue defendants for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including drug violations, credit card fraud, and bank theft, according to a government accounting released yesterday. (Dan Eggen in the Washington Post)

I was wryly amused by the DoJ's recently opened ‘website launched to educate Americans about how we are preserving life and liberty by using the USA PATRIOT Act’, where ‘drug crimes, mail fraud, and passport fraud’ are at least correctly termed ‘ordinary, non-terrorism crimes’ (www.lifeandliberty.gov).

109.2.1. A second strategy is to apply the extraordinary category of ‘enemy combatants’ to strip ‘suspects’ of all legal and constitutional rights:

[2285] The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects — U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike — may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say. (Washingon Post)

As usual, the DoJ emitted its justification in smarmy fraudspeak:

[2286] Attorney General John Ashcroft Tuesday adamantly defended the administration’s policy to detain enemy combatants without giving them the right to speak to an attorney. ‘Some people fail to understand that security is designed to secure something, and what we are securing are the rights of individuals’, Ashcroft told CNN’s Larry King Live. ‘So, rather than security being something that challenges rights and that diminishes rights, security makes those rights safe and strong.’ (CNN)

This tortuous logic hinges on Ashcroft’s odd notion (reported in Time)116 of  ‘civil liberties’ centring on ‘the right to be uninjured’ and to ‘to live in freedom’, which are inexplicably threatened by giving jailed defendants an attorney — never mind the verdict of the trial, which the government is not obligated to hold anyway.

109.2.2. Conversely, precisely those same ‘liberties’ are denied to supposed ‘enemy combatants’, such as the Muslim ‘detainees’ in Guantanamo (a locale chosen because it lies outside US jurisdiction and rule of law), viz.:

[2287] Upon leaving their cells, they have been subjected to strip searches and body cavity searches, and they have been placed in ‘three-piece suits’ consisting of leg restraints and a belly chain linked to handcuffs. (Amnesty International)

[2288] His face was slammed into a wall and he was kicked by prison guards. His lower teeth were loosened in the process, and although he was in extreme pain, he was not allowed to see a dentist. (Turkmen vs. Ashcroft)

[2289] He was grabbed by the hair while he was shackled and forced to face an American flag by a prison guard who told him ‘This is America’. (Amnesty International)

Not surprisingly, the dire threat of being ‘declared enemy combatants’ suffices to extort guilty pleas without even ‘offering evidence’:

[2290] The federal government implicitly threatened to toss the defendants into a secret military prison without trial, where they could languish indefinitely without access to courts or lawyers. That prospect terrified the men. They accepted prison terms of 6 ½ to 9 years. ‘We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us’, said attorney Patrick J. Brown, [even though] prosecutors never offered evidence that the defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism. […] ‘One by one’, Bush said after the arrests, ‘we’re hunting the killers down’.117

In January 2002, a court decision granted ‘President’ Bush ‘the authority to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and detain them in military custody if they are deemed a threat to national security’ (CNN Law).www  And, remember, he ‘doesn’t owe anybody an explanation’ (VII.3):

[2291] Solicitor General Ted Olson argued, in a recent legal brief, there is no requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant and no set evidentiary standard the administration needs to meet in order to slap someone in prison, incommunicado, without right of appeal. (Beria Lives)www  

This same Olson once seemed eager to lock up the Clintons [2075] (VII.27), which theoretically could now be done but for the massive political fallout.

109.3.1. A third strategy is to make dense, often fragmented references to other statutes. This occurs extensively in both Patriot Acts, making minor ‘amendments’. in the wording (or punctuation) of 15 previous Statutes which are not quoted, though most can be downloaded from the Internet. Moreover, Patriot II proposes 22 changes to Patriot I, such as inserting the ominous section heading ‘Required disclosure of customer communications or records’ (Sec. 2703).

109.3.2. This strategy might be favoured for several compelling reasons. First, the DoJ purports to be making ‘only modest, incremental changes in the law’ (website), as if the Act were not radical but interwoven with established US legislation:

[2292] Congress [sic] simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network. (DoJ website)

Second, the numerous calls among irate citizens to repeal Patriot I can be turned down for demanding a hunt for all the changes which have already been made, at least in the U.S. Code as it is now posted by the House of Representatives. Third, an Act written this way simply could not be digested by members Congress at the breakneck speed at which it got rammed through, as attested by [2277-78], even if they had a chance to read it and had taken the trouble (like I did) to gather the ‘amended’ Statutes. Still, I didn’t find any changes that seemed really more explosive and tyrannical than what is fully spelled out in the Patriot Acts.

109.3.3. The clear favorite was the United States Code, which was ‘amended’ 203 times in Patriot I and 82 times in Patriot II, of which 190 are directed only to Title 18, ‘Crimes and Criminal Procedure’. Title 18 is a truly gargantuan document, comprising (as of March 2004) 999,499 words in 122,292 paragraphs, and growing each time it gets ‘amended’. Some amendments in the Patriot Acts form stretches of discourse that are uninformative and, for most Americans, utterly meaningless, e.g.:

[2293] Rule 6(e)(3)(D) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure is amended by striking ‘(e)(3)(C)(i)’ and inserting ‘(e)(3)(C)(i)(I)’. (203)I

[2294] Section 2510 of title 18, United States Code, is amended in paragraph (17), by striking ‘and’ after the semicolon (800)I

Others at least betray the DoJ’s intentions, e.g., increasing the penalty for ‘wilfully and maliciously setting fire to or burning any building’ that is a ‘dwelling or if the life of any person be placed in jeopardy’ (U.S. Code) from ‘not more than twenty years’ ‘to ‘any term of years or for life’ (810)I.

