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ATTACK IRAQ? doron <doron@computerfinearts.com> Fw: Washington State AFL-CIO Opposes Iraq War & Patriot Act Fred Heutte <phred@sunlightdata.com> MSNBC.com report on bin Laden tape honor <honor@va.com.au> Combative recontextualization Phil Duncan <PDuncan@aggregatestudio.com> The Erosion of the American Dream Oliver Grau <Oliver.Grau@culture.hu-berlin.de> war is approching, Iraq Forum on globevisions "editor - globevisions" <micmol@globevisions.com> NSW police to set up secret protest watch centre Phill Orwell <aquios@roystonvasey.co.uk> Declaration of War John Harford <thefragment@thefragment.com> ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:07:12 -0400 From: doron <doron@computerfinearts.com> Subject: ATTACK IRAQ? No ! Stand up and be heard > http://www.computerfinearts.com/dialoque/attackiraq/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 14:07:52 -0700 From: Fred Heutte <phred@sunlightdata.com> Subject: Fw: Washington State AFL-CIO Opposes Iraq War & Patriot Act Via my friend Wes Brain... Resolution Against the War, Attacks on Civil Liberties and Cuts in Public Services Resolution #6 Adopted by the Washington State Labor Council at its August 19-22, 2002 Convention in Spokane, Washington. WHEREAS, President Bush's ever-expanding "war on terrorism" has been cynically used to justify a $48 billion hike in next year's military budget, bringing it to $383 billion, in addition to the $15 billion bailout of the airline industry and $25 billion in tax refunds for corporate America; and WHEREAS, Congress is forcing union members and other working and poor people to pay for this war drive and subsidize corporate profits by raiding the Social Security Trust Fund and cutting funding for economically distressed states and vital government programs such as subsidies for low income housing and services to the homeless; and WHEREAS, the billions spent on armaments, domestic repression and bailouts could be better used to provide re-training programs and jobs to the 800,000 workers across the nation who lost their jobs after September 11th, and to plug the $50 billion deficit in state and local budgets that has resulted in a major loss of union jobs and cuts in essential socials services such as fully staffed libraries, education, quality public transportation with reliable access services to the disabled, providing clean water and air, healthcare and treatment for the mentally ill; and WHEREAS, in the aftermath of September 11th over 1,000 immigrants were imprisoned in detention centers, thousands of airport workers (many of them immigrants of color) were fired simply because they were not citizens, and Muslims, people of Middle Eastern descent and other immigrants suffered increased violence sparked by racial profiling by the INS and FBI; and WHEREAS, the federal "USA PATRIOT" anti-terrorism act and similar state measures undermine labor's right to organize and fight anti-immigrant attacks and other union-busting tactics by expanding the government's ability to detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, to conduct telephone and internet surveillance and secret searches, and to define people engaged in political protest as "domestic terrorists;" and WHEREAS, the national AFL-CIO's uncritical support for this profit-driven war has derailed labor opposition to increased military expenditures, corporate subsidies and government spying and provided political cover for Democrats to jump on the anti-terrorism bandwagon; WHEREAS, the AFL-CIO's support for the war has led to the callous withholding of solidarity from labor's working class and poor allies in other countries who are suffering and dying as a result of this conflict; therefore, be it RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council expand its efforts to defend civil liberties by taking the following actions and urging the AFL-CIO to do the same: - ---Campaign for the repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act and defeat of similar "anti-terrorism" measures in state legislatures; - ---Pressure local and state law enforcement to refuse to cooperate with FBI spying on political, union, and anti-globalism activists or comply with INS harassment of Arabs and other immigrants and people of color in the U.S.; - ---Demand the immediate release of the hundreds of Middle Eastern, Arab and other immigrants who are still being detained without due process and/or legal justification; and be it finally RESOLVED that the Washington State Labor Council urge the AFL-CIO and its affiliates to oppose the U.S. government's open-ended "war on terrorism" and participate in rallies, marches and other activities to pressure President Bush and Congress to stop the war and redirect money from corporate handouts and the military budget to assist laid-off workers, restore and expand public services, and promote global justice by providing humanitarian and economic aid--administered by unions--to our brothers and sisters in other countries. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 13:14:00 +0000 From: honor <honor@va.com.au> Subject: MSNBC.com report on bin Laden tape hi all, thought some nettimers may find this interesting. best honor from: "jOhn pace" <earthplod@hotmail.com> to: fibreculture@lists.myspinach.org ><http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15176>http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15176 > ><snip> > >Powell used the existence of this tape, and the words he claimed bin Laden >had said on it, to further tie Saddam Hussein to international terrorism. >He claimed bin Laden was clearly establishing a connection between himself >and Hussein on the tape, beyond all question. "This nexus between >terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction," >said Powell, "can no longer be looked away from and ignored." > >The actual tape, played and translated live on every major cable news >channel, told a very different story. Osama bin Laden swore vengeance >against America if Iraq was attacked, and demanded that the Muslim world >stand in solidarity with the Muslim people of Iraq. In very clear words, >Osama bin Laden told the people of Iraq to rise up against both American >aggression and against "socialist" Saddam Hussein. If the translations >that were provided were reliable, there is no ambiguity in bin Laden's >words on the matter. So much, it seems, for Powell's case that Hussein and >bin Laden are working together. > >And this is where it gets interesting. > >An MSNBC.com report on the bin Laden tape carried the following sentence: >"At the same time, the message also called on Iraqis to rise up and oust >Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who is a secular leader." This clearly >confirms the clarity of mind Osama bin Laden displayed in regard to Saddam >Hussein, and conforms to the recorded message heard by millions and >millions of people around the world. > >Less than twenty minutes after this report appeared on MSNBC, that >sentence was deleted from the report. A few intrepid Internet news >junkies, including myself, preserved what is called a 'screen-grab' of the >original article before it was scrubbed. The version of the article >currently in existence has replaced the text above with this far more >benign text: "The taped statement reflected Saddam, a secular leader, but >made it clear that Saddam was not the immediate target." A similar story >line, bereft of the portions describing bin Laden's wish that Hussein be >killed, has appeared in virtually every mainstream news media report on >the matter. > >The manner in which this story unfolded brings forth a number of serious >questions. > >First of all, questions must be asked regarding Colin Powell's motives in >this. The recording heard by the world diverged significantly from the >spin Powell put on it before the Budget Committee. Osama bin Laden did not >state an alliance with Saddam Hussein, but with the Muslim civilians in >Iraq who will bear the bloody brunt of any American attack. In fact, bin >Laden told the Iraqi people to rise up against Hussein. This is not the >way allies deal with each other. > >Why would Powell go to such lengths to stretch the glaringly obvious truth >in this matter? He is already suffering from a deficit of credibility in >the aftermath of the plagiarism scandal that is currently rocking Tony >Blair's administration. Powell stood before the UN last week and praised a >British intelligence dossier that contained cut-and-pasted pages and pages >of an essay, with all spelling and grammatical errors intact, written by a >postgraduate student from California. The data was years out of date, >flat-out contradictory in several key areas, used without the student's >awareness, and yet was offered as an up-to-the-minute assessment of Iraqi >weapons capabilities. > >This, in combination with Powell's obviously skewed interpretation of >Tuesday's bin Laden recording, forces us to call into question every >single word he and the Bush administration have said on the matter. The >question of whether Saddam Hussein has ties to al Qaeda terrorism and >Osama bin Laden can be put to bed now, it seems, alongside the tatters and >shreds of honor and dignity formerly enjoyed by the Secretary of State. > >More ominously, why would a news network like MSNBC so obviously haul >water for the failed allegations of the Bush administration? Events happen >in seconds on the internet, but merely scrubbing uncomfortable sentences >from articles cannot stop the tens of thousands of readers who are wise >enough now to save the evidence before it evaporates in a cloud of silicon. > >These deletions display a manifest breach of faith on behalf of MSNBC, and >call to mind issues surrounding the conflict of interest that are inherent >in the ownership of this network. MSNBC, along with NBC and