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http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen07042003.html
July 4, 2003
A Sad Independence Day
Little to Celebrate in a Country Gone Mad
By WAYNE MADSEN
Amid the fireworks, parades, Wal Mart sales, professional sporting events, and other commercialized and phony tributes to what was once a holiday celebrated not only across America but around the world, Americans have very little to be proud of.
With a President whose lack of mental acuity would qualify him as mentally handicapped under the provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990--signed by Bush 41--the system of U.S. constitutional government and international comity is unraveling at the seams.
An elite group of neo-fascists in Washington, London, Canberra, Rome, Jerusalem, and Madrid are seeking to return independent nation states to colonialism. Republicans in the U.S. Congress and Texas are seeking to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of African Americans and other minorities by redistricting them into Bantustan-like congressional districts. Religious kooks like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum want a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Add that to the proposed amendment to make illegal the burning of cheap, Chinese prison-made American flags and one can begin to see the end of sane government as we have known it.
Meanwhile, in California, a state that overwhelmingly voted for Al Gore, the right-wing fascists are attempting to turn Governor Gray Davis out of office through a recall petition financed by a Republican Representative Darrell Issa. The Republicans are still smarting from the fact that Bill Simon, their crooked candidate for Governor in the last election, was soundly defeated by Davis. Typical of fascists -- when elections fail, seize power through some political contrivance. The Republicans want to overthrow Davis in a coup, just like they denied Gore the White House and want to illegally steal as many as seven House seats in Texas. One Republican plan would see "Terminator" Arnold Schwarzenegger assume control of one of the most anti-Bush states in the country. Just like when Adolf Hitler made Reinhard Heydrich the overseer of the remnants of Czechoslovakia in order to stamp out any remaining resistance to the Nazis.
So Bush could soon have his own "Terminator" to deal with wayward California. Forgive me if I'm just a little antsy about Austrian emigres who decide to seize political office in another country. The Republicans blame Davis for California's skyrocketing budget deficits and increased taxes, forgetting that it was Bush's buddies at Enron who originally raped the state's finances with usurious electricity rates. And to make the Republican plan to oust Davis even more bizarre, its prime hatcher, Issa, who made millions from selling those annoying auto alarms, was arrested in 1972 for auto theft. You just can't make this stuff up!
Bush eggs on potential Iraqi insurgents by saying "bring them on," throwing down a gauntlet for Iraqi resistance units to attack American troops who are increasingly under strain as they become a thinly-spread quasi-permanent occupation force. Bush's swagger is reminiscent of the British troops in colonial India who dared rebels to take in the power of the British Empire. That tactic failed in India just as assuredly as it will fail in neo-colonial Iraq.
Bush's fellow fascist, Italian scandal-ridden Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, just two days into Italy's presidency of the European Union, caused a major intra-continental rift when, during a speech to the European Parliament, said a German Social Democratic member of the European parliament would make a "perfect Nazi concentration camp commander" in a movie. Berlusconi, the heir to the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, should know all about Nazis and concentration camps. Berlusconi, an Italian version of the proto-fascist Fox News Channel tycoon Rupert Murdoch, is a fervent supporter of Bush, whose own Defense Department is busy building concentration camps and execution chambers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bush must be privately gleeful that his fascist Italian friend is tearing apart the very fabric of the European Union, an economic powerhouse that stands in the way of Bush's plans for global domination.
Bush invites Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to Camp David and asks him not to provide information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden but requests Pakistani troops as part of the Iraq occupation force. In return, Musharraf got a five year, $3 billion military aid package from Bush. What did Bush get? A promise from Musharraf to accept "in principle" a plan to send Pakistani troops to Iraq (where conceivably they would be stationed along with Indian troops, a real recipe for continued warfare in America's Middle East colony). Musharraf, who knows exactly where Bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar are hiding, offered no assistance in turning them over to the United States even though Bush, shortly after September 11, said, with typical bravado, that he wanted Bin Laden "dead or alive." Cheap words from a cowardly braggart.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, in a meeting with Palestinian factions, recounted what our "apocalyptic Christian" President said to him during the recent peace summit in Jordan. Bush indicated that he was personally told by God to solve the MIddle East problem, just as God told him to attack Al Qaeda and then Saddam Hussein. Nothing like a little more religious fanaticism in trying to bring peace to a region that has no shortage of it. Bush once received revelations from the bottom of a tequila bottle along with a few lines of cocaine, now he gets them from God. Either way, the man is delusional, dangerously so.