109.3.4. Similarly, ‘mail fraud’ was augmented by the new ‘felony’ called ‘computer fraud and abuse’ (202). The ‘telephone toll billing records’ the DoJ can request for suspected citizens became ‘local and long distance telephone connection records, or records of session times and durations’ (210). And the term ‘chemical’ was deleted in front of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (104) to make the latter term more encompassing for deadly items like tubes and trailers.

109.4.1. A fourth strategy is to insist that prevailing legislation, including Patriot I, is perilously weak. Perhaps the slam-bang passage of Patriot I made the DoJ confident that even more ‘patriotism’ could be inflicted on the cowed nation (say, like the second big tax cut). So Patriot II bristles with unintentionally ironic (not to say comic) gripes against Patriot I for containing ‘typographical and other errors’ that ‘prevent full utilization’ (428)II; manifesting ‘lack of clarity’ about ‘disclosure of e-mails’ (121)II; ‘losing valuable and necessary intelligence exemptions’ for ‘pen registers’ (monitor outgoing telephone calls) and ‘trap and trace devices’ (monitor incoming calls) (110)II; ‘complicating or preventing prosecution of persons convicted of non-violent terrorist offenses’ (410)II (not ‘prosecuted’ yet ‘convicted’ seems to be the status of ‘enemy combatants’); and generally ‘failing to take account of the myriad ways in which, in the modern world, war can be waged against the United States’ (501)II.

109.4.2. Yet a ‘lack of clarity’ can offer strategic advantages, such as allowing vague extensions for the term ‘terrorist’. Besides, how the ‘tools’ of Patriot I could be ‘utilized’ more ‘fully’ than current practices like [2295] is hard to imagine, let alone how typos could be ‘preventing’ them. (Perhaps the zeal of the agents was heightened by invading a town named Moscow?)

[2295] The FBI flew in 120 agents, fully-armed in riot gear, on two military aircraft, to Moscow, Idaho, to arrest one Saudi graduate student for visa fraud. The raid went down in University of Idaho student housing at 4:30 a.m. in the morning, terrorizing [!] the suspect’s family  [and] the families of neighboring students. […] At least 20 other students who had the misfortune to either know the suspect or to have some minor immigration irregularities were also subjected to substantial, surprise interrogations (4+ hours)… (Elizabeth Barker Brandt, Professor of Law at the University of Idaho)

Terrorism for ‘visa’ terrorists, with stars and stripes on it.

109.5.1. A fifth strategy is to appropriate mountains of public money for ‘national security’. Patriot I contains a barrelful of such provisions, mostly (surprise!) to the various arms of the DoJ, who wrote it. The sums are suspiciously round and enormous (e.g., four payouts of $50,000,000 each). By carefully tallying up the provisions,108 I computed the minimum cost of the Act for the taxpayer coming to $2,927,250,000. Yet the real cost will be far higher, because the Act also authorises ‘such sums as may be necessary’ for at least five other costly projects.108 Undoubtedly, these self-serving ‘allocations’ would have been cut back in Congress during a genuine debate — another compelling reason for not having any [2277-78].

109.5.2. In vain I scoured the discourse of Patriot I for some practical explanation of how millions of dollars actually translate into ‘antiterrorism training’ or ‘defending the Nation’. Presumably, an arsenal of high technology is to be purchased and unleashed, taking for granted that terrorism — like those insolent ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that unreasonably refuse to come out of hiding — will be found if you just look hard enough. The prospective gadgetry is literally endless:

[2296] Iris, retina, and fingerprint scanners; hand-geometry assayers; remote video-network surveillance; face-recognition software; smart cards with custom identification chips; decompressive baggage checkers that vacuum-extract minute chemical samples from inside suitcases; tiny radio implants beneath the skin that continually broadcast people’s identification codes; pulsed fast-neutron analysis of shipping containers…118

109.5.3. In return, I noticed some curious omissions in the financing. Agents are to be ‘trained’ in ‘utilizing foreign intelligence information’ but no mention is made of them learning foreign languages, perhaps because that wouldn’t sound expensive enough. Cash is piled up ‘protecting the northern border’ (perhaps with a chain-link fence made of US coins with a nice doublespeak name like ‘Penny Blockade’ or ‘Necklace of Nickels’ or ‘Borders of Quarters’?), but none for the southern border, notorious for smuggling. Or again, ‘antidrug’ funds go to Turkey and South and Central Asia (1005)I, but not Latin America — singling out Muslim nations?. The link between drugs and ‘terrorism’ is of course a pet theme of the ‘President’:

[2297] ‘If you’re doing drugs, you’re helping terrorists.’ […] While stopping just short of calling drug users terrorist co-conspirators, Bush argued that, because many terrorist organizations worldwide are financed in part by drug trafficking, quitting drugs may in some ways help cut off the flow of money to groups like al-Qaeda. (Associated Press)

You’re supposed to forget that al-Qaeda, like Bush and much of his family, is financed by oil money, so the real way to ‘cut of the flow of money’ is (God bless the mark!) to conserve energy.

