The virtue of uncertainty is not a comfortable idea,
but then a citizen-based democracy is built upon participation,
which is the very expression of permanent discomfort.
The corporatist system depends upon the citizen's desire
for inner comfort.
Equilibrium is dependent upon our recognition of reality,
which is the acceptance of permanent psychic discomfort.
And the acceptance of psychic discomfort
is the acceptance of consciousness.
John Ralston Saul
The Unconscious Civilization
STATE TERROR NETWORK UNDER THREAT The democratically elected Turkish Government is doing a job that various European nations have already finished.
TO DISSOLVE THE SECRET MILITARY (CIA) "gladio" NETWORKS.
It is top military secret service PSYOP agents that do INSIDE JOBS. They kill masses of innocent civilians and blame it on leftists or separatists. The STRATEGY OF TENSION keeps people in fear and (theoretically) in favour of right-wing "law and order". Of course LAW AND ORDER IT AIN'T! It is "DEEP STATE" rule of the few over the many. Undemocratic, and through perception management it achieves its goals. TO PERSERVE THE STATuS QUO.
Finally SOME newspapers dare to report between the lines about the taboo of STATE TERROR:
State Terror? CIA murders?
Bologna 1980, Herrhausen, Rohwedder, 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Anthrax, Aldo Moro... the list is endless!
In the wake of deadly attacks Turkey waits anxiously for Court.s decision on the AKP
The Constitutional Court begins today to examine request to dissolve ruling party, accused of planning to introduce Sharia. There is concern for the fact that the deliberations are taking place at the same time as top spots in armed forces must be replaced.
Ankara (AsiaNews) . Tensions are running high in Turkey today after yesterday.s terror attacks as the whole country waits for the Constitutional Court to rule whether the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is to be dissolved and 71 of its leaders banned from politics, including President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo.an.
The request was made by Turkey.s top prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalç.nkaya, who argued that the AKP wants to impose the Sharia, which is a clear and present danger.
The AKP and its top leaders have rejected the allegations that they seek to undermine the secular nature of the state.
The Court, which has already overturned a law that lifted a ban on wearing the Islamic veil in university, is expected to rule next month.
No one can say what the outcome will be; however, many have highlighted the fact that dissolution requires seven judges out of 11.
The court rapporteur Osman Can advocated in a non-binding report that the court should reject the closure request.
Complicating matters is the fact that terror attacks and the start of legal procedures before the Constitutional Court are taking place at a special time.
Some suggest that the charges against the AKP are but the latest action by the .deep state., a term used to describe the bureaucracy and the army which claim to be heirs and guarantors of Kemalist secularism against the ruling moderate Islamist party.
On the other hand, the AKP has responded with a probe into the Ergenekon network, an organisation similar to Gladio, the clandestine NATO .stay-behind. unit, and the arrest of retired gendarmerie chief, General .ener Eruygur and retired former head of the 1st Army, General Hur.it Tolon, who are accused of preparing since 2004 a coup d.État.
The start of August, when the Court should issue its ruling, is also when the leaders of the armed forces will be appointed, in particular, the new joint chief of staff.
General .lker Ba.bu., commander of the Turkish Army, is expected to replace the current Chief of the General Staff, General Ya.ar Büyükan.t.
But what will happen if Erdo.an is prevented from doing so and his party dissolved?
==================================
Turkey will not be subverted
No one is claiming responsibility for the bombs in Istanbul, but the finger of suspicion points at a shady ultra-nationalist group All comments (34)
* Bulent Kene * o Bulent Kenes o guardian.co.uk, o Monday July 28 2008 o Article history
All of Turkey was appalled by a villainous terror attack in Istanbul on Sunday night that came amid discussion over the findings of dark relations revealed by the indictment on the Ergenekon terror organisation, and on the eve of the beginning of deliberation by the constitutional court on an indictment seeking to close the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK party). Terror showed its bloody face this time on an ordinary Istanbul street, without discriminating between the old and the young, babies and children, men and women. Unfortunately, Turkey lost 17 of its citizens in this heinous terror attack, and 150 more were wounded. Over 15 of them are still in critical condition.
It is generally thought that terror attacks convey a bloody message in addition to their aim of terrorising people and spreading horror and fear among society. The most-circulated questions since the inhumane attacks on Sunday night have been, "Who perpetrated this terror attack?", "What was its aim?" and, "Why now?"
It is, of course, impossible to find immediately the answers to all these vital questions, which are on all of our minds. However, I am hopeful that the evidence and information found in the course of the police investigation will show us which terror organisation is behind this barbaric act. The fact that the Turkish police have been successful in solving terrorist assaults in the past and revealing the dark connections behind these attacks gives us hope that they will be successful in unravelling the case this time, too.
However, even if the terror organisation or organisations behind the attack were revealed, in countries like Turkey . which is insufficiently transparent and unsuccessful in deciphering the complex ties between illegal figures and organisations with official structures . it would not be enough to enable us to learn what the real aim and message of the terrorist acts are. In these cases, a clever analysis of the style of attacks, their timing and their messages could be much more functional.
If we start by analysing the timing of this latest terror attack, we can easily say that has occurred at a juncture where three crucial processes overlap or coincide:
1) The trial in the case on the Ergenekon terror organisation, which aimed to topple the popularly elected ruling AK party, has been legally under way since last Friday.
2) The constitutional court began a meeting to decide on the AK party closure case on Monday morning.
3) Military operations against the separatist terror organisation the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) have been ongoing both in Turkey and abroad (in the form of air strikes in northern Iraq). So the PKK feels squeezed into a corner.
Even if all the factors I have listed above seem very different from one another, the information, testimonies, documents and other evidence in the 2,455-page indictment on the Ergenekon terror organisation show that there are close links between Ergenekon and the closure case at the top court; and between Ergenekon and the PKK. The evidence in the indictment confirms that Ergenekon, as a Gladio-like formation with dark ties to deep state structures, played a major role in the formation of the pro-Kurdish PKK, the religious fundamentalist Hizbullah, Marxist-Leninist terror organisation the Revolutionary People's Liberation party/Front (DHKP-C) and the fundamentalist Islamic Great East Raiders Front (IBDA-C) . and it still has the power over them to direct and manipulate.
The first findings have indicated that the explosive material used in making the bombs used in the massacring attacks on Sunday night is RDX. And RDX has been known as the "bomb of secret services". This explosive was also used in past assassinations of Turkish intellectuals, like Bahriye Üçok, Ahmet Taner K.slal., Ugur Mumcu; in terror attacks, like that on the Anafartalar shopping centre in Ulus, Ankara in 2007 and that against the Final Course in Diyarbak.r on June 3 2008. Today, the combination of a terrorist attack and a secret service association can only point us to Ergenekon.
The evidences listed in the Ergenekon indictment, which has been covered enormously in Turkish media in recent days, oblige us to think that the last terrorist attack is linked with Ergenekon irregardless of whether it was perpetrated by the PKK, Hizbullah, the DHKP-C or the IBDA-C. Because I think the attacks aim at deterrence and intimidation of those officials who want to chase the trail of Ergenekon wherever it leads, as well as an easing of the increasing pressure on military operations against the PKK. Moreover, these twin attacks aimed to create pressure on the members of the top court, which is now in the process of closing the ruling party as a way of realising the Ergenekon mission to topple the ruling party through so-called legal means.
Beside of all the above-mentioned goals, these attacks have aimed to simply change and manipulate Turkey's agenda. It has at least been very successful in diverting the attention of Turkish public opinion and the Turkish media from Ergenekon and the closure case to the terrorism itself. The attacks function very efficiently as a way to black other issues out. Hence, instead of discussing Ergenekon and the closure case, Turkish people are now discussing these wretched terror attacks. In this respect, the twin bombs can be described as "agenda-targeting bombs".