Already dealing with a demoralized military, Bush, on the eve of his trip to Africa, mulls sending U.S. troops to Liberia. He also tells Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to step down. Never mind that Bush's friends in the international diamond industry, especially the head of the Corporate Council on Africa, Maurice Tempelsman, were largely responsible for the upheavals in West Africa, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. The diamond merchants have found it lucrative to keep West African governments unstable. They found unfettered access to the diamonds controlled by local warlords to be far more profitable than having to deal with centralized governments. However, when Charles Taylor began threatening neighboring countries's blood diamond supply lines and stood ready to upset the status quo enjoyed by the diamond cartels of Tel Aviv, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, Taylor's days were numbered. Bush's priority is to maintain leaders in power throughout Africa who will not stand in the way of Western exploitation. That includes the leaders of those countries he plans to visit, especially Uganda, Botswana, and Nigeria.
That is the way Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Walter Kansteiner III, wants it. A neo-fascist Republican veteran of the International Republican Institute and the Corporate Council on Africa, Kansteiner, a one-time supporter of racism and apartheid in South Africa and on the record as favoring the Balkanization of nation states in Africa, wants his friends in natural resources corporations and the Pentagon (where he headed the Strategic Minerals Task Force under then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney) to have free access to Africa's mineral and oil reserves. To make sure Africa's natural resource rapists understand his commitment to their cause, Bush spoke to the Corporate Council on Africa prior to his departure for the beleaguered continent, a continent the moron-in-chief once referred to as a "country."
The neo-cons now see West Africa as America's next target for control. One of their chicken hawk columnists, National Review's Rich Lowry, recently suggested that West Africa is of such strategic interest to America, the U.S. should set up military bases in the region with a U.S. military headquarters on Sao Tome, in the Gulf of Guinea, a potental future "American lake." More U.S. colonies. After years of exploitative European colonization, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, and other African countries may soon become virtual American colonies as part of a Greater West Africa National Economic Sphere. It is a page right out of the Japanese fascist playbook from World War II. So for our mentally challenged president, his neo con advisers tell him, "West Africa = diamonds + oil." That's all he has to hear. He authorizes sending in U.S. troops, building U.S. bases, and makes a trip there to Africa to cement the deals.
A Washington insider familiar with Liberia revealed that a major reason for Bush to go into Liberia is oil. Liberia's flag flies on most of the world's supertankers. "Look, the United States is about ready to start moving massive supplies of Iraqi oil on supertankers. With Liberia, the major flag of convenience for those tankers in a state of upheaval, Bush has to go in with troops. Forget human rights, that's not the issue, the Liberian Internatonal Ship and Corporate Registry must have a stable government to nurture it," the insider said.
What is in store for Africa is spelled out in the most recent journal of the neo con propaganda mill, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Its important to closely read neo-con literature in order to anticipate their future plans. Special attention must be paid to new catch phrases and code words, for example, "new American century," West Bank "outposts" (instead of settlements), and "Iraqi secular state." In one article in the JINSA journal, the term "Franco/Afro" dictatorships is used. This is a signal that the neo cons will make France pay dearly for its failure to support their worldwide agenda. So-called Franco-African governments in Gabon, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Chad, Niger, Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Madagascar, and Mauritius are clearly on the target list. For the United States and its neo con friends around the world to take over control of Africa--complete with ready-made human guinea pigs for AIDS vaccines and genetically-modified "Frankenfood"--the "Franco/Afro dictatorships" have to go. Bush showed his compassion for the AIDS pandemic in Africa by naming the former head of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, Randall Tobias, as his global AIDS "czar." Bush has shown us all not to be surprised at his "compassion," his visit to Africa will rival that of an arsonist visiting a hospital burn ward.
And what does Bush turn around and do to some of his "coalition of the willing" partners? He cuts off military aid to them. Because some 35 nations refused to sign treaties with the United States exempting U.S. war criminals from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, the moron in the White House cuts off military aid. The Baltic nations, who supported Bush's idiotic adventure in Iraq, are cut off. So are other coalition partners--Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria. Bush gave waivers to Uganda and Rwanda, two nations that use American military aid to maintain a brutal genocide in a fractured Congo.
And what of the Solomon Islands, which were added to the White House coalition list even though the country's Prime Minister said he was unaware of his nation's participation? Bush's troll-like partner, Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, recently announced that Australian troops would occupy the civil war-ridden Solomon Islands and mete out justice a la Iraq. Never mind the fact that American small arms companies have been caught smuggling arms into the island group to help foment civil war. Howard also reserves the right to invade and re-colonize any other Pacific "failed state" he thinks might have the potential to harbor terrorists. So attention all you Al Qaeda terrorists who have moved from Tora Bora to Bora Bora, Howard is going to come after you and your pina colada beach bars.