109.6.1. A sixth strategy is to push for unlimited rights to watch and listen to citizens without asking or telling anybody. Patriot I authorises total ‘interception’: not just via ‘wiretaps’, ‘pen registers’ and ‘trap and trace devices’ (see 109.4.1) (Sections 214, 216), and ‘seizure of voice-mail messages’ (209), but also via information from internet service providers about a citizen’s web surfing, e-mails, chat sites, special interest groups, membership in organisations, and so on — all channelled to ‘computer forensic laboratories for seized or intercepted computer evidence relating to criminal activity (including cyberterrorism)’ (816). You need not even be under investigation; the ‘interceptor’ just needs ‘reasonable grounds to believe that the contents will be relevant to the investigation’ (217). For good measure, ‘immunity’ from ‘court action’ is granted to ‘any provider of a wire or electronic communication service’ that ‘furnishes information’ (225). We should keep in mind here that the major news media being tamed, cowed, or bought up by 'converatives', the Internet is prime medium of information and resistance to the Bush team, who would gain much by criminalizing it as the arena for ‘cyberterrorism’ (a hazy Sci-Fi term the Act nowhere explains (perhaps ‘unpatriotic’ websites like bushwatch.com, bushandcheneysuck.com, or toostupidtobepresident.com, so far still posted). And we saw the ‘mission’ of the ‘New American Century’ to ‘take total control of cyberspace’ (VII.97).

109.6.2. Immunity is also granted to citizens who ‘furnish a consumer report of a consumer and all [!] other information in a consumer’s file to a government agency’; in return, they are forbidden to ‘disclose to any person, or specify in any consumer report, that a government agency has sought or obtained access to information’ (626)I. Again, ‘consumers’ are placed in a context together with ‘terrorists’, even if they only misuse their credit cards (compare sample [2284])

109.6.3. Moreover, not ‘complying with a request’ can be hazardous:

[2298] [After] a refusal to comply with a request for records, a report, or other information, […] the court may issue an order requiring the person to comply. […] Any failure to obey the order of the court may be punished by the court as contempt. (128) II

[2299] if a person refuses to comply with an order of the court to cooperate in the installation of a pen register or trap and trace device, […] the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has the same authority […] to impose contempt sanctions. (109)II

The penalties for publicly disclosing that you have ‘provided access by authorized investigative agencies to financial records and information, consumer reports, and travel records’ (129)II can be even worse:

[2300] This Subsection makes it an offense for an officer of a financial institution to notify other persons about a grand jury subpoena or an administrative subpoena issued by the Department of Justice for records of the financial institution. The offense is punishable by up to a year of imprisonment, or up to five years of imprisonment if the disclosure was made with the intent to obstruct a judicial proceeding. (129)II

The irony of calling this ‘offense’ an ‘unlawful disclosure’ (129)II is exquisite: prior to the outbreak of this epidemic of ‘Patriotism’, precisely these secret ‘provisions of access’ for government agents were themselves unlawful.

109.6.4. Patriot II goes further still by ‘authorising surveillance’ of your entire computer (stiffly called a ‘multi-functional device’):

[2301] Authorization of electronic surveillance with respect to a device, unless otherwise specified, may be relied on to intercept and access communications through any of the device’s functions. The section also effectively allows a search warrant for other information retrievable from the device (whether or not related to the intercepted communications) to be combined with the electronic surveillance order. (124)II

So the ‘warrant’ needn’t specify which ‘information’ to ‘search’ for: agents browse your hard disks and e-mails for anything they can use to charge (or blackmail) you.

109.7.1. A seventh strategy is to advocate enlisting a multitude of civilian informants. In case all that high-tech might not sniff the dastardly varlets out, ‘recruit’ a civilian army:

[2303] In one of the most misguided responses to the terrorist attacks, President Bush is proposing a program to recruit one million volunteers to act as spies and informants against their neighbors, [such as] letter carriers, utility workers, cable installers, and workers in the transportation, trucking, shipping, maritime, and mass transit industries, whose jobs allow access to private residences to report ‘suspicious’ activity. (ACLU)119

Even if these patriotic ‘volunteers’ don’t get a salary, they would certainly cost the government plenty if a tip can send ‘120 agents, fully-armed in riot gear, on two military aircraft’ to ‘arrest one Saudi graduate student for visa fraud’ [2295]. But this horde of bush league spooks was providentially blocked by Congress.

109.8.1. An eighth strategy is to complain that keeping the public informed ‘diverts valuable resources’ needed to ‘detect and incapacitate terrorists’ [2305-06].

[2305] The government is forced to divert valuable resources to litigating this question [whether to ‘approve the government’s request’ for the secret ‘submission of sensitive evidence’]. And even worse, a request for confidentiality itself can be a security breach: the government risks disclosing sensitive national-security information simply by explaining in open court why the information should be redacted. (204)II

[2306] Although existing exemptions permit the government to protect information relating to detainees, defending this interpretation through litigation requires extensive Department of Justice resources, which would be better spent detecting and incapacitating terrorists. (201) II

However, my financial tally summarised in 109.5.1 suggests that the ‘valuable resources’ are unlikely to run out. The real issue is still that the government, like Bush Jr, feels it ‘doesn’t owe the public any explanation’ (cf. VII.3, 109.2.2).

109.9.1. And so a ninth strategy is to claim that any information released to the public, e.g., about who has been ‘detained’ (which sounds more innocuous than ‘jailed’) or ‘denied release’, would instantly ‘tip off terrorists’, who would be heinous enough to ‘flee’, ‘accelerate their plans’, or ‘kill witnesses’:

[2307] Publicizing the fact that a particular alien has been detained could alert his co-conspirators about the extent of the federal investigation and the imminence of their own detention, thus provoking them to flee to avoid detention and prosecution or to accelerate their terrorist plans before they can be disrupted. (201)II

[2308] This section would  […] deny release to persons charged with […] offenses that are likely to be committed by terrorists, […] because terrorism is typically engaged in by groups — many with international connections — that are often in a position to help their members flee or go into hiding. (405)II

[2309] The Patriot Act […] allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists [who] might flee, destroy evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses, cut off contact with associates, or take other action to evade arrest. (DoJ website)

But terrorists (revealingly called ‘aliens’ in [2307]) who sustain a network of ‘international connections’ will know who has been ‘detained’ and ‘denied release’ without reading the court records or police reports the DoJ wants to keep secret.