Hopefully, these terrorist acts have no chance at reversing the Turkish people's eagerness to make Turkey a much more transparent and much more democratic country. Because the overwhelming majority of the Turkish people want a more transparent, more democratic regime, the attacks, fortunately, do not bear the potential to deter the Turkish people from these demands. Turkey will continue decisively on the path to more democracy, even if the AK party is closed and even if the armed and civilian bureaucratic elite try to oblige Turks to opt for a new direction for Turkey. Turkey will succeed in cleansing its intestines of the poisonous factors that cause nausea from time to time.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations" to examine legal and legislative responses to allegations of misconduct and the expansion of executive branch power by the Bush administration. Topics include allegations of: (1) improper politicization of the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys offices, including potential misuse of authority with regard to election and voting controversies; (2) misuse of executive branch authority and the adoption and implementation of the so-called unitary executive theory, including in the areas of presidential signing statements and regulatory authority; (3) misuse of investigatory and detention authority with regard to U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, including questions regarding the legality of the administration's surveillance, detention, interrogation, and rendition programs; (4) manipulation of intelligence and misuse of war powers, including possible misrepresentations to Congress related thereto; (5) improper retaliation against administration critics, including disclosing information concerning CIA operative Valerie Plame, and obstruction of justice related thereto; and (6) misuse of authority in denying Congress and the American people the ability to oversee and scrutinize conduct within the administration, including through the use of various asserted privileges and immunities.
Representatives Kucinich, Hinchey, Jones, and Miller were the first witnesses.
AIRINGS Begin Time End Time Network 07/25/2008 20:00:31 07/26/2008 01:57:08 C-SPAN 1 07/25/2008 10:00:30 07/25/2008 16:16:12 C-SPAN 1
Rep. Keith Ellison's questions during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constit Rep. Keith Ellison's questions during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutional limits of executive power which include testimony from Dennis Kucinich.(more)
I listened to almost the whole hearing... and recorded the mp3 until noliesradio cut out.. But some really good stuff came later ..DAMN!If you need the audio.. I can upload the mp3 files that I have recorded. Email me under u2r2h@gmx.net and follow the instructions from the autoresponder -- You must add a magic word into the subject line!.
video IS CENSORED -- NOT ONLINE!! rtsp://real.live.smc.net/ffnet/stux12.ash/encoder/56_judiciary-coj_2141_070212.rm?ts=1217060671&ttl=300&cs=6A15DDE588B641E7368EB543CC78A074AB17B8F4
Bush Accused of Tyranny and Murder
Star witnesses, legal scholar Bruce Fein and former LA District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi
Direct from the hearing
Michael Collins -- "Scoop" Independent News -- Washington, DC Part 1
Today's hearing on the abuse of presidential powers before the House Committee on the Judiciary turned into a devastating political ambush by Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), committee Democrats, and the extraordinary panel of witnesses.. At least 12 Democratic Committee members were present plus the Chairman while only four Republicans bothered to show up.
Belying their casual appearance in the committee chambers, the Democrats presented a well coordinated, hard hitting case against President George W. Bush. This lead to a double climax in the form of surgically erudite testimony by conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official, and former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's stunning summary statement. The best the Republicans could offer was inappropriate humor by Rep. Don Lundgren (D-CA) and a request to clear the chambers when the audience cheered Mr. Bugliosi's remarks.
The hearing resulted from the non stop campaign for the impeachment of President George W. Bush by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). That effort received an overwhelming endorsement last week with the votes of a 238 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 229 Democrats and 9 Republicans voted to refer the single count impeachment bill to the House or Representatives Committee on the Judiciary chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
"Deceived Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization for the use of force against Iraq and used that fraudulently obtained authorization, and then acting in his capacity under Article II, Section II of the Constitution as Commander in Chief, to commit US troops to combat in Iraq."
There was speculation prior to the hearings that the Republicans might scuttle the entire process due to House rules that prevent disparaging comments about the president. Apparently they failed to read the entirety of House Practice, Sec. 25 which lists a number of negative comments that House members have used in the past and makes clear they're available in the present.
"Few issues more important"
Chairman Conyers opened the hearing by noting that there are "few issues more important" than the actions of Congress to curtail the abuse of presidential powers. As a member of the House committee that heard the Nixon Impeachment case, he speaks with a certain authority. He listed the various abuses of presidential power by Bush laying out the case that his fellow Democrats would elaborate. The senior member of the committee, Republican Lamar Smith (R-TX) responded that he'd seen a lot from this committee but today's hearing was like "hosting an anger management class."
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), a strong advocate for the hearings, responded by pointing out that given the evidence of high crimes, this isn't a Democratic or Republican issue, it's an American issue. The Democrats continued the theme of gravity with Cong. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) referring to Bush as "the worst president our country has ever suffered"
Cong. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-X) returned to what would lead to the most devastating and startling charges of the hearing - the basis for the invasion of Iraq and the disregard for civil liberties through the torture of foreigners and the domestic assault on privacy. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) responded that the hearing was nothing but "a do-over that amuses our terrorist friends."
"If lying about casual sex" is an impeachment issue, "then certainly lying to the American people about invading Iraq" is, responded Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), another strong supporter of impeachment, continued the hard hitting attack
The Republicans were still not taking the hearing seriously when Cong. Don Lundgren resorted to nothing more than wise cracks in response.
Murder & Tyranny
The peroration came from conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein's testimony about the Bush administration's descent into tyranny. Had Bush showed up at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he would have been barred at the door by George Washington, Fein said with confidence. He made the comment in a fashion that betrayed contempt for any defense of the Bush administration's behavior. Bush was labeled a tyrant from one of the best and brightest of the United States' legal establishment.
The finale was the testimony of former Los Angeles District Attorney, Vincent Bugliosi. As DA, Bugliosi tired and convicted Charles Manson of first degree murder gaining a death sentence even though the state admitted that Manson was never at the seen of the murders. In the past, Bugliosi has said that preparation is the key to winning cases and that he knows that he's won after the opening statement. With only five minutes, he had a tall task but the syllogism he established was air tight.
On October 1, 2002, President Bush was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD). On October 7th, Bush clamed that Iraq was a threat to the United States due to the possession of WMD. He then used this claim to justify the war in Iraq making him guilty for the death of over four thousand U.S. soldiers and over 100,000 documented deaths of Iraqi civilians.
There were other members of the witness panel, including the author of today's hearings Dennis Kucinich (D-O), Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), and Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC). But it was the patient and cagey Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, his supporting cast of Democrats and the two star witnesses, Fein and Bugliosi who made charges of rule by tyranny and murder - charges that will not be easily forgotten no matter how much the mainstream media and politicians choose to ignore this issue.
YEY at least a partial transcript (downloadable statements!)
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) talks to the Washington Journal about today's Judiciary Cmte. hearing on the executive power and the Bush Admin. The hearing is partly based on a single article of impeachment he brought against Pres. Bush, and on alleged misconduct and unlawful expansion of executive power.
Now on C-SPAN
House Judiciary Committee Hearing on Kucinich Impeachment Resolution. Conyers tries to censor the hearing before it starts! LIVE BROADCAST: Friday, July 25th at 6am Pacific - 9am Eastern - 13:00 GMT Repeat broadcast: Saturday, July 26th at 9am Pacific - 12 noon Eastern - 16:00 GMT Watch for archive version here after the broadcasts. This Could Be Our Last Chance for 9/11 Truth, Stopping the Iran War and Martial Law!! Listen to the Hearing Carefully! Read Rep. Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment. Then Act! Call the Judiciary Committee and your Representative and Demand Impeachment Hearings Now. Be sure to mention Article 18 (Torture) and Articles 33-35 regarding 9/11 Truth. Call 6 friends to do this also and ask them to call 6 friends...and this will go viral!!! If this hearing is censored, call the above links and demand immediate impeachment hearings and Conyers resignation! SPECIAL LIVE COVERAGE: No Lies Radio will carry live the Pacifica Radio network (KPFA) broadcast of the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Imperial Presidency and possible legal responses entitled "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations". DESCRIPTION: For the last several years, many progressives - including a handful of Congress members - have called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush. But they have been stymied by six years of Republican majority followed by a Democratic leadership that took impeachment "off the table." That may be changing. This Friday, the House Judiciary Committee will take the first step to investigate what Rep. John Conyers calls "numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct." While the panel of witnesses is somewhat fluid until the hearing actually begins, the current roster of speakers includes: -- Several Congress members: Dennis Kucinich, Jane Harman, Walter Jones, Brad Miller, and Maurice Hinchey -- Several non-Congress Members: Elizabeth Holtzman, Bruce Fein, Frederick Schwartz, John Dean, Bob Barr, Rocky Anderson, Vincent Bugliosi, Elliott Adams. Anchored by KPFA's Larry Bensky & Aimee Allison and produced by Max Pringle.
