The North Coast times-eagle., January 01, 2002, Page 7, Image 7

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NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JAN&FEBRUARY 2002
LETTINE LOOSE THE DOGS OF WAR
where the status of justice and human rights are forsaken as
“collateral damage "? It goes without saying that such a cold
blooded murder will be the end of human rights and the start
of an era of cold blooded murders.
Dr Atique Mufti, Isamablad
I submit to you that we are failing in the war of terrorism.
Israel is now using the example of our violence as justification
for their own violence against the Palestinians. We have
sacrificed our opportunity to pursue justice in an international
court of law where we could have affirmed support for the very
international institutions that we helped to create as an alter­
native to war. For example, where is the pursuit of justice in
Saudi Arabia? Fifteen of the 19 highjackers originated from
there and it is a known fact that the wealth of the Saudi rulers
helped to finance the Taliban, if not Osama bin Laden himself.
The hypocrisy of our foreign policy overflows like oil and even
though we have driven the Taliban from Afghanistan and might
eventually find and murder Osama bin Laden, we are winning
the battle but losing the war
Witness what is happening to ourselves. Congress
passes the American Patriotic Act, a 172 page bill redrafted in
the night which many legislators complained they did not have
time to read. What does this law do? According to ACLU it:
-Allows for the indefinite detention of non-citizens who
are not terrorists on minor visa violations if they cannot be
deported. Fanning the fires of racial profiling.
-Minimizes judicial supervision of federal telephone and
internet surveillance by law enforcement. Continuing the trend of
stripping the judiciary of its power to enforce the Constitution.
-Expands the ability of government to conduct secret
searches.
-Gives the Attorney General and Secretary of State the
power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations
and deport any non-citizen who belongs to them, as well as
extending powers of surveillance to individual financial sup­
porters
-Grants the FBI broad access to business records
without having to show evidence of a crime
-Legalizes large scale investigations of American
citizens for “intelligence” purposes.
If this is what "patriotism" is all about then our earlier
patriots must be rolling in their graves — hear their voices speak
to us from the past:
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety
-Benjamin Franklin
There are more instances of the abridgment of the
freedom of the people by the gradual and silent encroachment of
those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpation
.
-James Madison
Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its
failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the
charter of its own existence
-U.S Supreme Court Justice Tom C Clark
(Mapp v Ohio)
And from a sympathetic Prime Minister of England
following our Revolution against the Mother Country’:
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human
freedom It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
-William Pitt, 18 Nov 1783
But it doesn’t end with the Patriot Act. New rules have
been issued by the Justice Department to allow monitoring of
conversations between lawyers and clients suspected of terror­
ism Congress is considering national identification cards, the
installation of video surveillance systems in airports with face
recognition software, and expanding the immunity of customs
officials in ways that would make it impossible to for a person
to seek redress for an unconstitutional search. We are already
seeing news of political activists being prevented from boarding
planes or crossing the border into Canada
And what about Corporate patriotism? Listen to the
words of journalist Bill Moyers in a recent speech before a
gathering of environmental grantmakers:
Would you like to know the memorial (the wartime
opportunists) would offer the (3,000+) people who died in the
attacks? Or the legacy they would provide the (thousands of)
children who lost a parent in the horror? How do they propose
to fight the long and costly war on terrorism America must now
undertake?