109.9.2. If you recall the ‘radical assault on a Clear Air programme’ in Bush’s ‘Clear Skies’ legislation in [2060], you’ll recognise a jewel of bubblespeak in Patriot II:

[2310] The Clean Air Act […] requires private companies that use potentially dangerous chemicals to submit to the Environmental Protection Agency a ‘worst case scenario’ report detailing what would be the impact on the surrounding community of release of the specified chemicals. Such reports are a roadmap for terrorists [at the EPA?], who could use the information to plan attacks on the facilities. […] The revised section will require that public access be limited to ‘read-only’ methods [i.e. you can ‘read’ the ‘information’ but not ‘remove, copy, or take notes’], and only to those persons who live or work in the geographical area likely to be affected by a worst-case release. (202)II

So to qualify for a ‘roadmap’, terrorists can go live next door to the ‘dangerous chemical facilities’ and see which side gets blown to bits first.

109.10.1. A tenth strategy is to place the blame on ‘aliens’, who are prominently cited in the Section authorising ‘mandatory detention of suspected terrorists’, where it sounds like Ashcroft the sheriff busting them in person:

[2311] The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien […] until the alien is removed from the United States […] if [the DoJ] has reasonable grounds to believe that the alien […] is engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States. (412)I

Ashcroft also nastily menaced aliens while addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors:

[2312] If you overstay your visa — even by one day — we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, you will be kept in custody as long as possible. […] We will use all our weapons within the law… (United Press International)

As we saw, those ‘weapons’ include having your ‘face slammed into a wall’ [2288].

109.10.2. Patriot II legalises sudden deportation, officially called ‘expedited removal’ (in one section, within 14 days), for ‘all aliens, not just nonpermanent residents’; and ‘expands the expedited-removal- triggering crimes to include’ ‘possession of controlled substances, firearms offenses, espionage, sabotage, treason, threats against the President, violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act, draft evasion, and certain alien smuggling crimes’ — these wildly excoriated as ‘far more serious than aggravated felonies’ (504)II. One Richard Humphreys was sentenced to 37 months in prison for ‘threatening to kill or harm the President’ after joking in a bar that ‘God might speak from a Burning Bush’, the absurd charge being that he must have been planning to douse the God-sent thief-in-chief with petrol and set him alight.120 (Insert your own joke here, but quietly.)

109.10.3. So aliens are not safe even as ‘permanent residents’:

[2313] Nor is there any reason to distinguish between aliens who are permanent residents and aliens who are not: for both types of aliens, the fact of a criminal conviction suffices to establish that a person is removable. (504) II

Whether ‘illegal activities’ were committed is made irrelevant [2314]; and  ‘acts’ need merely ‘appear to be intended’ [2315], as for ‘domestic terrorism’ in [2280].

[2314] Requiring the additional showing that the intelligence gathering […] on behalf of a foreign power […] violates the laws of the United States is both unnecessary and counterproductive, as such activities threaten the national security regardless of whether they are illegal. (101)II

[2315] The definition of ‘international terrorism’ […] covers acts which by their nature appear to be intended for the stated purposes. Hence, there would be no requirement to show that the defendants actually had such an intent. (402) II

And where an ‘alien’ may get ‘removed to’ may be irrelevant too:

[2316] The Attorney General may direct that an alien be removed to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government, recognized by the United States or otherwise. (503)II

By not requiring that aliens just be ‘removed’ to their native countries, the DoJ has a pretext not for sending repugnant specimens home to friendly allies like Britain, but rather, say, to the North Pole, where something a lot more personal than their assets will get frozen. And the Act seems to say as much:

[2317] The  Attorney  General  may  direct  that  the alien be removed to another country or region if […] removal to any country [is] impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible. (503)II

Astoundingly, US citizens too can get the boot, declared ‘aliens’ from some ‘inferred intent’, which need not be even be ‘‘manifested in words’ [2318].

[2318] An American can relinquish his citizenship [and] be expatriated if, with the intent to relinquish nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has been designated as a ‘terrorist organization’, if that group is engaged in hostilities against the United States. […] The intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct. (501)II

Without your citizenship, you couldn’t have a passport, so you would just be deported again and again until you found a friendly terrorist cell. Better drop that falafel with hummus and grab a BSE Hamburger Special with Freedom Fries.

109.11.1. The final and most insidious strategy is to equate protest or resistance to these Acts with ‘aid to terrorists’. After Bush Jr proclaimed to the world ‘you are either for us or against us’ in September 2001, the official response to protest or resistance might have been a foregone conclusion, viz.:

[2319] Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty […] only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve; […] they give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. (Ashcroft defending Patriot I before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 09/12/2001)

Yet few issues have split ‘national unity’ as sharply as the Patriot Acts, which also imply that Mr Ashcroft’s ‘America’ has countless ‘enemies’ and few ‘friends’.