OFFICIAL Hearing Information http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_072508.html
Hearing on: Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations
Wednesday 07/25/2008 - 10:00 AM 2141 Rayburn House Office Building Full Committee By Direction of the Chairman
In this hearing we heard the case for impeachment from Kucinich, Wexler, Jackson-Lee, Johnson, Baldwin, Ellison, Hinchey, Holtzman, Anderson, Adams, and even Barr. We heard general support in that direction from Scott, Lofgren, and even Nadler (almost). And we heard Pence's and Franks' laughable and inculpating defenses along the lines of "Bush is not a crook." Not bad for the first day's work of the 110th Congress! Now, how about an impeachment hearing? We saw a lot of interest from committee members in the offense of signing statements, and also in the refusal to comply with subpoenas. Those are the issues that seem to have the most traction (and the least congressional complicity).
4:10 Nadler points out that whereas evidence was nonexistant or disputed, Bush asserted repeatedly that it was absolutely certain. Lundgren claims that Bush based that on the wisdom of intelligence agencies around the world [sic!]. [Even if that were true, isn't it a problem that US intelligence was full of doubts and major counter-evidence?]
4:05 Lundgren claims Bush meant well. Nadler asks about evidence on edited NIE presented today. Lundgren dismisses it. Audience laughs. Lundgren asks for people to be removed. Conyers says that if anyone causes a disruption at the end of the hearing they will be forbidden to attend any more hearings.
3:58: Ellison is trying again to get Presser to agree there are grounds for impeachment on the matter of war lies. He agrees, only if Kucinich's case is "proved." Ellison asks Radkin too, but he pulls out the "they meant well and sadly turned out to be wrong, which is different from intentionally lying." I'd like Kucinich to make the overwhelming case that Bugliosi has been making that they knowingly lied, but he instead makes the reasonable case that if all the assertions turn out to be false that is sufficient grounds for an impeachment inquiry.
3:55: Ellison is giving Kucinich another opportunity to speak about his article of impeachment on war lies, which he is doing at some length. Lundgren is the only Republican member still here. Conyers, Nadler, Scott, Lofgren, and Baldwin are here, and everyone is awake.
3:54 After Fein suggests a law banning use of funds for anything signing statemented, Ellison asks why the president couldn't just signing statement that new law. Fein had no answer.
3:45 Red Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is here for first time and expressing concern of some sort about signing statements.
3:38 Rep Schiff wants a new Church Committee to last into the next Congress, and he wants to White House to notify the Congress in a timely manner when it is about to violate laws. (I do hope I am hallucinating now.) Schwartz points out that there is already a law requiring that the president notify Congress when he will use a signing statement to claim the right to violate a law, but Bush has used a signing statement to erase the requirement that he notify Congress about signing statements. Schwartz points out also that we should have no secret laws whatsoever.
3:34 Baldwin raises danger of leaving Bush and Cheney unchecked for seven more months, in particular the possibility of an attack on Iran. What impact would an impeachment inquiry have on the possibility of attacking Iran? Anderson: wants a bill passed! (???) Bugliosi refuses to speculate.
3:30 Baldwin is bringing up John Nichols' book and the Bill Moyers show he was on with Fein. She's quoting Nichols account of presidential toolbox passing from president to president. And the toolbox now has more powers in it than ever before.
Lundgren is asleep now.
3:25 pm Rep Brad Sherman shows up for first time and says Congress has become mere advisors to White House. President won't obey laws. Any law to fix the problem will be vetoed. To Fein: is nonfeasance an impeachable offense? Fein: the "take care that laws are faithfully executed" comes from English Bill of Rights ... meaning Yes. Sherman is talking about signing statements. Sherman asks Holtzman if a prosecutor should bring a case if virtually certain of not getting a conviction? She says maybe.
Kucinich has gone out and come back with what is probably a stack of petition signatures in support of impeachment. Ellison is talking with Kucinich.
3:19 p.m. Rep Hank Johnson asks Presser about his testimony back in the day that if Clinton lied he should be impeached: if a president lied about taking a nation into war, would that be an impeachable offense? Presser says "you'd have to look into the circumstances...." Johnson turns to Holtzman, which is much more productive.
Nadler and Scott are both sleeping. No joke.
3:13 Rep Cohen asks Holtzman about what branch Cheney belongs to. Fein points out that a Senator has been impeached, so Cheney can claim he's in the legislative branch and be impeached. Cohen asks Fein whether it would be socially beneficial to impeach, or more important to do other things as Rep Watt advises. Fein says that impeaching Nixon was greatly unifying. He also says that there is penty of time since no investigation is needed. The president has confessed to viiolating FISA (witnesses are now routinely accusing the president of crimes and calling him "the president" against the rules).
3:03 Rep. Wexler says that ignoring subpoenas, spying, and torture, are - pace Pence - not "mere policy differences". Wexler expands on the subpoenas topic. Barr has left. Wexler wanted to ask him about statements he made in support of the rule of law during the Clinton impeachment. (Wexler may have been out of the room today when Barr came around in support of impeachment.) Rocky Anderson says Wexler is right, that we're not just talking about policy, but about Constitutional issues. Now, says Rocky, is the time for Congress to assert its power. Wexler now asks Fein about Mukasey coming before the committee and refusing to honor subpoenas. Fein says that's a clear impeachable offense on its own. Popular government can't work if the public can't know what its government is doing. You don't need an investigation to impeach: you just vote. [Go, Bruce!] Liz Holtzman adds that the president [OOPS, WHO? Can you say that?] has refused to give Congress what it needs to do its job and obstructs the work of Congress. She recommends holding an impeachment inquiry, requesting the information again, and if it is not provided then impeaching.
NOTE: Pacifica is terminating its broadcast, but we all appreciate them carrying the hearing up to this point.
3:02 Rep. Pence appears to be filibustering on his opposition to impeachment, chewing up time for no apparent purpose, asking three-minute questions that get three-word responses because they are just obvious rants.
2:53 p.m. One of the Repubicans tried to cut Bugliosi off by claiming he was discussing classified information. (He was discussing the declassified 2002 NIE.) The groans from the audience shut him up. Nobody said a thing about the groaning. Bugliosi was permitted to keep speaking.
2:43 Sheila Jackson-Lee (I kid you not) is urging passage of a bill to correct the abuse of signing statements (who spots the weakness in this strategy?). But she's now asking Fein to speak on war lies, and she's suggesting it's treason. And now she's giving Bugliosi a chance to expand on his case (the familiar case in his book, which many in this room have never heard).
2:36 At request of a Republican Conyers asks staff to remove signs. Staff is asking vets to remove buttons.
Tarak Kauff shouts that it's a disgrace when Bush is responsible for so many murders to demand that vets take off buttons. He's hauled out by police.
TJ Buomo refuses to take off his button, shouts out his 1st Amendment right and is hauled out by police.
Lori Arbeiter also refused to comply and was hauled out.
Liz Cater spoke up and tried to go help Lori and was threatened with removal until a bunch of us shouted that she'd done nothing, and the police backed off and she sat down.
2:26 Lofgren is still pushing idea of a truth and reconciliation commission. And Schwartz is recommending the 9-11 Commission as a model [I may be tired but I'm not hallucinating this.]
2:25 OK I've covered up my IMPEACH shirt because a friend thinks they'll try to arrest me for wearing it.
2:16 Republican Rep. Louis Gohmert: The president is not a crook, really! And: Never trust a Muslim!
2:10 The Judiciary Committee staff is begging me to cover up my IMPEACH shirt, and I'm refusing.
2:08 Rep Mel Watt here now for first time today. He said "If attorneys general are protecting me against terrorists, who is protecting me against THEM?" [Loud applause.] He then refuses to support impeachment. [silence] Did Pelosi send Watt here??
2:02 Franks has interrupted this hearing on the abuses of Bush and Cheney to let us know that we should all be VERY VERY AFRAID of Muslim terrorists. Then Franks says that if there was a failure, it was in allowing 9-11 to occur. [Wow, it's almost as if he's read Kucinich's article of impeachment on that very point. Yes, I'm kidding. He wouldn't ever have done that.]
1:49 Bobby Scott: Are we necessarily talking about impeachment or something other than impeachment or must it be impeachment, what other tool do we have to enforce limitations on executive power? Fein says that under Nixon when he was in Justice Dept they concluded you could not prosecute a president while in office, and concluded that impeachment was the only remedy for an abusive president. Barr added that Congress can pass laws. Holtzman said that doesn't matter if president is not bound to obey the laws, and that the real remedy is impeachment -- there's no running away from that. Bugliosi added that president can be prosecuted from the day he leaves office.