Why, restore the 3-martini lunch; that will surely strike
fear in the heart of Osama bin Laden. You think I'm kidding, but
bringing back the deductible lunch is one of the proposals on
the table (sic) in Washington right now There are members of
Congress who believe you should sacrifice in this time of crisis
by paying for lobbyists' long lunches And cut capital gams for
the wealthy, naturally; that's America's patriotic duty, too While
we're at it, don't forget to eliminate the Corporate Alternative
Minimum Tax. enacted 15 years ago to prevent corporations
from taking so many tax credits and deductions that they owed
little if any taxes. But don 't just repeal their minimum tax; give
those corporations a refund for all the minimum tax they have
ever been assessed
You look incredulous But that's taking place in Wash­
ington even as we meet here this morning What else can
America do to strike at the terrorists7 Why, slip in a special tax
break for poor General Electric and slip inside the Environmental
Protection Agency while everyone's distracted and torpedo the
recent order to clean the Hudson River of PCBs Don t worry
about NBC, CNBC or MSNBC reporting it; they re all in the GE
family
...AND THE PISS OF OPPORTUNISM
It’s time for Churchillian courage, we re told So how
would this crowd assure that future generations will look back
and say. “This was their finest hour?" That’s easy. Give those
coal producers freedom to pollute. And shovel generous tax
breaks to those giant energy companies; and open the Alaskan
wilderness to drilling — that ’s something to remember the 11th
of September for And while the red, white & blue wave at half-
mast over the land of the free and the home of the brave, why,
give the President the power to discard democratic debate and
the rule-of-law concerning controversial trade agreements, and
set up secret tribunals to run roughshod over local communities
trying to protect their environment and health. It’s happening as
we meet. It’s happening right now.
Or the words of Ralph Nader in a recent speech in San
Francisco:
Now, in the midst of this situation come the big corpora­
tions in Washington, D. C These are corporations who are turn­
ing this tragedy into greed and then into a pretext, demanding
from Congress and the executive branch subsidies, bailouts,
immunities from liability, demanding deregulation. They're going
for it big, folks. They’re taking advantage of this crisis in order
to increase their power over the rights of the people. They're
moving to put in a little amendment that will open up the Arctic
Refuge, after 26 years of not improving — by law — the fuel
efficiency requirements for the motor vehicle industry. They
are now moving for a capital gains cut They are moving to
bail out one industry after another. The airlines got theirs
after announcing 85,000 workers laid off; they got $1.5 billion,
$10 billion in loan guarantees and $5 billion in cash, just like that,
stampeding Congress and sending a bill to a willing George W
Bush with nothing in it for the 85,000 workers who are laid off
This is what’s going on.
Now the hotel industry, the car rental industry, the oil
industries, the securities industry are up there, going for the big
grab. Suddenly Uncle Sam is a desirable man. Suddenly they
all want government to be the ultimate guarantor, the ultimate
insurer, the ultimate bail-outer of this kind of corporate capitalism.
And isn't that unpatriotic? You know, we never say corporations
are unpatriotic, do we? We never say that. Well, they are exploit­
ing this tragedy to a level where they were denounced by the
Washington Post itself in the business page, which had a head­
line something like, “Stop Blaming Everything on bin Laden."
They ’re blaming all their woes going back several years, saying
“It’s the attackers, we 've got to have a bailout. We 've got to
have a subsidy. You’ve got to get us an exemption from this law.
You've got to deregulate us. "And of course, they're getting away
with it because our Congress is being stampeded It’s in panic,
and we've got to strengthen it and give it the kind of backbone
that comes only from people back home.
Or hear it in the bluntness of Jim Hightower:
It's on the home front, however, where we citizens must
be forceful in holding Washington accountable The looters are
loose Not common looters rampaging through the streets, but
corporate looters rampaging through the Congress.
So what are you and I going to do about this We must
Protest, Protest, Protest' We must not allow ourselves to be
blindsided by war and the orchestration of war profiteers. Not
only must we exercise our right of free speech but we must
assert our sovereignty
We must use the tools that have been provided us
In Oregon and Washington we as citizens have the power to
create law Our ancestors gave us the Initiative and Referendum
process because they knew what it was like to have a concen­
tration of wealth in the hands of the few and its stranglehold over
government Our legislatures are never going to adopt campaign
finance reform Why should they? They all know how they got
there and to whom they are beholden. We are going to have to
do it. and thankfully we can. Bu there is one condition: Each of
us must assert our sovereignty and be willing to set the example
for others.
UNIONTOWN
218 WEST MARINE DRIVE
ASTORIA, OREGON 97103
(503) 325-8708
In Oregon we have the following initiatives endorsed by
the Pacific Green Party for the 2002 general election:
-Candidate Campaign Finance Reform which bans
corporate contributions to candidates, restricts individual contri­
butions, and allows Grassroots Nonprofit Organizations to make
contributions as long as 80% of their money comes from indivi­
dual contributions of $200 or less.