109.11.2. The same malevolent response targets protests against unprovoked war:

[2320] ‘You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is  international  terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest’, said Van Winkle, of the [California] State Justice  Department. ‘You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.’ (Oakland Tribune)

For publicly criticising the acts and policies of ‘President’ Bush, newspaper editors have been fired, and university professors disciplined: one of the latter , Sami Al-Arian, was actually arrested and declared a ‘terrorist leader’, although he had once been photographed with the then-candidate Bush Jr (for whom he campaigned), and his son Abdullah had been invited into the White House to help lure Muslims into the super-smarmy ‘faith-based initiative’.121

109.11.3. Universities are monitored by meddlesome ‘patriotic’ thought-police:

[2321] The American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a report […] in November, 2001, listing 117 allegedly anti-American statements made on college campuses, [and] calling professors ‘the weak link in America’s response’. In March, 2002, the Americans for Victory Over Terrorism released its list of ‘objectionable’ statements from professors, legislators, and writers who, it claims, ‘misunderstand [our] ideals and their practice’ — among others, former President Jimmy Carter [!!]. […] Both organizations have close ties to the Administration. (USA PATRIOT Act Six Months Later)www

High schools came to enjoy a similar assiduous attention:

[2322] Secret Service agents visited Oakland High and interrogated two 16 year-old male students in connection with comments they had allegedly made during a classroom discussion concerning President Bush and the U.S. Government’s role in Iraq. When one of the students asked if […] could he talk to them later with a lawyer present, the agents told him, ‘We own you, if you don’t talk to us now, and we find out you haven’t told us everything, we’ll put you motherfuckers in federal prison.’ (IndyMedia)www 

Anchorman Dan Rather expressed his ‘worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend in a constitutional republic based on the principles of democracy’.122 If, as Bush repeats like a crowing rooster, enemies really do attack the US because ‘they hate our freedoms’123 (and not because of how the US imposes its ‘interests’, heavens, no!), the Bush-boys’ fix seems to consist of taking those freedoms away.

110. One piquant bit of counter-discourse from the intelligence committees of the US House and Senate directed to the CIA might be apt here:

[2323] The committees recommended that the ‘aggressive recruitment’ of ‘terrorist informants who have human rights violations in their background’ be ‘one of the highest priorities.’ Within months of instituting the guidelines, in-coming CIA director George Tenet assured Congress that not a single unsavory applicant had been rejected. […] A secret CIS study found that more than 1,000 informants known as ‘unsavory characters’ were employed around the world. (John Kelley)124 

The committees dryly adduced the ‘unfortunate fact that individuals with a reputable background rarely yield the key intelligence leads that are critical to the counter- terrorist efforts of the United States’.124  But the Intelligence Oversight Board disagreed, citing unsavoury CIA informants who, like Manuel Noriega,

[2324] enjoyed profitable contractual arrangements with the CIA not because they were particularly important sources of information, but because they served as paid agents of influence who promoted actions or policies favoured by the CIA in that country. (Wash-ington Post)

111. As of January 2004, 237 communities in 37 states have passed resolutions opposing Patriot I, though these are largely symbolic, since test cases of defiance would be vilified by the DoJ for ‘aiding terrorism’ and eventually garrotted by the vengeful ‘Supreme’ Court. So far, Patriot Act II has not been formally introduced into Congress, thanks to having been swiftly made public on the Internet. Perhaps it was a trial balloon (pun intended). Or perhaps the DoJ is keeping it dormant like an unexploded cluster bomb until another major terrorist strike sets a felicitous mood.

112. On January 9, 2003, the same day Patriot II was secretly forwarded to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, an intriguing counter-discourse was formally introduced in the full Senate as Senate Bill S. 22, called the ‘Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act’ (with 482 pages), by a list of Democrats reading like a Who’s Who of ‘left-wing liberalism’ (by my own definition), including Tom Daschle (presenter), Edward Kennedy, Hilary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, Mark Dayton, Richard Durbin, Jon Corzine, and Jack Reed. I downloaded the bill from the website of the Congressional Record  and finally beheld the other face of America, long blotted out by the far-right blizzard of rants and grants.

113. Despite the similarity of titles with Patriot II (presumably a coincidence given the timing), this bill sought to redirect the legislating trend of Patriot I. It does ‘provide $12 billion over three years to support public safety officers in their efforts to protect homeland security and prevent and respond to acts of terrorism’, but the agenda is utterly unlike Patriot II. Support is projected for protection of children against abuse, abduction, and pornography, and of the elderly (‘seniors’) against crime and mistreatment in nursing homes; assistance to victims of crime; compensation of persons wrongfully convicted; benefits for officers (‘hometown heroes’) injured or incapacitated while on duty; protection of the cultural and archaeological history of native Americans; protection of whistle-blowers in government agencies; increased use of DNA in sexual assault investigations; rescue of innocent persons from the death penalty; and drug education and prevention programs, including drug treatment alternatives to prison. Tougher laws are projected not for locking up people who refuse to provide information to the government or have disclosed that they did so, but for ‘identity theft’ of social security or bank account numbers; immigration of war criminals and human rights abusers; perpetration of toxic hoaxes; and sale of firearms to juveniles and believed delinquents.

114. To judge from the Internet, this bill has received far less publicity that its counterpart Patriot II, most of carping about the provisions on drugs and gun control. I find no confirmation that it has been brought to a vote, and Bush would instantly veto it for more reasons than I have room to mention here. Like so many other hesitant signs of hope, it hangs in a wistful balance until America finds its way again in a mass exercise of free speech and free action too populist and too determined to be slandered, muffled or silenced by the chin gangs of corporate America.