1:46 Congressman Kucinich has never left the room and is still sitting in the front row. People are still coming in -- all of them impeachment activists -- whenever a seat opens up.
1:42 King is still talking about shopping for uranium. Essentially his case amounts to "Yoo Hoo, Look way over here away from the Constitution. I'm making a giant ass of myself! Look Look!" See evidence re uranium lies HERE.
1:37 Nadler suggests impeachment is virtually impossible because conviction requires support of president's party. Holtzman says that impeachment can be bipartisan, as in fact it was with Nixon. But the Democrats led in the beginning and did not do a headcount before proceeding. The process was made completely fair. Southern Democats and Republicans joined in because it was fair to parties and fair to the president. And when we started nobody thought it would work. It did.
1:32 Nadler questions Schwartz assertion that impeachment is not practical. But prosecution faces possible block by pardons. Do we need to change pardon clause of the Constitution? [IS HE SERIOUS? Amend the Constitution to explicity bar the outrageous absurdity of self-pardoning??] Fein jumps in to say that a statute could require that pardons occur 8 months before leaving office, therby creating political penalty for abuse of the power.
1:30 Nadler suggests that even though executive privilege should not apply in an impeachment hearing, Bush might STILL assert it. Fein replies that remedy wold be an article of impeachment, as with Nixon.
1:28 Nadler tears down rightwing strawman that impeachment is about using presidency for personal gain, it's about abuse of power! If the Pres lied to Congres, and I think there's good evidence he did [Nadler just violated the HOLY RULE against calling the king a liar], it's impeachable. This prez claims right to call anyone in this room an enemy combatant and lock them up forever. This has never happened since Magna Carta in English-speaking countries. They torture. they don't prosecute their own crimes. There's no remedy by the executive branch! We've got to figure a way around this. [HOW ABOUT IMPEACHMENT?]
1:18 Lamar Smith citing fact that most people have discussed impeachment in this non-impeachment hearing. Presser claims Clinton impeachment had nothing to do with lying about sex, and that he has heard nothing today to suggest impeachable offenses. [YES! More "I am not a crook" discussion from the Republicans.] Radkin joining in: "He did not lie us into a war." Plus: "Lots of other presidents have lied us into wars too!" [Derrida called this kettle logic: I didn't break your kettle, it was broken when I borrowed it, they always break, and I never borrowed it at all.]
1:18 Q and A beginning.
Elliott Adams: he joked and passed on commenting.
Schwartz: Abuses of this president are unique. He claims the right to break any law and to do so secretly. This doctrine needs to be "squashed, disagreed with, and exposed." [HOW ABOUT IMPEACHED?]
Vincent Bugliosi beautifully challenges Presser's contention that a lie about sex is worse than a lie about war. Now Bugliosi is citing the WHITE HOUSE MEMO. Cindy Sheehan shouted out "Thank you, Vince!" Conyers said that his colleagues were urging him to take action. Cindy said "I urge YOU to take action!" Conyers said, "Well then, Sheehan you're out." Cindy left. Other impeachment advocates immediately came in to fill her seat and those of people who left with her.
Bruce Fein: Executive ONLY has powers we the people give him. Do all presidents spy during wars? No, and this is worse because this war is permanent. Robert Jackson at Nuremburg says that an abusive power unrebuked will lie around like a loaded weapon.
Stephen Presser: right to hold this hearing, but there is no evidence of fraudulent motives, and minority report of this committee shows that the admin has cooperated and acted in good faith.
Rocky Anderson: impeachment appropriate now, including for fraud in taking us into war by the pres... oops I mean hight ranking official of the administration.
Bob Barr: Our bill of rights is vanishing. He holds up and displys the Bill of Rights with most of it blacked out. He submits it into the record. Not my job to choose impeachment, but if choice is constitutional inquiry or silence, I choose inquiry. [One rightwinger won over already today!]
Liz H: Admin will never prosecute itself. Truth Commission won't work. Only impeachment is practical and possible. It eliminates executive privilege. Somebody get this bit onto Youtube ASAP!
12:58 Conyers letting each panelist add something in response to other panelists.
12:48 Fred Schwartz opposes impeachment as too late (as if he ever lifted a finger for it) but wants a big whopping "investigation" (which of course actually does take time, unlike impeaching Bush and Cheney on the grounds established today and over the past years).
12:44: A staffer is trying to get me to cover up my IMPEACH shirt and I'm refusing.
12:41 Rightwing minority witness Jeremy Radkin says war lies is clearly most important charge, but claims its "wild conspiracy charges." And, so, all other charges should be ignored as less important, and then this charge should be ignored as crazy.
12:34 Bugliosi is giving abbreviated version of his usual powerful rap on Bush lying us into war. AND he's calling for referral of criminal charges to the Justice Department (are you kidding me, Vince? you were going to advocate impeachment, not futility). Great rhetoric, though. [Strong applause results in Republican call to clear the room and Conyers refusal but repeated admonition.
12:32 Conyers is introducing Vince Bugliosi, holding up his book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for murder."
12:25 Bruce Fein is now reading his excellent statement, posted earlier on this website.
12:20 p.m. Rightwing lawyer Stephen Presser making case that his brain has been absent from the room for the past couple of hours AND that Bill Clinton was a president who really merited impeachment. He claims that stating a theory about "unitary executive" is not an impeachable offense, but he's the first today to have suggested that.
Note: more citizens (all for impeachment) are gradually filling in more seats as staffers grow tired and hungry.
12:13 Rocky Anderson wants investigation (as if we don't already know the crimes and haven't just heard about them for hours). He wants to know about the spying program. [Fine, but we know, as he says, that it's felonious. So is it appropriate to "investigate" with no subpoena power or to impeach?] "There has never been a more compelling case for impeachment!" [NOW YOU'RE TALKING!!] Rocky goes on to support legislation delegitimizing signign statements (as if that were possible). He wants legislation (which would be vetoed) to criminalize an illegal attack on Iran [I kid you not].
12:10 Bob Barr going on about wide variety of grave abuses, but not so much what to do about them.
11:58 Liz Holtzman gives prima facie grounds for impeachment: systematic refusal to obey the laws, spying, torture, signing statements, misuse of executive privilege, war lies, etc... we need an impeachment inquiry to educate the public and give members of administration facing accusations a forum in which to respond.
PANEL 2 BEGINS WITH NO QandA for PANEL 1.
11:49 Republican Rep. Walter Jones, in response to signing-statement announcements of intention to violate laws, wants the public to have easy access to the signing statements and Congress to have the right to ask the White House about its criminal announcements. [Now, how does this make more sense than renaming french fries? Well, at least it points to the problem and misses the solution so wildly that even a reporter could see it.] He wants his bill passed now (as if it wouldn't be vetoed!!).
11:45 Rep. Brad Miller discussing various abuses and various so-called legislative remedies.
11:30 Rep Maurice Hinchey: president dominates entire government. He focuses on "corruption and incompetance". [Huh? what about criminality and murder?] [He's going over all the old material in way too conservative a manner and putting me to sleep.] This is th emost impeachable administration in the history of America. [Hello! I'm awake!]
11:25 Kucinich has a written statement (Can somebody get a copy?) and focuses on destructive nature of Iraq war, including impact on US economy. Statements made to justify war were false. Congress members believed the lies. Rules of House prevent me using familiar terms. (DK introduces his three resolutions for impeachment into the record and asks that members read them.) Should we honor our oaths to support and defend the Constitution? Will Congress endorse with its silence the methods used to take us into the Iraq war, one of the greatest injustices imaginable? Act now! Right a very great wrong! Hold accountable those who misled this nation! [DK spoke less than 5 minutes and avoided the I word.]
11:20 Keith Ellison has written statement (Can somebody get a copy?). Congress needs to maintain its power. Impeachment is only way to do it. [Yeah!]
11:15 Rep Tammy Baldwin submitting a written statement. This is about the conduct of future presidents for generations. This is not frivolous, but no task more important than to consider whether our leaders have violated their oaths of office. Public expects no less. After all, it is their Constitution. American people and nations around the world wonder whether US is going to illegally attack Iran, whether their conversations are wiretaped, whether people are being held in sectre prisons, who authorized torture. But attempt to investigate are blocked. List of ignored subpoenas is long. True accountability is impossible. In my judgment at least two high ranking administration officials have met the standard for impeachment [meaning Bush and Cheney] - I now firmly believe we must begin impeachment hearings.
