Fenian Notes

By our Washington correspondent

WE all want the United States to be the ideal that it was constructed to be, but because of its all too often human element cannot mirror that ideal.

The United States gives hope to the hopeless with every societal group vying to place its version of the ideal front and centre. We all hope, therefore, to realise our
particular portion while not infringing on the portions of others.

If the government of the day does not debilitate basic rights then the whole will honour its parts. Under the terror scare being fomented by the Bush Regime, the whole is determining what the parts may have which curtails the basic premise of a free society.

You will hear all too often that the US has more freedoms than other countries and this is true, however the freedoms are shrinking whereby freedoms are controlled and doled out as the government see fit. Rights are by permission now, not the inherent way it was meant to be.

Fear is a terrible thing and playing on the fears of the average American has been a Bush staple since September 11, 2001. By utilizing fear, Mr bush is able to carry on questionable tactics, possibly illegal tactics, without the general population in an uproar. People have been frightened into giving up freedoms for security.

It is in effect a protection racket that is usually the venue of organised crime. The reader is well aware of the Bush war on civil liberties. All aspects of American society are now infected by the outgrowth of the policy of George W Bush.

During his State of the Union address, Mr Bush slipped another one by his gullible audience. He has called for a National Volunteer Corps. He is calling this effort the USA Freedom Corps. The name sounds patriotic, however the name is deceptive.

A Volunteer Corps suggest a group of people helping people and this certainly sounds upbeat. What is it that is the true agenda of this mission?

The mission or hidden agenda of George Bush is that his volunteers will be a massive domestic spy agency. Again, we must return to the 1950s and the Red Scare that had rightwing anti-communist fanatics declaring scores of people communist because of views opposing theirs.

It was a time of fear where spying on one’s neighbours, church congregants, fellow-workers and just about anyone else, including strangers, was encouraged.

This is what George Bush’s Volunteer movement is all about. Informers are now to be considered patriots under the present scenario. Americans are being asked to monitor other Americans as an act of patriotism endorsed by Mr Bush.
 

INTERNAL SPY SYSTEM

George Bush has stated to the nations of the world that you are with Us or Them. Now, he has applied the same to the citizens of the United States.

If you support the policies of the Bush regime, legal or illegal, or as yet to be determined, you are us. But if you offer any constructive criticism or dissent, you are in effect a traitor for giving comfort to the enemy.

This is the line of Attorney General John Ashcroft to the US Congress. This sounds like a line out of Nazi Germany or the old Soviet Union. Like those totalitarian regimes, covert methods and secrecy abound.

Today silence has descended over all of Washington where civil servants are under threat of dismissal for speaking in any way on matters considered sensitive at the moment. From four-star generals to lowly webmasters, the town is in an information lockdown.

According to The Nation magazine, never in the nation’s history has the flow of information from Government to Press and Public been shut off so comprehensively and quickly as in the weeks following September 11.

Much of the shutdown seems to have little to do with preventing future terror attacks and all to do with the Bush Administration’s ironclad centralised control of the publics right to know.

The US is holding hundreds of people presently whose names the FBI refuses to make public. The FBI is frustrated at the lack of progress in their interrogations of the detainees.

The Washington Post reported they are considering using Sodium Pentothal or turning the suspects over to countries that use beatings and torture. How about the Brits?

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted to allow the public access to government records. An October 12 memo from Attorney General john Ashcroft reversed longstanding FOIA policy.

Since 1993 US agencies were ordered to disclose any government information upon request unless it was reasonably foreseeable that disclosure could cause harm to someone. Mr Ashcroft reversed this policy.

Ashcroft now wants agencies to withhold any and all information the law permits to be withheld. The Bush Administration has embarked on a conspiracy of secrecy.

They are exploiting the current circumstances to turn the FOIA into an Official Secrets Act. One by one, Federal agencies are removing public information from their websites and deny legitimate requests for information.

More than any of its recent  predecessors this administration has an obsession for secrecy. So much secrecy strongly suggests a cover up and this is all too obvious. George Bush is an affable Richard Nixon.

The Bush White House has steadfastly refused to tell the US Congress about contacts last year between corporate executives and a task force to develop energy policy supervised by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Last week, the General Accounting Office (GAO), the investigative agency of congress, announced it would sue the White House to gain the information, the first time it has ever filed such a suit.