115. Now more than ever, critical discourse analysis is called upon for its ‘critical’ perspective and discursive engagements with discursive themes of social division. Our status as discourse analysts must be intimately balanced with our status as deeply concerned citizens in a vertiginously polarizing world, and as practitioners of a counter-discourse  of economic and ecological sanity.

Notes to Ch. VII

1       See Hightower, Yellow Stripes (Note 2 to Ch. I).

2       Quoted from Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (New York: Dell, 1996) p. 157, describing the programme of the blusterous former senator and hopeless presidential hopeful Phil Gramm.

3           Quoted from Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning? The Case against George W. Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), pp. 130-35.

4           Compare now Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

5           For details, see Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling (NY: Norton, 2003).

6           Molly Ivins, and Paul Dubose, Bushwhacked (NY: Random House, 2003), pp. 47f.

7       Quoted from Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis (Note 148 to Ch. II) p. 142, who forthrightly analyses his own academic self-ratings.

8       I thank William Lutz for identifying the source of this priceless example.

9       The definitions in the section are from the immensely amusing Hackers’ Dictionary of Computer Jargon, posted at www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/ computers/

          TheHackersDictionaryofComputerJargon/toc.html.

10     The New Doublespeak : Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), p. x. I am indebted to this book for some prime examples.

11     I thank Jim Hightower in Yellow Stripes (Note 2 to Ch. I.), p. 78, for these examples.

12     Supreme Court No. 00-949 (00A504).

13     Compare David Barstow and Don van Natta ‘How Bush took Florida: Mining the over-seas absentee vote’, New York Times, 14/07/2001.

14     The original and still best report is Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. (New York: Plume, 2003).

15     See Gore Vidal, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002); and Michael Moore, Stupid White Men And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! (NY: Harper Collins).

16     See Clayton E. Cramer, ‘An American Coup d’État?’ History Today, 11/1995.

17     See now Bev Harris, Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century (High Point, NC: Plan Nine, 2003), to be posted for free as a PDF file via Plan Nine’s website at http://www.plan9.org/.

18     Compare Note 11 to Ch. IV.

19     See above all Joe Conason, Big Lies: The Right Wing  Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (New York: Thomas Dunne. 2003).

20     By David Corn (New York: Crown, 2003).

21     On the Harken scandal, see Ivins and Dubose (Note 6), pp. 3-14. Bush says he was cleared by the SEC, but the SEC just said it didn’t have enough to prosecute him.

22     For a shocking transcript of the ‘interview’, see Tom Gorman, ‘Bill O’Reilly’s Fascism, Part 2’ at www.counterpunch.org/gorman02122003.html.

23     On how Scaife ‘has worked hard and spent millions to dictate America’s political agenda’, see Rothmyer’s report at http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/07news.html.

24     The flak has been reported on numerous websites like Bush’s Record of Shame at /www.blogd.com/bushrecord.html, citing eyewitnesses who affirm that Bush was visibly drunk, though the incident came long after he officially ‘stopped drinking’.

25     Compare David Brock Blinded by the Right; (NY: Crown, 2002); Joe Conason and Gene Lyons,  The Hunting of the President (NY: Thomas Dunne, 2000).

26     Nicely deconstructed in Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? (NY: Basic Books, 2003).

27     Robert McChesney, ‘The rise and fall of professional journalism’, in Kristina Borjes-son (ed.), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002), p. 371.

28     See Ralph Nader, Crashing the Party (NY: St. Martins, 2002); Michael Moore, ‘Democrats DOA’, in Stupid White Men (Note 15), 209-28; and Jim Hightower, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They’d Have Given Us Candidates  (NY: Perennial, 2001.)

29     With only four websites mentioning it on the Internet, (three of them ridiculing it), and only three mentions of his vaunted ‘booklet’ for polluting the academic environment, this ‘National Campaign’ doesn’t seem to be making a big impression, though I don’t doubt the cash is rolling in from ‘foundations’ and ‘think tanks’.

30     There is No Such Thing as Free Speech (Oxford: OUP, 1994), p. 55.

31     For the record, National Review Online took this post-9/11 column ‘This Is War’ off its website, and editor Joshua Goldberg fired Coulter, though only after she also ridiculed John Ashcroft’s airport safety programme (Goldberg’s recent wife is Ashcroft’s chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor). She was promptly snapped up by fellow Rent-A-Rant Horowitz, quoted in VII.30 and 44.

32     ‘60 Hard Truths [i.e. hateful lies] about Liberals’, on the Internet. Compare from Franken (Note 2),  pp. 8, 49f.

33     She was demanding the execution of John Walker Lindh, an American who joined the Taliban back when they were still friends with the US, and who must be ‘liberal’ just because he grew up in Marin County, California.

34     Hightower (Note 2 to Ch. I), p. 253.

35     The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (London: J. Murray, 1853). He coined the term ‘eugenics’ in Hereditary Genius (London: Macmillan, 1869).

36     ‘Syphilis and the American Negro’, Transcriptions of the Medical Society of Virginia 1909,  p. 169.

37     The most informative site I have found on this trend is from the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism  at www.ferris.edu/isar/homepage.htm.

38     ‘In Genes We Trust: When Science Bows to Racism’, The Public Eye: A Publication of Political Research Associates, March 1995.

39     See William Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: Illinois UP, 2002).

40     Norman Solomon, ‘The Manhattan Institute: Launch Pad For Conservative Authors’, Institute for Public Accuracy.www

41     ‘Race, intelligence and ideology: A review essay of The Bell Curve’, Education Policy Analysis Archive 3/2, February 1995.

42     Compare Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (NY: W.W. Norton, 1997).

43     ‘Alarm bells’, Socialist Review 182, January 1995.