-Instant Runoff Voting so we can vote our preference
rather than choice of evils.
- Health Care For All which establishes a single payer
health care system.
-Labeling of Genetically Modified Food
Each of these proposed laws could also be enacted
in Washington State. Not only that, we can pool our resources
by helping each other put our initiatives on the ballot. Due to
a Supreme Court decision in a case out of Colorado, we can
petition in each other's states. We can also financially contribute
to each other's campaigns. We can set the example of what it
means to be citizens of the earth by lending our creativity to
those struggling to bring change We can make “Stone Soup.”
When my daughter was a little girl one of her favorite
children's stories was Stone Soup This story takes place during
the Napoleonic Wars at a time in which most villages were
devastated by war and peasants were hiding what little food they
had left. A very hungry soldier wanders into one of these villages
begging for food and finds that no one is willing to feed him.
Suddenly he begins to talk about how good it would be to make
stone soup. The villagers had never heard of stone soup and
in growing curiosity they begin to fetch the ingredients for the
wishful recipe this soldier describes. In the end everyone in the
village eats a good meal. By making stone soup we pool our
creativity to help one another.
Albert Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved at the
same level of awareness that created them.” At a time in which
we face seeming insurmountable obstacles, I am also reminded
of the words of Mahatma Gandhi:
Strength does not come from physical capacity It comes
from an indomitable will.
Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible
is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished
these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence.
But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impos­
sible discoveries will be made in the Field of nonviolence
What is more nonviolent than reclaiming democracy by
using our initiative process to enact election reform or to enact
new energy policies in our communities, like they are doing in
San Francisco with PV panels on the roofs of their buildings
along with wind generating machines in their yards, so they
can free themselves from the terrorists’ dream of nuclear power
and the reliance on foreign oil. Just think, they didn't have to
ask George the Younger’s permission. In the eloquent words
of Betsy Toll:
Our addiction to this fuel of ancient sunlight (oil) is heart­
breaking Like any other junkie, crackhead or drunk on the street,
we grovel at the feet of our dealers, protect them, defend them,
bribe them, seduce them, hate them As a culture we perform
these debasing psychological gymnastics, humiliating ourselves
and ruthlessly eliminating any who might come between us and
our connection.
And of course as individuals, we are not evil: we love
our children, help our neighbors, long for peace Yet all the
while, the cultural matrix in which we are entangled is dragging
us down and causing untold suffering to others, literally destroy­
ing the very systems that support all life Like junkies, our denial
is so entrancing, we are somehow so lost in it. we don’t see its
true nature, can't bear to look at its inevitable effects
These are extraordinary times, though, and within that
there is hope Many hearts are breaking wide open. Rather than
closing our eyes and letting hearts crust back over, our work is
to keep them open, fierce and soft, dynamic and melting. Pray
that our heartbreak will provide the fertile ground in which new
ways of being will begin to grow
Finally I leave you with the words of Bill Moyer:
I know you see the magnitude of challenge I know you
see what we re up against I know you get it, the work we must
do. It’s why you mustn’t lose heart Your adversaries will call you
unpatriotic for speaking the truth when conformity reigns Ideo­
logues will smear you for challenging the official view of reality
Mainstream media will ignore you, and those gasbags on TV
and the radio talk shows will ridicule and vilify you But I urge
you to hold onto these words: “In the course of fighting the
present fire, we must not abandon our efforts to create fire-
resistant structures for the future " Those words were written
by my friend Randy Kehler more than ten years ago, as America
geared up to fight the Gulf War They ring as true today Those
fire-resistant structures must include an electoral system that
is no longer dominated by big money, where the voices and
problems of average people are attended on a fair and equal
basis They must include an energy system that is more sustain­
able. and less dangerous And they must include a media that
takes its responsibility to inform us as seriously as its interest in
entertaining us
Lloyd Marbet is usually credited with being the main
force behind the shutdown of the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant
He was the Pacific Green Party candidate for Oregon Secretary
of State in 2000 and has also run for the U.S. Congress He is
an indefatigable advocate of the Oregon Initiative process The
Dalai Lama personally singled him out for praise during his
recent visit to Oregon