CNBC, are >owned by the corporate giant General Electric. GE is one of the largest >defense contractors on the face of the earth, and will, bluntly, be paid a >king's ransom in the event of a war. Following this line of questioning >leads to some dark corners, indeed. How often is the data being >manipulated by the corporate-owned media? Are we to rely solely on the >nimble fingers of keyboarded citizens to get to the heart of the matter? > >A report appearing later on Tuesday on MSNBC.com served to refute the >claims of collusion between bin Laden and Hussein. "Although Powell sought >to characterize the tape as a concrete link between al-Qaida and the Iraqi >government," the MSNBC.com report read, "White House officials >acknowledged later to NBC News that it did not. Powell did not know it had >not been broadcast when he spoke to the committee and was 'a little on the >front of his skis,' a government source said." These lines were buried >deep within the report. > >By Wednesday morning, this text had been completely removed from the article. > ><snip> > >William Rivers Pitt is the author of two books – "War On Iraq" (with Scott >Ritter), and "The Greatest Sedition is Silence," available in May 2003 >from Pluto Press. He teaches high school in Boston, Mass. > >Scott Lowery contributed research to this report. _______________.play <honor@va.com.au> <http://www.radioqualia.net> +44 (0)20 76841859 _______________.work <honor.harger@tate.org.uk> <http://www.tate.org.uk/audiovideo/> ph: +44 (0)20 74015066 "perhaps attention acts on information the same way gravity acts on mass: attraction begets attraction and a positive feedback loop is formed" http://electricsheep.org/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 15:45:36 -0800 From: Phil Duncan <PDuncan@aggregatestudio.com> Subject: Combative recontextualization The following is from: http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YDL4XZ1WDJ3ZECRBAEZSFEY?type=worldNews&storyID=2294634 A senior defense official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, also said foreigners who have arrived in Baghdad to volunteer as "human shields" at key Iraqi sites may be considered war combatants rather than innocent civilians. ... Foreign "volunteers," including some from Europe who drove from London, arrived in Baghdad this month and have begun to take their places at Iraqi installations to serve as human shields in the hope of warding off attacks. The senior defense official said, "I'm not a legal expert, but you certainly could argue that since they're working in the service of the Iraqi government, they may in fact have crossed the line between combatant and noncombatant." - -end quote- It seems the US senior leadership is facing up to the challenge posed by the international peaceful protesters, offering the war mongering corporate coalition an opportunity to think twice about bombing the shit out Baghdad, in typical form. By declaring humanitarian efforts "combatant," the US Hawks have posited any kind of relief aid as "enemy" and therefore fair game as cannon fodder. What's next? Does this precedent mean that the Red Cross and Crescent are also fair targets? Why is it not surprising that this tactic comes out of the same end of the machine that also accuses the Iraqi administration of, "violation of the fundamental principle that civilians and civilian objects must be protected in wartime." Perhaps it is true that we despise in others those things about which we hold ourselves in contempt... - -pause rant- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 16:48:55 +0100 From: Oliver Grau <Oliver.Grau@culture.hu-berlin.de> Subject: The Erosion of the American Dream The Erosion of the American Dream It's Time to Take Action Against Our Wars on the Rest of the World by GORE VIDAL http://www.counterpunch.org/vidal03142003.html This is a transcript of Gore Vidals's March 12 interview on Dateline, SBS TV Australia. MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, welcome to Dateline. GORE VIDAL: Happy to have crossed the dateline down under. MARK DAVIS: In the past few years, you have shifted from being a novelist to principally an essayist or, in your own words 'a pamphleteer'. It's almost the reverse of most writers' careers. Why the shift for you? GORE VIDAL: Why the shift in the United States of America, which has obliged me --since I've spent most of my life marinated in the history of my country and I'm so alarmed by what is happening with our global empire, and our wars against the rest of the world, it is time for me to take political action. And I think anybody who has the position, has a platform, must do so. It's also a family tradition. My grandfather lost his seat in the Senate because he opposed going into the First World War. And he won it back 10 years later on exactly the same set of speeches that he'd lost it. So, attitudes change, attitudes can be changed but, now, I am not terribly