This is not the first example of the Bushies keeping material from becoming public. We know of the policy to try terrorists in secret military tribunals and the governments refusal to reveal the identities or nationalities of the Taliban and Al Queda fighters held at Guantanimo Bay, Cuba or the names and locations of hundreds of immigrants imprisoned in the US because the authorities insist they might be able to assist in the war on terrorism.

The only way these dedicated people will talk is by coercion and torture. Slowly, the use of these tactics is being manifest. The Bush insistence on secrecy goes far beyond September 11, 2001. The Administration has a knee-jerk reflex; secrecy boding ominous details.

The Government is even stonewalling Congress concerning results of a survey taken after the 2000 census to calculate how many people were missed or double counted by the census takers which has no bearing on national security. However, it has great bearing on redistricting and eventual political control.
 

BUSH SECRECY ORDER

Bush has ordered that former presidents, their families and their former vice-presidents have the right to prevent the release of their official papers.

Brett M Kavanaugh, the White House staffer who drafted the Bush secrecy order, formerly worked for Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who persecuted President Bill Clinton.

Then, Kavanaugh argued that Clinton had no right to retain documents, no executive privilege and had to yield to every demand made by the office of independent counsel.

George Bush has characterised his administration as a continuation of that of Ronald Reagan. In order to envoke positivism, he cannot allow the public access to Reagan’s records.

Ronald Reagan and other presidents have done questionable if not illegal things, so there is an interest in suppressing revelation.

Among other things in the Reagan file are his Nicaragua/Contra program that approved illegal arms shipments and the murder of many people.

Also, there is the Reagan-Thatcher correspondence which will show his total support for her cruel campaign against Irish Republicans in Ireland and the US.

It also contains her request to destroy the career of the same Republicans best friend in Congress, Mario Biaggi. To his utter disgrace and shame it contains Reagans unqualified support of her dealings with the Irish hunger strike martyrs of 1981.

Documents concerning the White House involvement in the Enron scandal especially that of Vice President Cheney must contain inflammatory evidence the way the Bush people are stonewalling Congress over the release. Enron gave millions to the Bush campaigns and received favours. Some people call this bribery.

Along with secrecy, we have a campaign of total monitoring of political and everyday activity of US citizens and residents. We are aware of Mr Bush’s call for all citizens to be volunteers and report any activity, no matter how slight or insignificant that they might observe. This includes speech, assembly, movement and writings. This is a very threatening policy and impairs basic freedom.

The charter of the Central Intelligence Agency expressly denies the snoopers the right to any domestic police power. This has been changed as of September 11, 2001.

Congress has given the CIA new legal powers to spy on people in the United States – not limited to investigating groups like Al Qaeda. Any individual or group may be spied upon by the CIA.

Americans used to be the great unwatched, free people conducting their private lives; now they are under close surveillance by hundreds of hidden cameras. Is this the kind of world we want?

The promise is greater safety and the trade-off is total control of by the government of individual lives; this according to columnist, William Safire.

The next proposed monitor is a long-range microphone that will be allowed to pick up voice vibrations on window panes. This is now an alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here now, financed by $20 Billion last year and $35 Billion dollars this year in Federal money.

The showcase for the new total monitoring will be the nation’s capital, Washington DC. The Governments eyes will be everywhere. Every car and pedestrian on the streets of Washington will be recorded.

After the system is in full service, every move you make in public and many in private will be watched. Toilets? You bet on it.

The Government owes it to the people to tell them what rights they have considering all the changes since September 11.

They must define suspicious activity, not leave it to the average citizen to discern. What are the standards? What are the parameters?

Right now, there is no freedom in the broad or narrow sense of the word. All freedom is controlled and  parcelled out, which is certainly the anti-freedom and freezing out dissenting politics.

George Bush is trading off the deaths of people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon for his own political career. He was an imbecile before September 11 and he is the same now.

The war of Al Qaeda may be justified, but his war on the civil liberties of Americans and aliens alike is a raving disgrace. Al Qaeda set out to destroy the fabric of America and George Bush has given them their victory.
 

-- Peadar Mac Fhínín
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