11:08 Rep Hank Johnson: action must be taken.. prevailing view has been that impeachment should be off the table...and public would not approve, but impeachment would restore life and vitality to the system of checks and balances that is the hallmark of our system of government [yeah !] if lying about consensual sexual activity fits the bill, then surely lying to the American people about the invasion of Iraq, a sovereign nation, resulting in countless Iraqi deaths, 4,000 Americans, surely that qualifies as an impeachable offense [brief loud applause]. Kidnapping, detaining, torturing, selective prosecutions, etc, etc. Should consider impeaching. [Conyers again says not to clap.]
11:06 Rep Steve Cohen, freshman from Memphis: recounts Gonzales resigning as he and Bruce Fein were drafting articles of impeachment for him. Supports this hearing.
11:02 Trent Franks just said the word Impeachment repeatedly, requesting that the word never be mentioned. Then said Terrorist, Terrorism, and Terror many many times.
10:57 Rep Sheila Jackson-Lee quoting preamble to the Constitution and defending the importance of taking up impeachment hearings, without predicting the outcome. She is concerned about war lies, torture, possibility of treason, firing of US attorneys, signing statements (and she has legislation [I kid you not!] to address that abuse).
10:51 Republican Rep Pence wants to be sure this is not about impeachment and at the same time wants to argue against impeachment. [The Republicans are putting impeachment on the table AND making themselves look like McCain-style senile fools. Pence is arguing that Bush has not done things he's publicly on record confessing to, thus opening the door to the corporate media to cover these issues - if they dare.] "There have been no high crimes and misdemeanors!" ["I am not a crook!"]
10:50 Rep Jerrold Nadler saying the offenses now are far more serious than what Clinton was impeached for.
10:45 Republican Rep Dan Lundgren is disappointed. This is impeachment light. The allegations without real impeachment. [Exactly.]
10:43 Rep Zoe Lofgren urging further investigations like today's.
10:41 Conyers says it's not an impeachment hearing, and that that could only follow a vote in the full house [of which we have ALREADY HAD THREE SUCCESSFULLY FOR THIS PRESIDENT IN RESPONSE TO RESOLUTIONS FROM KUCINICH!!!]
10:37 Republican Rep King is pointing out that "power to remove" means impeachment - and he's shocked and scandalized, and he's seen no impeachable offenses. King is voluntarily bringing up the forged Niger documents and defending the lies about attempts to purchase uranium (as if that would have justified an aggressive war if true, which it wasn't). He's claiming to have new proof and introducing it into the record without explaining it.
10:35 Rep Bobby Scott made brief remarks in support of today's hearing, but did not mention impeachment.
10:31 Conyers introduced Robert Wexler, and the audience applauded him. He's laying out the case for impeachment powerfully. Never before has an administration so diminished the powers of the legislative branch....ordered officials to refuse to testify or even appear... unprecedented ... distorted executive privilege beyond recognition ... most appropriate response is to hold hearings for impeachment [applause, and staffer reprimanding those of us applauding]. We have to seek impeachment and removal from office... Delicate balance of power eviscerated... not a Democratic or Republican issue, This is an American issue. The only option left is impeachment hearings. In 1973 articles of impeachment were introduced against Nixon after he tried to use executive privilege ... we should look more deeply into what happened... We need to begin to take our government and our country back.
Conyers reminds audience that we can make no reactions.
10:26 Ranking Republican Lamar Smith: We recently hosted a book of the month club. Nothing is going to come out of this for impeachment. I know it, the media knows it, the speaker knows it ... there's no evidence for impeachment. You cannot impeach a president simply because you don't like him. No evidence of any criminal wrong doing. 9% approve of Congress, making Bush look good at 32%. Americans want "bipartisanship." Smith is now reading an excerpt from the House Rules: no personally offensive language toward the president, etc...
10:19 a.m. ET Conyers is speaking quite to the point on the power of the purse and the power of impeachment (he said the power "to remove" and avoided the I word). He's mentioning politicization of Justice Dept, signing statements, detention, rendition, "possible" manipulation of intelligence, retaliation including outing of Plame, excessive secrecy. Evidence is both credible and substantial and merits direct answers from "the most senior members of the administration under oath if possible" (by which he likely means Bush and Cheney, but how does he propose to put them under oath? We will struggle with this legacy regardless of electoral outcome. Some say we've done too little too late [damn straight]. I held hearings on Downing Street Memo and Ohio elections before being chairman, and as chairman I've held more than 45 separate public hearings on these matters [to what end?]. We've sent subpoenas and pursued criminal contempt [with what outcome?]. We expect to take action against Karl Rove for refusal to comply with a subpoena [what action, when?, and will it include impeaching his former boss?] We've held investigations and passed legislation and we're not done until we achieve accountability [how, without impeachment?].
10:08 Very noisy protests ongoing in the hallway, which can be heard in the hearing room. My internet connection is shakey and I hope it holds out. Hearing has not begun. A huge number of congressional staffers are here filling up seats.
10:02 Noisy standing ovation by some 20 people when Dennis Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth and dedicated scheduler Amy Vossbrink walked in.
9:57 a.m. I'm in the back row with a power outlet and a good connection online. They let a grand total of 17 members of the public into the room. A crowd of hundreds is in the hallway shouting "Shame! Shame!" despite being offered two large overflow rooms. The 17 of us include a bunch of people with IMPEACH shirts, after we won an argument in the hallway for the right to wear them -- led by Col. (retired) Ann Wright. At least half of us (not I) are members of Vets for Peace. [18 people: Dave Lindorff got in as press]
7:48 A Capitol Police officer is here, making everyone (including disabled vets) stand, not sit, and preventing me from having my computer near a power outlet, so I'm going to turn it off and save the battery.
7:38 About 60 or 70 people are here in line. We're all impeachment advocates. We've made our own numbered tickets. Cynthia Papermaster is 1. Cindy Sheehan is 2. I'm 7. We're in the hallway outside Rayburn 2141, and nobody official has shown up yet. We don't know how many people will get in, and how many will sit in overflow rooms. By the way, it is unheard of to have or to need overflow rooms, but they will today. I'll be on Pacifica radio at 9:30. Their broadcast starts at 9:00 a.m. ET.
Interviewed by Vincent Navarro. at M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 13, 2008. Vincent Navarro is Professor of Public Policy at the PompeuFabraUniversity, and The Johns Hopkins University.
Vincent Navarro: Thank you so much for welcoming us here.
Noam Chomsky: Delighted to have a chance to talk to you.
VN: We are here on behalf of the Summer Progressive University of Catalonia. As I told you before the interview, the University's intention is to recover the history of Catalonia, recalling the time during the thirties when workers and academics would get together in the summer to discuss matters of interest to them. This was, of course, forbidden during the Franco dictatorship. When the left-wing parties regained the government of Catalonia in 2003, they renewed this commitment to restarting the SummerProgressiveUniversity. We would have liked you to give the inaugural address for this reopening. I'm sorry you couldn't make it. We hope you will come to visit us there some day.
NC: I hope so.
VN: I want to chat with you about yourself and about the United States. Outside the United States you are the best-known U.S. intellectual, and most people outside the country are not fully aware of what it means that the best-known U.S. intellectual seldom appears in the U.S. media. So, when we watch the major TV channels - CBS, NBC, and the many other channels - you are never there. Many people do not understand this, because the United States is frequently idealized and presented as an extremely dynamic, active democracy, and they do not fully realize how much the left is discriminated against in the United States. This discrimination occurs even within the left of the liberal establishment. How do you respond to this? How do you explain this discrimination in most forums?
NC: I should say that the place where I am most feared and despised is probably in left liberal intellectual circles. If you want to see a graphic indication of this, take a look at one of my favorite journal covers, which is framed and posted right outside my door. It's the more or less official journal of left liberal intellectuals, The American Prospect, and the cover depicts the terrible circumstances in which they try to survive - the enormous forces that are virtually destroying them.