optimistic that there is much anyone can do now the machine is set to go. And, to have a major depression going on, economic, really, collapse all round the world and begin a war against an enemy that has done nothing against us other than what our media occasionally alleges, this is lunacy. And I have a hunch - --I've been getting quite a bit around the country --most people are beginning to sense it. The poll numbers are not as good as the Bush regime would have us believe. A great...something like 70% really only wants to go into war with United Nations sanction and a new resolution. I would prefer, however, that we use our constitution, which we often ignore, which is - --Article 1 Section 8 says, "Only the Congress may declare war. The President has no right to go to war and he is Commander-in-Chief once it starts." MARK DAVIS: Over the past 40 years or so, you've written about the undermining of the foundations of the constitution --liberty, human rights, free speech. Indeed, you've probably damned every administration throughout that period on that score. Is George Bush really any worse? GORE VIDAL: No, he certainly is worse. We've never had a kind of reckless one who may believe --and there's a whole theory now that he's inspired by love of Our Lord --that he is an apocalyptic Christian who'll be going to Heaven while the rest of us go to blazes. I hope that isn't the case. I hope that's exaggeration. No. We've had...the problem began when we got the empire, which was brilliantly done, in the most Machiavellian --and I mean that in the best sense of the word --way by Franklin Roosevelt. With the winning of World War II, we were everywhere on Earth our troops and our economy was number one. Europe was ruined. And from that, then in 1950, the great problem began when Harry Truman decided to militarise the economy, maintain a vast military establishment in every corner of the Earth. Meanwhile, denying money to schools but really to the infrastructure of the nation. So we have been at war steadily since 1950. I did a...one of my little pamphlets was 'A Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace' --how that worked. I mean, we've gone everywhere --we have the Enemy of the Month Club. One month, it's Noriega --king of drugs. Another one, it's Gaddafi. We hated his eyeliner or something and killed his daughter. We moved from one enemy to another and the press, the media, has never been more disgusting. I don't know why, but there are very few voices that are speaking out publicly. The censorship here is so tight in all of the newspapers and particularly in network television. So nobody's getting the facts. I mean, I spend part of the year in Italy and really, basically, what I find out I find out from European journalists who actually will go to Iraq, which our people cannot do or will not do, and are certainly not admired for doing so. We are in a kind of bubble of ignorance about what is really going on. MARK DAVIS: Well, is the pamphlet the only viable option for voices of dissent at the moment? GORE VIDAL: Well, it's a weapon. I suppose one could --Khomeini had a wonderful idea, which made him the lord of all Iran. When the Shah was on his way out, Khomeini flooded Iran with audio recordings of his voice, very cheaply made in Paris, and they were listened to by everybody in Iran --it's too late for that sort of thing for us. There are ways of getting around official media and there are ways of getting around a government which is given to lying about everything, and the people eventually pick up on it, but things are moving so swiftly now. MARK DAVIS: You charge what you call the 'Cheney-Bush junta' with empire-building but hasn't America always been an empire and isn't this junta just a little bit more honest about it? They aren't shy in proclaiming their belief that America has something worth exporting? GORE VIDAL: I prefer hypocrisy to honesty any time if hypocrisy will keep the peace. No, we have had an imperial streak from the very beginning, but it didn't get going until 1898, when we picked a war with Spain because we had our eye on Spanish colonial possessions, specifically the Philippines, which got us into your part of the world --into Asia and, from that moment on, we really were a global empire. And then, by the time of the Second World War, we'd achieved it. It was all ours. No, what is going on now is kind of interesting. We've never seen anything like it. There's a group of what they call neo-conservatives --most of them were old Stalinists and then they were Trotskyites and then, finally, they are neo-conservatives now. They preach openly and they're all over the war department as we used to call it, the Defence Department. Mr Wolfowitz is one of their brains and they write really extraordinarily frightening overviews of the United States and the rest of the world that we, after all, have all the military power that there is and let's use it. Let's