With Howard threatening to invade Pacific islands, no wonder Indonesia feels it can brutalize the secessionist provinces of Aceh and West Papua, especially when Western corporate interests (oil and copper, respectively) are involved. Expect no more nations receiving independence or autonomy in Bush's New World Order. The Indonesians, with Bush's support, might just think about rolling back East Timor's hard-won independence. After all, there's oil in the Timor Sea. Better for Bush and his cronies to deal with corrupt and bloody Indonesian generals than with the Nobel Peace Prize winners who run East Timor.
Other neo cons are advocating US intervention to oust the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil, America's so-called southern flank "Axis of Evil."
Unfortunately, some of these neo-con ideas are creeping into periodicals not nornally associated with their overall agenda. Here is an interesting exchange with the editor of The American Legion magazine after they published three neo-con propaganda pieces:
29 June 2003
To the Editor, The American Legion:
Your July issue contains a number of articles that can best be described as mere propaganda generated from the neo-conservative ideologues peppered throughout the Bush administration. These individuals, many of whom conveniently dodged the Vietnam draft, have hijacked American foreign and defense policy for their own narrow political purposes. "The Other Axis of Evil" by Paul Crespo gives weight to a white paper from the extreme right-wing Hudson Institute, while "Beyond Baghdad" is written by an official of the Hudson Institute. "A Farewell to Armistice" about North Korea follows the same neo-conservative line. Please do not allow your publication to become an echo chamber for the "neo-cons." As a veteran, I can speak for myself and many other veterans who object to the chickenhawk neo-con agenda, one that dismisses the opinions of flag rank officers and places our young military men and women in perpetual danger in a badly thought-out Iraq occupation and possible further military adventures as suggested by the above three articles.
Wayne Madsen, Arlington, VA
*** Dear Mr. Madsen,
Thank you for your message to The American Legion Magazine. Before accusing people of being "chickenhawks" or "dodging the Vietnam draft," you may wish to do a little more research. Paul Crespo is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Alan Dowd was seven years old when Saigon fell, and Mike O'Callaghan, a former Democratic governor of Nevada, is a Silver Star recipient who lost his leg in Korea.
Your point that many idealogues [sic] in the Bush administration evaded military service in Vietnam is accurate, but the same can be said of the previous administration. Draft evasion, unfortunately, is a bipartisan practice.
Sincerely,
John Raughter Editor USMC (1983-1990)
*** I did not accuse them of being draft dodgers or being chickenhawks, I was accusing them of serving the interests of those who are: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Abram Shulsky, Dick Cheney, Harold Rhode, David Wurmser, Dov Zakheim, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, and the list goes on and on and ultimately also includes Messrs. Rumsfeld (weekend warrior between Korea and Vietnam) and G W Bush (AWOL weekend warrior). The draft dodgers in the previous administration did not place the country on an endless path to more unprovoked pre-emptive warfare and our previous Vice President did serve in Vietnam unlike either of the two top office holders in this administration. Many veterans were and continue to be patriotic Democrats who are opposed to this administration's unwise policies.
Wayne Madsen
***
I noticed that you left Bill Clinton off your list of "Chickenhawks." Were we ever attacked by Bosnia? Haiti? Or what about the air strikes he called on Afgahnistan [sic], Sudan or Iraq?
I agree that many Democrats are patriotic Americans. Partisanship should have nothing to do with foreign policy.
*** "Partisanship should have nothing to do with foreign policy." In other words, just do what your dictators tell you to do and be about your business. On that particular note, my exchange with the editor ceased. Notice how these Republicans constantly must fall back on Bill Clinton? It demonstrates that they can't maintain an argument based on the current situation. Their neo-fascist parents always blamed Franklin Roosevelt for every ill in America, even as late as the 1960s and 1970s and as if Roosevelt had nothing to do with pulling the country out of the deep recesses of the Depression. Now, it's all Clinton's fault, or Carter's fault, or Kennedy's fault. I refuse to get into a battle of wits with such unarmed men.
So as Bush goes about ousting more leaders from Charles Taylor in Liberia to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, let us remember that the political oustings should be refocused The leaders who must be ousted are Bush, Blair, Aznar in Spain, the insulting gangster Berlusconi of Italy, and Howard in Australia for starters. It will be great day, indeed, when people can visit as tourists, a Guantanamo Bay under restored Cuban sovereignty and be taken to see the prison cages where Bush, Cheney, Berlusconi, Aznar, Musharraf, Howard, Sharon, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Blair are held as international war criminals. See the war criminals and then celebrate their imprisonment at the nearest pina colada beach bar. Only then will we know the world has returned to sanity and Americans can celebrate Independence Day once again.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of the forthcoming book, "America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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