In the picture, two figures are depicted; two faces, sneering and angry. On one side is Dick Cheney and the Pentagon, on the other side is me. The left liberal intellectuals are caught between these two huge forces. This depiction is indicative of the paranoia and concern that there might be some small break in orthodoxy. The liberal intellectuals (and not just in the United States) are typically the guardians at the gates: we'll go this far, but not one millimeter farther; and it's terrifying to think that somebody might go a millimeter farther. This extends throughout the major media too. So, yes, the United States is a very free country, in fact it's the freest country in the world. I don't think freedom of speech, for example, is protected anywhere in the world as much as it is here. But it's a very managed society, it's a business-run society, carefully managed, with strict doctrinal requirements and no deviation tolerated - this would be too dangerous.
One of the reasons it's too dangerous is that the political establishment, both political parties and the political class, is, on many major issues, well to the right of the population. On health care, for example, which you've written about for decades, the population is to the left of the establishment, and has been so forever. And the same is true for many other issues. So, permitting issues to be discussed is threatening, and permitting deviation from a kind of party line is dangerous and has to be carefully controlled.
So, yes, this is a very free country, but at the same time there's a very rigid ideology. VN: But this is surprising because, from outside the United States, one has the impression the country has a very secure, stable political system. One would think that, with such powerful political and media establishments, they could afford to allow more critical voices in the media.
NC: Yes!
VN: It's as if they are afraid of critical voices, such as your voice.
NC: Yes, I think they are afraid. There's a terrible fear that a slight deviation might lead to disaster. It's a typical totalitarian mentality. You have to control everything. If anything is out of control, it's a disaster. And, in fact, the stability of U.S. society is not so obvious. It requires a lot of suppression - the Pentagon Papers are quite interesting in this respect. The Pentagon Papers are not declassified documents. Getting access to them is like stealing the archives; it's like conquering a country and stealing the archives. The information wasn't intended for the public. There are a few interesting things in the Pentagon papers that are suppressed - not formally, but in effect. The most interesting is the account at the very end - the period they cover ends in mid-1968, right after the Tet offensive in January 1968, which convinced the business classes that the war was too costly, not worth pursuing. But, in those next few months there was an attempt by the government to send an extra 200,000 troops to Vietnam, to raise the troop level to almost three-quarters of a million. There was a debate on this, as discussed in the Pentagon papers, and they decided not to do it. The reason was that they feared that if they did so, they would need the troops for civil disorder control in the United States. There would be an uprising of unprecedented proportions among young people, women, minorities, the poor, and so on. They barely had things under control at home, and any move might have led to an uprising. And this continues. You cannot let the population get out of control. It has to be tightly disciplined.
One of the reasons for the extraordinary pressure of consumerism, which goes back to the 1920s, is the recognition by the business world that unless it atomizes people, unless it drives them to what it calls the "superficial things of life, such as fashionable consumption," the population may turn on them. Right now, for example, about 80% of the U.S. population believes that the country is, in their words, run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the benefit of the population. About 95% of the population thinks that the government ought to pay regular attention to public opinion. The degree of alienation from institutions is enormous. As long as people are atomized, worried about maxing out their credit cards, separated from one another, and don't hear serious critical discussion, the ideas can be controlled.
VN: Another thing that happens abroad is the idealization of the U.S. system by the European media. For example, the presidential primaries are being portrayed in the European media as a sign of the vitality of U.S. democracy. And the Obama phenomenon is presented as being responsible for the mobilization of the masses. This is so contrary to the reality. But how do you explain this idealization of the American political scene that is so common in Europe?
NC: People have these illusions, and you have to ask, what is the source of these illusions? But it's clear what has happened, and the establishment understands it very well.
For example, on one day, called Super Tuesday, February 5th, there are a couple of dozen primaries, so there's big excitement. Take a look at the Wall Street Journal: its front page story on Super Tuesday, with a big headline, reads: "Issues recede in '08 Contest as Voters Focus on Character." Shortly after, a poll appeared, which I did not see reported, finding that three-fourths of the public want coverage of candidates' positions on issues. Exactly the opposite of the standard doctrine, expressed in the headline. That's not new. The same has been true in earlier elections But issues are carefully kept out of sight by the party managers. It's not true that voters prefer character over issues. Voters would be perfectly happy to vote for the national health care system that they've wanted for decades. It's just that those things aren't options. The party managers - or, basically, the public relations industry that sells commodities on television and markets candidates in the same way that they market commodities. When you see an ad on television, you don't expect to learn anything from it. If we had a free market of the kind economists discuss, in which informed consumers make rational choices, General Motors would post on television the characteristics of the cars they're selling. They don't do that. What they do is try to create illusions, using complicated graphics, a famous actress driving up to heaven, or something like that. The point is to delude and marginalize the public, so that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices. When you market candidates, it's the same thing - keep away from the issues, that's too dangerous because the public doesn't agree with you on the issues. So what you have is character, trivialities, personal issues - somebody's pastor says something, Clinton made a mistake when she talked about Bosnia. The Pew research foundation released a study of press coverage of the primaries. The top story was Rev. Jeremy Wright's sermons. Second was the role of the "superdelegates." Third was whether Obama misformulated his comment about "bitterness" of the electorate over the economy. And on down to the tenth story about Clinton's misstatement concerning Bosnia. All of the top stories listed were about marginal irrelevancies. None brought up the stand of the candidates on any issue - what the vast majority of the public wants to hear. You know, anything but the issues. So the population just doesn't know what the issues are, and this is quite obvious.
Popular opinion in the United States has been very well studied, mainly because the business classes, who run the country, want to have their finger on the public pulse - for the purpose of control and propaganda. You can only hope to control people's attitudes and opinions if you know a lot about them, so we know a lot about public opinion. In the last election, 2004, most Bush voters were mistaken about his views on major issues - not because they're stupid or uninterested, but because the elections are a marketing system. This is a business-run society: you market commodities, you market candidates. The public are the victims and they know it, and that's why 80% think, more or less accurately, that the country is run by a few big interests looking after themselves. So people are not deluded, they just don't really see any choices.
The Obama phenomenon is an interesting reaction to this. Obama's handlers, the campaign managers, have created an image that is essentially a blank slate. In the Obama campaign the words are hope, change, unity - totally vacuous slogans said by a nice person, who looks good and talks nicely - what commentators call "soaring rhetoric" - and you can write anything you like on that blank slate. A lot of people are writing on it their hopes for progressive change. In the campaign, as the Wall Street Journal correctly notes, issues have received little attention. Personal characteristics are the key element. It's character that's up front.
But, yes, the support for Obama is a popular phenomenon, and I think it reflects the alienation of the population from the institutions. People are grasping at a straw: here's a possibility that maybe somebody will stand up for what they want. Even though he's not saying so, he looks like the kind of person who might do it. It's quite interesting to look at the comparisons that are made. Obama is compared to John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan - Kennedy and Reagan were media constructions, Reagan particularly. He probably didn't even know what the policies were, but he was a creation of the media. He wasn't particularly popular, incidentally, but the media created the image of this wonderful cowboy who would save us, and so on and so forth.
The Kennedy administration was more in control; they were the first ruling group to understand the power of television and they created a kind of charisma through good public relations: the image of Camelot, this marvelous place, with wonderful things happening, and a great president. When you look at the actual actions, it's grotesque. Kennedy is the president who invaded South Vietnam and launched a major terrorist war against Cuba, and we could go on and on about it. His administration was responsible for establishment of the Brazilian neo-Nazi dictatorship. The coup took place right after Kennedy's assassination, but the ground was prepared by the Kennedys and led to a horrible plague of repression over Latin America, and on and on. But the image of Camelot is there, and imagery is very important when you are trying to control a dissident population.
Actually, the United States is far from a fascist country, that's a bad analogy. But the similarity to fascist propaganda techniques is quite striking, and it's not accidental. The Nazis explicitly, consciously, and openly adopted the techniques of American commercial advertising, and said so. They took a few simple ideas, stressed them over and over again, and made them look glamorous - that was the technique of American commercial advertising in the 1920s and it was the model that the Nazis explicitly adopted, and it's the model of business propaganda today.
So, yes, the Obama phenomenon, I think, reflects the alienation of the population that you find in the polls: 80% say the country is run by a few big interests. While Obama says we are going to change that, there's no indication of what the change is going to be. In fact, the financial institutions, which are his major contributors, think he's fine, so there's no indication of any change. But if you say "change," people will grasp at it; you say "change" and "hope," and people will grasp at this and say, OK, maybe this is the savior who will bring about what we want, even though there is no evidence for it.
VN: Sure.
NC: So I think the Obama phenomenon and people's alienation go hand in hand.