take the Earth. It's there for us. They're talking glibly now about after they get rid of Saddam --which they think is going to be a very easy thing to do --well, Iran is next. One of them, not long ago, made a public statement --"It's time we really had regime change in ALL the Arab countries." Well, there are 1 billion Muslims and I don't see them taking this very well, and if a smallish place like wherever it was ultimately can produce so many suicide bombers, 1 billion Muslims can take out the whole United States or western Europe. I would always opt for peace, as war is always a mess. But I was in a war which the junta, Mr Bush and Mr Cheney, did everything possible to avoid being involved in --Vietnam. Cheney when asked, as he became vice--president, they said, "Well, why didn't you serve your country at the time of Vietnam?" and he said, "Well, I had other priorities." I'll say he did. Those of us who...we are the one group, the World War II veterans, we are a shrinking group obviously, but we are the ones that are the most solidly against the war. The people who stayed out of Vietnam, the rest who have never known war, are just gung--ho for other people to go fight. They, themselves, don't do it. But there is a split here between those who've had a bit of experience of the world and of war and the others who are mostly interested, certainly the junta, as I call them, in Washington, they're all in the gas and oil business. People ask me, "Are you saying there's a conspiracy?" - --because that's the word where everybody starts laughing. It means you believe in flying saucers. "No," I said, "I'm going to change the world." We won't say it's a conspiracy that all the great offices of state are occupied by gas and oil people --the President, the Vice-President, National Security Adviser --it's not a coincidence. "It's a coincidence," and everybody smiles - --that's a nice word --"Oh, yes, of course, it's a coincidence" that they are running the government and getting us into a war in oil-rich places." MARK DAVIS: Well, Bush has claimed that the American belief in liberty will deliver a free and peaceful Iraq, even with the stench of oil in the air, George Bush probably can deliver that --a free and peaceful Iraq that is. Isn't there a legitimate case to be argued that there's a greater good at work here? GORE VIDAL: There is no greater good at work. We cannot deliver it. Only the Iraqis can deliver that. You don't go in and smash up a country, which we will do, and gain their love so that they then want to imitate our highly corrupt political system and, on the subject of democracy --I happen to be something of a student of the American constitution --it was set up in order to avoid majority rule. The two things the founding fathers hated were majoritarian rule and monarchy. So they devised a republic in which only a very few white men of property could vote. Then, to make sure that we never had any democracy at work at the highest levels of governance, they created something called the electoral college, which can break any change that might upset them. We saw what happened in November 2000, when Albert Gore won the popular vote by 600,000, he actually won the electoral vote of Florida, but a lot of dismal things happened and denied him the election. So that's what happened there. So for us to talk about a democracy that we are going to translate into other lands is the height of hypocrisy and is simply foolish. We don't invent governments for other people. MARK DAVIS: The American virtues of individual liberties, although viewed by many people with some cynicism, are still meaningful to people around the world. It's interesting to note the support that America is getting from the former eastern bloc European nations --Rumsfeld's "new Europe". The American message still resonates with them, doesn't it? GORE VIDAL: They're not clued in to what sort of country the United States is. They've certainly found out what kind of country the Soviet Union was and they didn't like that one bit and they associate us with their relative liberation. That's all. What we're really about they don't know. They believe the propaganda. They believe the media, which is constantly going on about democracy and freedom and liberty and the greatest country on earth and so on and the only thing wrong in the world is there are EVIL people who hate us because we are SO good. Well, I don't know how anybody can buy this line, but people do. People are not very well informed. The well-informed countries --western Europe --know perfectly well what our game is. General de Gaulle took France out of NATO because he suspected that we were in the empire--building business, and he didn't want to go along with it yet, simultaneously, France remained an ally in case there was a major war with the Soviets. I don't think we should take too seriously those eastern European countries. In due course, they will wake up, as