44        Alterman (Note 26), p. 98ff.

45        Robert Hauser, quoted in Nicholas Leman, ‘The Bell Curve Flattened’, Slate.com 18/01/1997.

46     ‘The Bell Curve: Too smooth to be true’, American Behavioural Sciences, 09/10/1995.

47     Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts (NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001), pp. 112f.

48     By Rachel Scott (NY: E.P. Dutton 1974), p. 293.

49     See David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in 20th Century America (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991).

50     Jennifer Jordan, ‘Hawks’ Nest’, West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly, 12/2, April 1998, 1-3.

51     Quoted from Rampton and Stauber  (Note 47), p. 77.

52      Paul Sherman, ‘New coal dust standards mean increased black lung for miners’, WSWS, 25/06/2003.

53      Quoted in Leigh Strope, ‘Government to offer workplace guidelines’, TruthOut 5/04/2002.

54     See Hightower (Note 2 to Ch. I), p. 119.

55     Gar Smith and Han Hollitscher, ‘Secret documents reveal nuclear accidents worldwide’, Earth Island Journal, summer 1987.

56     See Richard Rashke The Killing of Karen Silkwood (NY: Viking, 1982); and Howard Kohn, Who Killed Karen Silkwood? (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1981).

57     Howard Kohn, ‘Malignant Giant’, Rolling Stone, March 1975.

58     For their full report, see Sandra Eskin and Nancy Donley, ‘Why are people still dying from contaminated food?’ at www.safetables.org/pdf/STOP_Report.pdf; and the thorough exposé in Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (NY: Perennial, 2002). An informative newsletter at www.foodhaccp. com/memberonly/newsletter48.html collects reports on outbreaks, recalls, and food safety from all round the world. See also the Organic Consumers Association’s ‘toxic archive’ at www.organicconsumers.org/ toxicarchive.htm.

59     www.stop-usa.org/Victim_Support/victim_stories.html.

60     Ivins and Dubose (Note 5), pp. 134, 128, 130. See Oliver Prichard and Aparna Surendran, ‘Food plant cited before outbreak: Corrective actions were not taken at a Franconia poultry processor linked to seven deaths’, Philadelphia Inquirer 03/09/2002.

61     Compare discussions in Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996); and John Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides (New Haven: Yale UP, 1998).

62     ‘The Alar “Scare” Was for Real’.  Columbia Journalism Review, Sept/Oct 1996.

63     Marianne Lavelle, ‘Food Abuse: Basis for Suits’, National Law Journal, 05/051997.

64     Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Mad Cow U.S.A: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1997). Answer, 2003: It can and has.

65     Reported in Thomas Goetz, ‘After the Oprah crash’, Village Voice, 29/04/1997, p. 39.

66     Its ‘Director of Nutrition’, one Ruth Kava, sent a flakspeak letter to the editor or the Wall Street Journal (23/08/1999) titled ‘Food Terrorists Targeting U.S. Parents’ directing the accusation of ‘terrorism’ at Greenpeace, of all people.

67     See Barbara Garson, ‘The baby bottle scandal’, Mother Jones, 12/1977.

68     George E. Brown, ‘Environmental Science Under Siege: Fringe Science and the 104th Congress’, posted at the Website of the Democratic Caucus www.house.gov/ science_democrats/archive/envrpt96.htm.

69     ‘Disclosure Bush Received General Warning Before 09/11 Prompting Criticism of Missed Signals’, CNN.com Transcripts, 17/05/2002; Mike Hersh, ‘Call it 9-11Gate’, American  Politics Journal.www

70     Greg Palast, ‘Don’t Buy Exxon’s Fable of the Drunken Captain’, London Observer 23/03/1999.

71     ‘Ten Years After But Who Was To Blame?’ London Observer 21/03/1999.

72     Greg Palast, ‘Exxon Lubricated by Bush Judges’, London Observer 02/09/2003.

73     Environmental Working Group, Dishonorable Discharge: Toxic Pollution of America’s Waters, at www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/dishonorable/dd_pdf/disdisch.pdf.

74        John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995), Ch. VIII; p. 119f., 122.

75        Len Martin, in ‘The Death of Tony Behun, DEP, UMWA and Rush Township’ at www.penweb.org/issues/sludge/behun-synopsis.html documents the obscene wash of fibspeak and bubblespeak from the various authorities, whilst the death-dealing sludge company is actually suing the township for defamation!

76     According to a company representative, ‘Del Monte is an active supporter of a study which we hope will facilitate sludge use in the future’. Quoted in Rampton and Stauber, Note 76, p, 122.

77     Rampton and Stauber (Note 45), p. 126f, 222f, 264f.

78     Quoted in Tim Boston, ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of resourcism: An ideological analysis of the Wise Use Movement’, The Trumpeter, 1998.

79     See David Helvarg, The War against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, the New Right and Anti-Environmental Violence (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994).

80     At www.ucsusa.org/ucs-home.html.

81     For a devastating exposé of why the war is a fraud, see Michael Levine, Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence, and Subterfuge Lost us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War (NY: Delacorte, 1990); and Michael Levine and Laura Kavanau, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic (NY: Thunder’s Mouth. 1993).

82     At www.progress.org/archive/fold13.htm.

83     Jarret Wollstein, ‘The Looting Of America: Civil Asset Forfeiture’, International Society for Individual Liberty Educational Pamphlet Series, at www.isil.org/resources /lit/ looting-of-america.html.

84     Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty, ‘Presumed Guilty: The Law’s Victims in the War on Drugs’, Pittsburgh Press, 11/08/1991.

