Today, nearly 3,000* people died because your President George W. Bush failed to respond swiftly to prevent the 9/11-attacks. Stephen Harper, take-note, Canadians aren't as stupid as Americans. Yes, that isn't saying much, point-taken. We have been under a corporatist-regime since the 2000-elections, with much of our country's direction being guided by unelected-appointees. Dick Cheney is our first CEO-in-Chief, and this should have never been tolerated for even one day by any self-respecting nation. Point-taken. What is corporatism? Imagine non-governmental councils and committees (corporations) legislating things for the rest of us. You don't have to after living-through the last six-years. The roots of this began after corporations were granted the rights of individuals, but corporatism became very real during WWI. The Wilson administration created "interlocking-networks" between government and industry, even predating Mussolini's and Hitler's national socialist structures. Government and business often became 'one'.
This fusion of the state and the business-sector got-worse during WWII and the Cold War, and it is still with us. But there were countervailing forces at the time, and organized-labor cushioned society from the militarization-threat. Today, labor is far-diminished from what it was, even from the early-1970s. One of labor's many mistakes was not fighting interventionist-policies by our government, and not allying-itself with international labor. 9/11 would never have been possible were it not for the State Department's foreign-policies of of the post-war era, but it is virtually assured they will never be what they were before Vietnam, a hopeful development.
The Executive got us into all of this mess long-ago, but there is no 'imperial Presidency' without Congressional-aid. We never saw any major domestic-attacks from foreign-elements until after we built permanent military-bases in Saudi Arabia, this is a fact. Now, we are building no-less than 14 of them in Iraq, but you always need enemies to keep a war-industry oiled. With those bases in-place, we'll attract all the enemies Halliburton and all the other defense contractors will ever need. Every single person that died during 9/11 has turned-a-buck for the people Cheney and Bush serve: the major-shareholders, our faceless-dictatorship.
For most Americans, revelations of Executive abuse-of-power during the last six-years have been a shock. How can we be torturing people? Why is the President doing roving-wiretaps? How pervasive is lobbying in Washington? Why won't Congress rein-them-in? Some stories will never be known, and are lost to history. We can be assured that the paper-shredders are working around-the-clock in Washington today, but you can't hide everything. There will be many more revelations about the Bush administration from the Libby trial, and upcoming lobbying-scandals that continue to unfold.
And so, as with so many of us, five-years-ago, my phone rang one morning. It was my best-friend, and he told me to turn-on my TV, and I did. It still hasn't registered for myself, and many others, what happened that day. Even when my friend told me his sister watched people falling to their deaths screaming across Hudson Bay, it didn't register. One of my High School class-members died in the WTC on 9/11. But not for one-moment did I ever believe the Bush administration had any right to use this event for political-gain. But they have, and it is running-out. When I watched the second plane crash into the second tower, my heart sank, because I knew they were going to rollback our rights. They sure have, and we have a major-fight on our hands. We'll have to fight the Democratic-leadership over retaking-them, too. Russ Feingold was the only senator to vote-against the Patriot Act! For that reason, he might be the only person to vote-for in 2008.
*Nobody seems to agree on the exact-number of fatalities. President George W. Bush keeps stating '3,000', while the AP reports '2,749'. Huffingtonpost headlines with 'Memorials for 2,973'. What's it going to be then?
Breaking-news: Journalist Greg Palast is being charged by the Office of Homeland Security for filming a "critical national security structure" without prior-authorization. The location is an Exxon refinery, next-to a Homeland Security/FEMA-camp where 1,600 displaced victims of Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers are being held against-their-wills. This happened in 1927, also. It's easy to assume that most of the people at the camp are Black, along-with poor whites. Maybe those militia folks were right about FEMA after-all. Scary, isn't it?
09-14-06: Exxon, I mean the government, I mean Exxon has dropped the charges.
www.gregpalast.com
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