Turkey did, that we are dangerous. MARK DAVIS: Well, unlike Iraq, indeed any members of the 'axis of evil', Americans can change their government with some drawbacks, they can express their opinions. On the eve of a war, whatever Machiavellian benefits might accrue to the US, isn't there still moral weight in the voice of America, given its history as a democratic force over the past century? GORE VIDAL: I spoke to 100,000 people two weeks ago in Hollywood Boulevard, down the hill from where I'm speaking to you now. There were 100,000, lots of police, many helicopters overhead which, as the speaker got up, would lower themselves to try and drown your voice out. The press did not record that there were 100,000 people. They said, "Oh, 30,000 perhaps. That might be an exaggeration," they said. Unfortunately for them, the 'Los Angeles Times', generally a fairly good paper, had a long shot from La Brea where I was speaking on a stage straight up to Vine Street, which was a mile or two away, and you saw 100,000 people, so their very picture undid them. What I'm saying is the censorship is very tight. Don't think we're a free country to say anything we want. We can say it, but it's not going to be printed and you're not going to get on television. One of our great voices for some time now for peace in the world is Noam Chomsky. I've never seen his name in the 'New York Times' in any context other than linguistics of which he's a professor at MIT. We go totally unnoticed. I can do a pamphlet and it's the Internet that gets it to people. So I can sell a couple of hundred thousand copies of a pamphlet. No word of it will appear in the 'New York Times'. To my amazement this time, they actually put it on their bestseller list. Generally, they won't do that. I can't tell you how tightly controlled this place is and it's beginning to show, because talk radio and so on --I've done a lot of that lately --the questions you get, the people are so confused. They don't know where Iraq is. They think Saddam Hussein, because he's an evil person, deliberately blew up the twin towers in Manhattan. He didn't. That was Osama bin Laden or somebody else. We still don't know because there has been no investigation of that, as Congress and the constitution require. So we are totally in the dark and we have a president who is even in a greater darkness, who's totally uninformed about the world, leading us into war because, because because. MARK DAVIS: Well, the defence of American civil liberties has been a consistent theme of yours, most vocally in recent months, in response to the Patriot Act and the new Homeland Defence Agency. But it would seem that Americans don't share your views in any significant numbers. Why not? GORE VIDAL: They do. What I do is quite popular. Now, mind you, we're not much of a reading country, but we certainly watch a lot of television. You can pick up a tremendous audience across --you know, millions of people have been marching. If you read the American press... MARK DAVIS: And yet there's been very little political response to the establishment of those agencies or the very dramatic constitutional changes that have been made in the Patriot Act. We're not really hearing a strong movement, not from the Democrats, not in the media. There is a certain acquiescence. GORE VIDAL: Well, we don't hear it because they're part of it. You know, we have elections --very expensive ones and very corrupt ones. But we don't have politics. We made a trade-off somewhere. This was after Harry Truman established the national security state, and suddenly television came along and elections cost billions. It cost $3 billion to elect Bush. That's a lot of money. And it was a campaign almost without issues except personalities. Nothing was talked about. Nothing was talked about going to war as quickly as possible, which of course obviously was in his mind. So you have a country that is not political, without political parties. There are movements of people, which go largely unrecorded. There are eloquent voices out there, but you don't see them in print, you don't hear them on the air. MARK DAVIS: Well, one of those voices is one of your contemporaries, Norman Mailer. He wrote recently that, after a long life, he's concluded that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state and that America as a nation is in a pre-fascist era, a mega banana republic increasingly dominated by the military. Is it a view that you share? GORE VIDAL: I have those days, yes, such as Norman is having. But I am more deeply rooted in the old constitution with all of its flaws and in the Bill of Rights with all of its virtues. That was something special on Earth and Jefferson was something special on Earth when he said that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness --nobody had ever used that phrase in the constitution before or set that out as a political goal for everyone. So, out of that came the energies