Working on this new server in php7...
imc indymedia

Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

white themeblack themered themetheme help
About Us Contact Us Calendar Publish RSS
Features
latest news
best of news
syndication
commentary


KILLRADIO

VozMob

ABCF LA

A-Infos Radio

Indymedia On Air

Dope-X-Resistance-LA List

LAAMN List




IMC Network:

Original Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: ambazonia canarias estrecho / madiaq kenya nigeria south africa canada: hamilton london, ontario maritimes montreal ontario ottawa quebec thunder bay vancouver victoria windsor winnipeg east asia: burma jakarta japan korea manila qc europe: abruzzo alacant andorra antwerpen armenia athens austria barcelona belarus belgium belgrade bristol brussels bulgaria calabria croatia cyprus emilia-romagna estrecho / madiaq euskal herria galiza germany grenoble hungary ireland istanbul italy la plana liege liguria lille linksunten lombardia london madrid malta marseille nantes napoli netherlands nice northern england norway oost-vlaanderen paris/Île-de-france patras piemonte poland portugal roma romania russia saint-petersburg scotland sverige switzerland thessaloniki torun toscana toulouse ukraine united kingdom valencia latin america: argentina bolivia chiapas chile chile sur cmi brasil colombia ecuador mexico peru puerto rico qollasuyu rosario santiago tijuana uruguay valparaiso venezuela venezuela oceania: adelaide aotearoa brisbane burma darwin jakarta manila melbourne perth qc sydney south asia: india mumbai united states: arizona arkansas asheville atlanta austin baltimore big muddy binghamton boston buffalo charlottesville chicago cleveland colorado columbus dc hawaii houston hudson mohawk kansas city la madison maine miami michigan milwaukee minneapolis/st. paul new hampshire new jersey new mexico new orleans north carolina north texas nyc oklahoma philadelphia pittsburgh portland richmond rochester rogue valley saint louis san diego san francisco san francisco bay area santa barbara santa cruz, ca sarasota seattle tampa bay tennessee urbana-champaign vermont western mass worcester west asia: armenia beirut israel palestine process: fbi/legal updates mailing lists process & imc docs tech volunteer projects: print radio satellite tv video regions: oceania united states topics: biotech

Surviving Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: canada: quebec east asia: japan europe: athens barcelona belgium bristol brussels cyprus germany grenoble ireland istanbul lille linksunten nantes netherlands norway portugal united kingdom latin america: argentina cmi brasil rosario oceania: aotearoa united states: austin big muddy binghamton boston chicago columbus la michigan nyc portland rochester saint louis san diego san francisco bay area santa cruz, ca tennessee urbana-champaign worcester west asia: palestine process: fbi/legal updates process & imc docs projects: radio satellite tv
printable version - js reader version - view hidden posts - tags and related articles


View article without comments

Impeachment as an anti-war strategy

by Brent Herbert Monday, Mar. 24, 2003 at 9:25 AM

After 9-11 Bush remarked, 'it looks like I hit the trifecta' and someone was so offended by his out of place remark that they leaked it to the media. Note that a 'trifecta' connotates something that you gamble on. Bush's August 6, 2001 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S." Sometimes the mainstream media can really surprise a person, as the piece quoted here demonstrates...

After 9-11 Bush remarked, 'it looks like I hit the trifecta' and someone was so offended by his out of place remark that they leaked it to the media. Note that a 'trifecta' connotates something that you gamble on. Bush's August 6, 2001 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S." John Ashcroft received FBI intelligence that caused him to quit catching the planes that summer. All airports were shut down for Bush at the Genoa summit, the summit was ringed by anti-aircraft guns, and Bush spent the evenings on the U.S.S. Enterprise, bristling with anti-aircraft guns, because, as I like to say it, perhaps the Americans were afraid that the Italians couldn't shoot straight.