VN: What would be the difference between a McCain administration and an Obama administration?
NC: McCain is another example of very effective propaganda-creation imagery. I mean, suppose there was a Russian pilot who was bombing civilian targets in Afghanistan and was shot down and tortured by the American-run Islamic fanatic terrorists there. Would we say he's a war hero? Would we say he's an expert in strategic and security issues, because he was a bomber of civilian targets? We wouldn't. But this is the image that's been created of McCain. His heroism and his expertise and strategy are based on the fact that he was bombing people from 30,000 feet and he was shot down. It's not nice that he was tortured, it shouldn't have happened, it was a crime, and so on. But that doesn't make him a war hero or a specialist in foreign policy. That's all a public relations creation. The public relations industry is a huge industry, very sophisticated. Probably something like a sixth of the gross domestic product goes into marketing, advertising, and so on, and that's a core element of society. It's the way you keep people separated from one another, subdued, and focused on something else. And this is explicit and, as I say, it's all discussed in public relations propaganda.
VN: Would you foresee any difference between McCain and Obama administrations in terms of foreign policy?
NC: Yes. McCain may be worse than Bush. He doesn't say much, because you're not supposed to say much about issues, but the few things he has said are pretty frightening. He could be a real loose cannon.
VN: Could you explain the sympathy that Europe has toward Obama?
NC: I suppose Europeans are also writing what they want on the blank slate. And it's no secret that they feared and disliked Bush. The American establishment itself was afraid of Bush. Bush came under unprecedented criticism even from officials of the Reagan administration, and from the mainstream generally. For example, when his national security strategy was announced in September 2002, calling for preventive war, virtually announcing a war in Iraq, immediately, within weeks, there was a major article in Foreign Affairs (the main establishment journal) condemning what they called the New Imperial Grand Strategy - not on principle, but because it would be harmful to the United States. And there has been a lot of criticism of the Bush administration as extremist, if not at the far extreme of radical nationalism, and McCain is probably in the same territory. Obama very likely would move back to the center right where the Clinton administration was.
The Bush doctrine itself, the doctrine of preventive war - you know, brazen contempt for our allies and so on - is an interesting example. The doctrine, however, was not new. Clinton's doctrine was even worse, taken literally. Clinton's doctrine officially was that the United States has the right to use force to protect access to markets and resources, and that's more extreme than the Bush doctrine. But the Clinton administration presented it politely, quietly, not in a way that would alienate our allies. The Europeans couldn't pretend they didn't hear it - of course they knew it and, in fact, European leaders probably approved of it. But the arrogance, brazenness, extremism, and ultra-nationalism of the Bush administration did offend the mainstream center in the United States and Europe. So, there's a more polite way of following the same policies.
VN: Do you see room for the left in the United States at some point?
NC: I think this country presents an enormous opportunity for organizers. You see this if you look at public opinion, which is very well studied. Your own work on people's opinion on national health programs shows that people want such a program in the United States. If we had a functioning democracy, the United States would have had a national health care system decades ago. The public has always wanted it. The same is true in foreign policy. Take Iran, the next big issue coming along. Every presidential candidate, including Obama, says we must maintain the threat of force against Iran, keep the options open. It happens to be in violation of the U.N. Charter, but elite opinion takes for granted that the United States should be an outlaw state so nobody comments on that. But this is not what the public wants. The large majority of the public says we should not make threats, we should enter into diplomacy. The large majority, about 75%, of the public, holds that Iran has the same rights as any signer of the non-proliferation treaty: the right to enrich uranium for nuclear power but not for nuclear weapons. And, strikingly, a very large majority of the public thinks we should support a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region, including Iran, Israel, and the American forces deployed there. That happens to be Iranian official policy, too, and, in fact, the United States and England are officially committed to this position, though the facts are unmentionable. When the U.S.-U.K. tried to construct a thin legal cover for their invasion of Iraq, they appealed to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 in 1991, which called on Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction, and they claimed it had not done so. That much was publicized, but not the fact that the same Resolution commits the signers to move to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East (Article 14). But no candidate can even mention this possibility. If the United States were a functioning democracy in which public opinion influenced policy, the very dangerous confrontation with Iran might well be settled peacefully.
Also, consider Cuba. For 45 years the United States has been dedicated to punishing Cubans - we have the internal documents from the Kennedys and so on to show it. We've got to punish the Cuban people because of their "successful defiance" of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The Monroe Doctrine established the United States' right to run the hemisphere. The Cubans are successfully defying that, so the population must be punished by a very substantial war, a terrorist war. This aim wasn't concealed. Arthur Schlesinger, the semi-official biographer of Robert Kennedy and a Kennedy adviser, says that Robert Kennedy was put in charge of bringing "the terrors of the earth" to Cuba. This was his prime responsibility. They were fanatical about it - also about bringing economic strangulation to punish the Cuban population for its misdeed. What does the U.S. public think about this? In polls taken since the 1970s, about two-thirds of the public says we should enter into normal diplomatic relations with Cuba, just as the rest of the world does. But the fanaticism of the establishment includes the whole spectrum here - the Kennedys, the ones who started it, along with others. No political candidate will ever mention it.
The same is true for a host of other issues. So, as I say, the United States should be an organizer's paradise. I think the possibilities for the left are extraordinary, and that's one reason for the clamping down on opinion, on expression of attitudes, and so on. And, in fact, the country has a pretty activist population. There are now probably more people involved in activism on one serious issue or another than in the 1960s. It's just kind of subdued, and atomized. There are many popular movements that never existed in the past. Take, say, the solidarity movements with the third world: that's something totally new in the history of European Imperialism, and it came from mainstream America in the 1980s. Rural churches, evangelicals, people from the mainstream, thousands of people, were going to Central America to live with the victims of Reagan's terrorist wars, to help them, to try to protect them, and so on; and this was thousands or tens of thousands of people. One of my daughters is still there, in Nicaragua. This has never happened before in the history of Imperialism. Nobody from France went to live in an Algerian village to help the people, to protect them from French atrocities. It wasn't even an option that was considered, during the Indochina wars either, apart from a very scattered few. But in the 1980s this developed spontaneously - not in the elite centers, so you didn't find it in Boston, but in rural Kansas and Arizona, and it's now spread all over the world. So you have Christian peace-keepers, and heaven knows who else. Another very important new development is the international global justice movement, which is called, ridiculously, "anti-globalization."
The propaganda says that the so-called anti-globalization movement began in Seattle. It didn't. It began in the third world. When hundreds of thousands of Indian peasants storm the parliament, that's not a fact - only if people do something in a Northern city is it a fact. So the mass popular movements in Brazil and India, and so on, didn't exist until a Northern city became involved. But it did become involved, and the movement has now spread over much of the North as well all over the South.
VN: The "anti-globalization" movement has indeed been a splendid movement. But sometimes there's a feeling that maybe it's stuck and paralyzed. What do you think about the idea of establishing a Fifth International, or some form of organization that could come up with an alternative to the current worldwide system?
NC: I've talked at the meetings of the World Social Forum, which are always in the South, and I've mentioned that this movement may carry the seeds of a real International and, in my view, the first real International. What was called the First International was important, but it was highly localized. It was part of Europe, and it was essentially destroyed by Marx when he couldn't control it. The Second International collapsed before the Second World War. The Third International was taken over as a propaganda institution by the Soviet Union. And the Fourth International was marginal Trotskyite.
But this is the first authentic International, or at least it seems so. I don't mean just the World Social Forum, but, say, the Via Campesina. The last time I went to Puerto Alegre in Brazil, to attend the World Social Forum, the first place I visited was the international meeting of the Via Campesina, the international peasants' organization. It was very lively, very exciting. It represents most of the population of the world, and it was really exciting to be there. The World Social Forum, too. This is authentic globalization. These are people from all over the world, all spheres of life, interacting, discussing, and going back home and trying to implement ideas about social change.
I don't know whether the new International will fail. Perhaps. But its failure would raise the level of action for the next try. So I think it makes sense, what you say. We may see the seeds of the first authentic International, constituted by popular classes from all over, trying to overcome the extraordinary alienation that people everywhere are feeling, in the United States and elsewhere - the feeling that the institutions don't work for us, that they work for someone else. These groups may mobilize and organize, using the freedoms that we do enjoy. That's a very significant prospect.