of the United States to have made it the number one country in the world and the most inventive and the most creative, and then the Devil entered Eden and we ended up with an Asiatic empire, and a European empire, and a South American dependency and we are not what we were. The people get no education. I call it 'the United States of Amnesia'. I've written now is it 12 books I think, doing American history from the Revolution up to the Millennium. They're very popular because they don't get it in school and they don't get it from the media. So people do read my books. But there should be more by other people too. It is a terrible thing to lose your past, particularly when you had such an interesting one, as we did. In the 18th century, we had three of the great geniuses of the 18th century all living in this little colonial world of 3 million people. We had Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. These were extraordinarily wise men and understood the ways of the world, and they gave us a very good form of government. No, it was not a liberal government. It was a very reactionary one. But it was the 18th century --1787 was when the constitution was written. It was as advanced as the human race had ever got at that time in devising a republic. To have lost that and to have lost all memory of it --we've been having a big argument about we've got "In God we trust" on the money. Well this is over the dead bodies of Thomas Jefferson and the other founders, most of whom did not believe in God and wanted to keep Church and State separate. Every American seems to think, "In God we trust" was put on the money by George Washington. Well, it was put on there by Dwight Eisenhower in trying to get some southern votes, Baptist preachers. MARK DAVIS: Well, you're one of America's harshest cultural and political critics and yet you write and clearly talk very romantically about the republic. You've documented those ebbs and flows where you believe it's verged from its founding principles. In the broader sweep, what is the state of America today? GORE VIDAL: Adrift, but adrift toward war, and it's a war that we can't win. I suppose we can blow up Baghdad but I think, when that starts, if that happens, we can count on retaliation from 1 billion Muslims and who knows what other? We are opening up --I don't know, a Pandora's box --it's as if we're opening a tomb and God knows what will come out of it. This is dangerous country. This isn't just ordinary colonial aggression --a European power that wants to take over Panama, something like that. This isn't it at all. First of all, they're proudly talking about a cultural and religious clash between Christianity and Devil's work. Well, that's very dangerous and very stupid. And I don't know how you win that one. MARK DAVIS: Well, there are definite echoes of the 1950s in America today. Some of the loudest critics of that shift are also products of that era - --yourself, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller. Where are the young Vidals, the young Mailers, the young Millers? GORE VIDAL: One of the things that happened, although we don't have much of an educational system for the general public --the writers of the Second War, all except a few like the three that you've just named went into the universities to teach. Eisenhower in a rather great speech when he left office --he warned against the military industrial complex, which he said was taking over too much of this nation's money and life. A part of it that is never quoted --he said, in effect, that "The universities and learning will be hurt the most because, because when places of learning and knowledge, investigation are dependent upon government bounty, subsidies, for their very lives --which we were doing, we were giving everything to the science department to develop weapons, well that also went for the humanities, the history department too, the English department. We have a whole generation of school teachers and they're not very good school teachers. Some of them are very talented writers, but they're quiet. They don't want to rock the boat. They want to keep their jobs. They saw in the '50s --what happened if you got associated with radical movements. You lost your job and they weren't easy to find. Now, they're quiet as could be. MARK DAVIS: Is the '50s back, or are the 1950s back with us? GORE VIDAL: Well, nothing repeats itself except human folly, so no. I do feel an energy across the country --this may be because I go to energetic groups --that are fighting their own government, but they're going to lose because the government is now totally militarised and ready for war --a war they can't really sell to the rest of the world, but they're going to do it anyway. This is something new. We've never had a period like this and it was - --to somebody like me, who is really hooked into constitutional America - --this is incredible. We cannot trust the Supreme