Now you might recall how a 'whistle blower' named Crowley appeared to complain that the FBI had to many layers of beaurocracy. Very rarely is a true whistle blower celebrated in congress and praised by her bosses, but that is what happened this time. (Normally whistle blowers get into a lot of hot water, become unemployable, and pushed into the wilderness, denied opportunities and promotions, despite legislation that is supposed to protect them.) I am not suggesting that Crowley's complaints about the beaurocracy at the FBI were not feelings she might have sincerely held, but we know that despite whatever flaws there might have been in the beaurocracy at the FBI, the intelligence regarding the dangers posed by Osama bin Laden to the nations passenger jets worked its way right to the top, and convinced Ashcroft to stop taking passenger jets during the summer of 2001. So her complaints were invalid as a description of a systemic failure at the FBI, and rather what we are left with is a systemic failure at the very top of the totem pole, where great power has been concentrated, and thus becomes wide open to abuse. Crowley was feted as a 'whistle blower' only because her complaints drew attention away from the top and focused it below on FBI beaurocrats, and her criticism also conveniently fit into the agenda of imposing a super domestic spy agency on the country (the notorious Total Information Awareness which is temporarily in limbo).

Recently such people as Ramsey Clark have written articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. While I sympathize with the effort, and feel that the grounds are also legally sound, politically this effort is inadequate, and yes, sometimes you do have to get down and fight and roll and in the muck. Its called politics. The strongest grounds for impeachment of George W. Bush will in the end prove to be obstruction of justice, the poisoned arrow that brought down the Nixon White House. To this day even the 9-11 families, arguably the most powerful latent political force in America at the present time, have not been able to force through an investigation of 9-11, the stonewalling at the top being just that powerfully entrenched, but this can't last forever. And here we begin to see the grounds for obstruction of justice being firmly established by the main subjects of our investigation, and so in the long run, you can see how that is not such a bad thing after all.

I should warn you that attempts have been made by the establishment progressive media in America to squelch this investigation of 9-11. It is wide spread and prevalent, but that won't last forever either.

I feel that it might be good to direct your attention to the Online Journal site, which recognizes the value of this strategy I have just outlined...

http://onlinejournal.com/

of particular interest is their link to the page exposing the corporate funding connections of the Gate Keepers of the Establishment left, something anyone who wants this impeachment to proceed must be very wary of...

http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html

My suggestion here is that this line of action is much more powerful and will be much more fruitful and productive over the long run than simply carrying signs and marching. Think about it... There is something here that is painfully obvious and it is only a matter of recognizing this fact, and then deciding what you are going to do about it. Will you take action, or will you join the powerful forces that are currently working to obstruct justice in the United States of America? Follow the link at the bottom of the page for my own personal page on Impeaching George W. Bush, which relies heavily on this tactic of 'rolling in the muck' rather than simply taking the high moral ground like the articles written by such people as Ramsey Clark, which stand very little chance of being successful, because we are talking not just morality or legal justification here, but rather politics. Sometimes you have to get dirty in the world of politics, and thus you must fight fire with fire, as it were...

Sometimes there are islands in the Mainstream media that can just leave a person astonished, and the following piece is just one such example...

How Bush Hit the 'Trifecta' on 9/11--and the Public Lost Big-Time
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/trifecta_jun02.shtml

It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security.

by Brad Carlton
See letters sent us in response to this OP-ED
Bush, in the weeks before September 11, pledged to honor the sanctity of the Social Security lockbox except in the event of recession, war, or a national emergency. But after "everything changed" on 9/11, he reportedly gloated to his budget director, Mitch Daniels, "Lucky me--I hit the trifecta!" At the time, this comment (a variation of which is being recycled for laughs at current GOP fundraisers) seemed merely offensive. But in light of revelations that Bush's August 6 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.," Bush's "luck" and weird prescience are worth more than passing scrutiny.

Whenever someone is suspected of a crime, investigators look for a motive in addition to actual proof of guilt to determine, a posteriori, whether there was malice aforethought. In cases of criminal negligence, motive must also be deduced, a priori, to answer the question: were preventive failures due to craftiness or mere cluelessness?