85     Jarret Wollstein, ‘Red Alert: The Rising American Police State’ in Practical Freedom: The Asset Forfeiture Manual, at www.buildfreedom.com/tl/aforfeit,shtml.

86     David Boaz, The Drug War Hits Home’, Freedom Daily, January 1992.

87     Contemporary Urban Television at cutv.com/robbery.htm http://

88     www.therighter.com/articles/Asset_Forfeiture.html.

89     Free-Market.Net Spotlight, at http://www.free-market.net/spotlight/forfeiture/

90     Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty, ‘Government Seizures Victimize the Innocent’, Pittsburgh Press, 08/11/1991.

91     The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act 1997, Congressional Testimony to the Commit-tee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, posted at  www.cato.org/ testimony/ct-rp061197.html.

92     At www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/newsreleases/2000mn007.

93     For a careful assessment, see Ernest H. Short, ‘Civil forfeiture of real property and the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000’, Oklahoma Bar Journal 73/18, 15/06, 2002.

94     Brant Hadaway, ‘Executive privateers:  A discussion on why the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act will not significantly reform the practice of forfeiture’, University of Miami Law Review 55/1, 2002, 81-121.

95     At www.newamericancentury.org.

96     Quoted in Kurt Nimmo, ‘The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: PR Spinning the Bush Doctrine’, Counterpunch, November 19, 2002. None of the Bush regime but Colin Powell have seen combat. Compare Jim Lobe, The Chicken Hawk Factor, at www.alternet.org, September 9, 2002; and the ‘Chicken Hawk Database’ of the New Hampshire Gazette at www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html.

97        On ‘Meet the Press with Tim Russert; NBC,  08/02/2004.

98        ‘The Hun is at the gate’, Town Hall, 29/11/2001.

99        This pet phrase of the Iraqicidal chickenhawks  is the title of a book by ‘military strat-egists’ Harlan K Ullman and James P. Wade (Washington, DC: Command Control  Research Program, 1996), which cites as successes the Nazi blitzkrieg and the bombing of Hiroshima. Proud precedents indeed!

100   Smedley D. Butler. War is a Racket (NY: Round Table, 1935).

101   KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation at www.parascope.com/articles/0397/

         kubark06.htm According to Team Delta, ‘a ‘high speed unit of former special forces and other elite military personnel’,www KUBARK is the CIA’s codename for itself.

102   Posted at www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_20_01_northwoods.pdf; its authenticity has been confirmed by SPIEGEL ONLINE.

103   By Robin Hahnel, (Cambridge MA: South End Press, 1999).

104   John McMurtry, Unequal Freedoms; The Global Market as an Ethical System, (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998), p. 305.

105   At wlbn0018.worldbank.org/HDNet/HD.nsf/Sector Pages.

106   By David Werner, posted at www.panos.co.uk.                                   

107   Reprinted in Palast, Note 13, pp. 154-56. Compare Stiglitz’s own more detailed account in Globalization and its Discontents (NY: Norton. 2002).

108   An earlier version of this report was presented as a keynote address at the Conference on Discourse Analysis at the University of Hodeidah in Yemen, in October, 2003. My paper ‘Critical discourse analysis from the perspective of ecologism: The discourse of the ‘New Patriotism’ for the ‘New Secrecy’ may appear in Critical Discourse Analysis in 2004, and offers full quotes and specifies the previous acts ‘amended’ with download sites, and the dollar amounts (or ‘such sums as necessary’) authorised to various agencies and projects.

109   Paul Krugman, ‘Bush’s Aggressive Accounting’, New York Times, 05/02/ 2002.

110   Paul Krugman, ‘Exploiting the Atrocity’ New York Times 12/09/2002.

111   Posted by the Elect Our Public Defender website at www.electpd.org/hr3162.pdf.

112   Sections are identified in Arabic numbers and the two Acts with I and II in superscript.

113   Barbara Comstock, Director of Public Affairs for the Justice Department, denied it was forwarded. But the ‘Department of Justice control sheet’ proving this transaction was obtained by PBS and is now posted at www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/ Story_01_020703_Doc_2.pdf

114   Follow the ‘Patriot II’ link at www.publicintegrity.org, where a helpful summary is also provided. A PDF version composed of bitmaps made by a scanner is at www.infowars. com /print_patriotact2_analysis.htm.

115   Other interesting frequencies: ‘Attorney General’ 121, ‘Secretary of the Treasury’ 49, ‘Secretary of State’ 45, but ‘Secretary of Defense’ just 2.

116   Quoted in Richard Lacayo, ‘The War Comes Back Home’, Time, 12/05/2003.

117   M. Powell, ‘No Choice but Guilty: Lackawanna Case Highlights Legal Tilt’, Washing-ton Post, 20/07/2003.

118   C.C. Mann, ‘Homeland Insecurity’, The Atlantic Monthly, September 2002.

119   At www.aclu.org/action/tips107.html.

120   ‘Man jailed for Bush remark’, CNEWS Law & Order, 06/12/2002.www

121   In the exultant screed ‘The Scorching Indictment Of Sami Al-Arian’ (21/02/2003), the Tampa Tribune boasts of having targeted Al-Arian since 1995, until flakspeaker Bill O’Reilly finally helped them out by smearing him as a terrorist on the Fox Channel.

122   At www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/c...20517_extra.asp

123   First at his Address to a Joint Session of Congress and then at every opportunity.

124   ‘Crimes and Silence’, in Kristina Borjesson (ed.), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002),  pp. 314f and 317.

 

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