Court after their mysterious decisions on the election of 2000. We have no political parties. We've never had much of them --I mean the Democrats, the Republicans. We have one party --we have the party of essentially corporate America. It has two right wings, one called Democratic, one called Republican. So in the absence of politics, with a media that is easy to manipulate and, in the hands of very few people with interests in wars and oil and so on, I don't see how you get the word out, but one tries because there is nothing else to be done. MARK DAVIS: Gore Vidal, thanks for joining us on Dateline. GORE VIDAL: Thank you. Gore Vidal is the author of two excellent pamphlets on 9/11 and Bush's wars: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and, most recently, Dreaming War - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 16:25:06 -0500 From: "editor - globevisions" <micmol@globevisions.com> Subject: war is approching, Iraq Forum on globevisions issue 4.3 war is approching fast, do you have a personal point of view on the matter you want to share or simply say out loud? please, be our guest, the Irak Forum, in the Smiling People of Iraq page, is open to everybody more pictures and more stories: Semana Santa, the celebrations for the Holy Week in Andalucia, Spain, by Paco Feria enjoy Michele Molinari Iraq Forum: http://www.globevisions.com/english/iraq/iraq.htm Semana Santa: http://www.globevisions.com/english/semana_santa/semana_santa.htm - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.globevisions.com A glance of the planet and a broader perspective. Uno sguardo sul mondo per una visione piu' ricca. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- do you want to be removed from globevisions' mailing list? send us an email remove - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 23:02:31 -0800 (PST) From: Phill Orwell <aquios@roystonvasey.co.uk> Subject: NSW police to set up secret protest watch centre hmmm... this cant be good - ------------------ NSW POLICE SET UP PROTEST WATCH CENTRE New South Wales police have set up a 24-hour centre to monitor anti-war activity across the state. The centre, to be based somewhere in Sydney's CBD, will also focus on public places where there are large gatherings of people. Acting New South Wales police commissioner Andrew Scipione refuses to say how many police resources will be put towards it but does say it will be open for the duration of the war. "We'll make a decision based on what we see unfolding in the coming weeks and months," he said. Following the Prime Minister's commitment of troops yesterday, the Federal Government said Australia's security alert level would remain unchanged, but Mr Scipione says police have decided that arrangements in New South Wales need to be strengthened. "The operations centre will co-ordinate all of our anti-war demonstrations and we'll monitor them from that location and we'll ensure we're there and standing by ready to deal with any issue that might arise at any time during the day or night." New South Wales Police Minister Michael Costa will meet senior police today to discuss how to best protect potential targets. "We do have experience based on the history of potential attacks on mosques and synagogues, we had that the last time there was a conflict," he said. "Every time there is some heightened tension in the region we do put our police on alert to ensure there are some sorts of patrols around those sorts of institutions." But anti-war protesters say they are very concerned their activities are set to be monitored. Bruce Childs from the Walk Against War Coalition says it appears to be a change of heart by police and could lead to demonstrations being treated the same way as terrorist threats. "We've had an excellent relationship with the senior traffic police," he said. "I've attended meetings of all the public departments, the state government departments presided over by the Premier's Department's officer and they've all been very positive discussions so I'd be very worried about any over-reaction of state police in this security area." - ------------------ to see the original article go to the ABC web site: http://www.abc.net.au/news/justin/nat/newsnat-19mar2003-24.htm _____________________________________________________________ Get your Royston Vasey email address ---> http://www.roystonvasey.co.uk/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 11:23:16 -0500 From: John Harford <thefragment@thefragment.com> Subject: Declaration of War See you at the detention center. Declaration of War: http://www.thefragment.com - --oOo-- thefragment@thefragment.com http://www.thefragment.com/ - visual/multimedia http://www.eccentre.net/ - sound art "Surrealism, as I envisage it, asserts our absolute nonconformism so clearly that there can be no question of claiming it as witless when the real world comes up for trial." - Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net