The serial apologists of the Bush Is Not Stupid crowd are rather incongruously opting for the latter, this in the wake of the scandal about pre-9/11 failures to issue precisely the kinds of public warnings and security directives that accompanied the also "non-specific" Y2K threats. For now, it is difficult to say who knew what when because the administration is not exactly being forthcoming, preferring instead to use the scandal as an excuse to broaden the FBI's snoop powers. However: there was a potential motive for the administration to sit on perceived terrorist threats.

Think back to the days before 9/11. The topic on everyone's lips (Condit aside) was: what will happen when budget realities force Bush to raid Social Security? He had explicitly promised during his campaign to establish a contingency fund for severe emergencies that would keep Social Security untouched. But the economy was tanking and the costs of the tax cut made the raid inevitable. Even Daniels acknowledged that the government would be forced to tap Social Security to the tune of $14 billion to fund pending legislation. Strangely, Bush kept insisting, "We can work together to avoid dipping into Social Security." But, beginning August 24, he gave himself an escape clause: "I've said that the only reason we should use Social Security funds is in case of an economic recession or war." (Three days earlier he had said that there should be "special consideration" in the budget for these contingencies. Otherwise, this was completely new rhetoric.)

September 4: businessman and commentator Ben Cohen ran a mock "help wanted" ad reading, "Serious enemy needed to justify Pentagon budget increase. Defense contractors desperate." Same day: a CBS poll found that 66 percent of Americans did not think a recession (extant, but not yet confirmed) was reason enough to tap Social Security. September 6: Bush invented another exception. "The only time to use Social Security money is in times of war, times of recession, or times of severe emergency." September 11: he had all three. Lucky Bush.

These extraordinary coincidences have gone unremarked in the media, who have entirely missed that the terms of the "trifecta"--note that the word connotes something you bet on--was never mentioned until two-and-a-half weeks after Bush's August 6 briefing and days before 9/11. (He has since claimed the 'trifecta' was a campaign promise. This is a lie.) It is sickening to contemplate an administration intentionally looking the other way while terrorists scheme so that whatever havoc they wreak can provide cover for the president to raid Social Security. But we journalists are paid to have strong stomachs.


the Campaign to Impeach George W. Bush
http://www.awitness.org/journal/impeach_george_bush.html
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


Regime Change

by bh Monday, Mar. 24, 2003 at 10:48 AM

You know they say that regime change is an internal matter for a country to settle, and that is like a mantra in the anti-war movement. For example we can consider the 'People Power' movement that toppled Marcos in the philipines, and there are so many other examples.

Will the Americans PLEASE PLEASE start fighting dirty and stop being Mr. Clean. The whole word is watching (not to mention suffering), Just marching isn't enough, and these 'shut down the town' tactics are also not well targetted as a form of strategy, and indicate that people perhaps are clutching at straws in their desperation to find some outlet for the protests. Well here's one, something REALLY DAMAGING and real dirty too, and thus the way to go.
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


frustration

by bh Monday, Mar. 24, 2003 at 11:12 AM

I am mentioning this because I am growing frustrated with the American anti-war protests and I wish to God, since you people have to do the regime change, being the Americans after all, that you would take the gloves off, and plunge right into the dirty ditch and fight real nasty and dirty. One of the advantages to doing this is that the more they stone wall, the stronger the case for obstruction of justice becomes.

And by the way, does anyone know those 9-11 families. Now there is one powerful political force, do you not realize that? Ask them how it feels to be used, and then tossed in the trash can, and now they are even getting arrested as they were last week. Hey, 9-11 families, how long are we going to wait? Hmmmm? Till hell freezes over, more than likely.

Look, this is an expression of my frustration with Americans, and with such tactics as blocking traffic, which only alienate a lot of people, and do not stop the war, but rather are expressions of a movement in disarray, full of frustration, looking for something, any straw they can clutch, or so it would appear from watching it all unfold.

would you Americans get nasty and get down and dirty and fight dirty for a change. Do the world a favor PLEASE PLEASE. Do some real damage for a change would you.
Report this post as:
Share on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+

add your comments


© 2000-2018 Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Running sf-active v0.9.4 Disclaimer | Privacy