VN: One thing that is very worrisome is the Americanization of European politics, which I think is happening everywhere. Even the European left has lost its language. For example, even left-wing leaders do not speak about the working class, but about the middle class. Class struggle has completely disappeared from left-wing discourse. So there is a very worrisome development: American political language is now appearing in Europe, coinciding with the enormous weakness of the left.
This Americanization of European political life seems paradoxical, because it is happening at the same time that U.S. influence is declining in the world. Europe is becoming more and more like the United States. Political parties, for example, have lost their potency and value. Rather than political parties, what we see is leaders' media networks. And politics becomes a show, a theatrical show. As you said earlier in our conversation, slogans are presented without any meaning. How do you explain that, at a time when U.S. influence is declining, the cultural and political values of the U.S. establishment are becoming very dominant in Europe?
NC: That's a large topic, but let's just pick a few elements. If you look over a longer historical sweep, Europe was the most savage and brutal region of the world for centuries. Establishing the nation-state system in Europe was a program of mass murder and destruction. In the 17th century, probably 40% of the population of Germany was wiped out by war. In the course of this savagery and brutality, Europe created a culture of savagery and a technology of savagery that enabled it to conquer the world. For example, Britain is a little island off the coast of Europe, but it dominated the world. And the rest of Europe didn't exactly have nice policies. A small country like Belgium was able to kill probably 10 million people in the Congo.
This, of course, was associated with racist arrogance of the most extreme kind. And it finally culminated in two world wars. Since the Second World War, Europe has been at peace, not because Europeans became pacifists, but because there was a realization that the next time they played the traditional game of slaughtering each other they would wipe out the world. They've created such a culture of savagery and technology of destruction that that game is over.
The Second World War was also a sharp shift of global power. The United States had been the most powerful economy in the world for a long time, far stronger than Europe, but it was not a major player in world affairs. It dominated the Western hemisphere and there were forays into the Pacific, but it was second to England and even France.
The Second World War changed all that. The United States profited enormously from the war, and the rest of the world was seriously harmed and destroyed. The war ended the Depression, and industrial production practically quadrupled. The United States ended the war possessing literally half the wealth of the world and with incomparable security and military force, and planners knew it. They planned for global domination in which the exercise of sovereignty by other countries would not be tolerated. The plans were developed and implemented. In Europe, at the end of the war, there was a wave of radical democracy, anti-fascism, the resistance, workers' control - some of which was quite significant — and the first task of the United States and Britain, the conquerors, was to crush it. So in country after country, Japan as well, the first task of the liberators, so-called, was to crush the resistance to fascism and restore the traditional order. Maybe not under the same name, but often under the same leaders. It was a battle that didn't happen overnight. For example, Italy was probably the main target of CIA subversion, at least into the 1970s when the record runs dry, to try to prevent Italian democracy, because this would have meant a big role for the labor movement, which couldn't be tolerated. It gradually sank in: European elites had to accept a position in which the United States would take over their traditional role of running the world by savagery and barbarism, and they would accept part of the gains that would come to the United States from global domination.
It's not that the radical democrats lost entirely in Europe - they did gain a measure of social democracy. In fact, Europeans live better that Americans in many respects: they're healthier, they're taller, they have more leisure. The United States, especially since the 1970s, has about the highest number of work hours in the industrial world, about the lowest wages, the worst benefits, and the worst health outcomes. Even if we just look at height: when an American goes to Europe, the first thing that strikes you is how tall everybody is, and it's literally true. So Europe has had many gains from its subordinate position - let the United States take the lead in destroying, massacring, and so on - and a kind of complacency has set in. There's almost a sigh of relief: after centuries of savagery and barbarism, we'll relax and follow somebody else, let them do it, and we'll just enjoy the benefits from that.
The political classes, the business classes, and so on, don't have any objection to this. What you call Americanization is really the spread of business control. The business classes are quite happy. They're closely integrated. There is some conflict, but they are really closely integrated with the United States.
If you look at the conflict, that is interesting. We supposedly have a free market, or so the ideology says. In fact, we have a state-based economic system. The dynamism of the high-tech economy comes largely from the state sector, places like where we are sitting right now [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], and then it's handed over to private capital to exploit. Sometimes it becomes almost comical. One of the leading exports is civilian aircraft. The civilian aircraft industry is now dominated by two companies, Airbus and Boeing, and they are constantly having battles in the World Trade Organization as to which one gets greater state subsidies. In fact, they are both offshoots of state power. In the United States, commercial aircraft are largely an offshoot of the Air Force and aerospace, and wouldn't exist without it.
In Europe the civilian aircraft industry has massive state subsidies. Recently, great horror was expressed in the United States over the fact that Airbus won a contract to refuel planes for the U.S. Air Force. Take a look at the contract and you'll see it's integrated: a U.S. company working together with Airbus. That's what we call a free market: state-based industries integrated with one another. But for the European business classes and American business classes this is an acceptable arrangement, and since they largely dominate their societies, it's OK. It's what the propaganda and the doctrine say, too. I suspect that, underneath the surface, a class struggle still exists and is understood, and is ready to burst out at any moment. It's true you're not supposed to talk about it. One of my daughters teaches in a state college that has students from relatively poor families whose aspirations are to be a nurse or a policeman, or something like that, for the most part. In her first class she asks them to identify themselves, their class background, give a classifying word. Most of them have never heard this, you're not supposed to use that word. The answers that she gets are "underclass" or "middle class." If your father has job as a janitor somewhere, you're middle class. If your father is in jail, you're underclass. Those are the two classes. That's an ideological trap. The understanding that class has something to do with who gives the orders and who follows them has been driven out of consciousness, at least on the surface. But it is there, right below. As soon as you talk to working-class people, they respond quite promptly because they feel it.
VN: Thank you. I had promised not to take too much of your time. Just one last question, a personal one. A lot of people in the world thank you so much for the work you do, but where do you get your strength? How do you carry on? Here you are, in the center of the Empire, speaking quite clearly to the powerful forces and being silenced, ostracized, marginalized. Meanwhile, all over the world, people admire you, read your work, find it extremely helpful.
NC: I don't feel marginalized in the United States. When I get home tonight I will spend five hours answering e-mail, and probably several dozen letters will be invitations.
VN: I meant marginalized by the power structures.
NC: I don't care about the power structures, that's not where I live. If I wasn't their enemy I'd think something was wrong. That's why I have that picture of the magazine cover [The American Prospect] I described earlier so prominently displayed.
VN: It's the best way to indicate you're doing the right thing.
NC: Yes, that I'm doing the right thing. It's partly that. But what keeps me working is things that are illustrated by some of those photographs over there [pointing]. One shows the worst labor massacre, probably in history. In Chile, a century ago, in Iquique, miners worked the mines under indescribable conditions. They and their families marched about thirty kilometers to the town to ask for a slight increase in wages. The British mine owners welcomed them, showed them into a schoolyard, allowed them to begin their meeting, and then brought in soldiers and machine-gunned them all: men, women, children. Nobody knows how many were killed - you don't count the number of people that we kill - maybe thousands. It was a century before there was any commemoration of this. That [shown in the photograph] is a small monument, which I saw last year; it was put up by young people who are just beginning to break out of the iron grip of the dictatorship. It's not just Pinochet. Chile has a bitter history of state violence and repression. But now they're breaking out. So, yes, the atrocity took place, and now they begin to pay attention to it. That one over there [pointing] is - you know what it is, of course - a painting given to me by a Jesuit priest. On one side, Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated in 1980. In front of him, six leading intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who had their brains blown out in 1989 by U.S.-run terrorist forces who had already compiled a hideous record of massacre of the usual victims. And the Angel of Death, standing over them. That event captures Reagan - not the cheerful uncle. That's the reality of the 1980s. I just put it there to remind myself of the real world. But it's been an interesting "Rorschach" test. Almost no one from the United States knows what it is; because we're responsible for the massacre, we don't know. People from Europe, maybe 10% know what it is. From South America, I'd say, everyone knows what it is. Until recently. By now, young people often don't know because they, too, are having history driven out of their heads. History and reality are too dangerous. On the other hand, they're now coming back. The Iquique commemoration was mostly initiated by young people, rising up, wanting to recover the past, recover idealism, and do something about it. So that's enough, I would say, more than enough, to keep me going.
VN: Thank you. It has been great. You have a standing invitation to come to Barcelona and Catalonia. Thank you on behalf of millions of people.
