ZAP III, with a vengeance

September 21st, 2007

Yesterday was a rough day — by the time I was through swimming the depths of politics in America I had the feeling I’d been doing the backstroke in a sewage pond, my head just above water. I was discouraged and frazzled. I set my VCR to catch Larry King and Bill Clinton and hunted around for a distracting movie — I found one; and even then, I couldn’t escape politics.

I settled on a showing of Pleasantville, the fantasy tale of a young man who loves old television re-runs reminiscent of “Father Knows Best.” He and his sister are transported to the black and white town that lives within the closed loop of its scripted existence. With this new contemporary variable thrown into their mix, even acting within their assigned roles, the population around our two visitors begins to act independently of their “character” — and slowly the town comes to life … in Living Color.

You’ve probably seen this one — it’s an oldie; but it’s US, isn’t it! The “black ‘n whites” v. the “anti-authoritarians”? In the movie, one is able to take on coloration as one “feels” … no longer single-dimensional pod people, but actual feeling beings. In the end, there is no “happy ending” … just a script as yet unwritten, full of insecurities and possibilities, fears and hopes. Like reality.

See? Can’t get away from politics even when you try; Neptunian illusion meets the cold light of day … in life, in art.

Here are the latest bits on our Florida ZAP, connecting the dots further to the police state we’re quickly becoming. First, look at yet another Youtube of the ZAP itself, but this one is revealing … watch the police behind Meyer, and the guy that’s standing with them holding a piece of paper, without a uniform, issuing directions. When Meyer says “blow job” the guy does the “cut” sign, hand across his throat — and all hell breaks loose after that. Meyers was, indeed, hyper and belligerent, chiding Kerry for not wanting to take his questions after being listened to for two hours — but was it that statement that turned the moment? The impeachment question? The blow job reference? All of the above?

You’ll find updates on the Meyers issue, here — another taser video CNN is playing and playing, putting dinky little Warren, OH on the map, and not in a good way — and despicable commentary by Glenn Beck, Rush-wannabe and Ugly American [sadly carried, as well, by CNN.]

Then, some heavyweight reads on the “state of our police state,” including Part 2 of John Dean’s series on Authoritarian Conservatism. The last two bits: a recent Colbert video and a read from the archives by Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Well worth the time.

We’ve seen too many overreactions by police in the last weeks to ignore the chicken scratches in the dirt — consider Lefty’s Rev. Yearwood, who was arrested by Capital police trying to enter the Petraeus hearings, suffering a broken ankle, and Ray McGovern being escorted away after asking that General Dave be sworn in [he never was] — even Sally Fields [the Flying Nun, for goodness sake!] being censored by FOX at the Emmy’s for either her use of the phrase “god-damned” or her criticism of the war.

We’ve entered a dark patch, dearhearts — it will continue for awhile. We may lose some “fair-weather patriots” along the way, but it ALL has to come up, like the nasty dregs in the bottom of the glass as we pour in fresh water. We’re in the process — we have to trust ourselves and our intuition to navigate these dimmer spaces. It isn’t just the Republicans playing out the black ‘n white game … there are gray pod-people of every political persuasion awakening … if we’re to use all the rainbow colors to create a portrait of peace and plenty, we’ll have to feel our way ahead, and keep the Vision bright in our hearts.

Jude

Greg Palast Offers Job to Tasered Journalism Student
Andrew Meyer Currently ‘On Ice,’ According to Investigate Journalist/NYTimes Best Selling Author of ‘Mysterious Yellow Book’…
Brad Friedman, Bradblog
9/20/2007

We just spoke with Greg Palast, whose Armed Madhouse paperback (or “mysterious ‘yellow book,’” as lazy Washington Post blogger, Emil Steiner “reported” it), was being waved and alluded to by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer just prior to his being Tasered by UF cops earlier this week.

Palast says he is offering the journalism student a job as a paid intern. Meyer had described Palast, in his question to Sen. John Kerry, asking why he conceded the 2004 Presidential Election so early, as “the top investigate journalist in America.”

“Did you notice he never let the book touch the ground?” an impressed Palast wryly noted.

Meyers was Tasered by the authorities as the majority of the students in the crowd sat passively during their fellow student’s pleas for help and shrieks of pain. He was then arrested and charged with a felony for “inciting a riot and disrupting a school function.” (Police report here [PDF])

“His attorneys seem to be keeping him on ice,” Palast told us, when we asked if he’d been able to officially offer the gig to Meyer.

Indeed, our note to Meyer sent Tuesday, inviting him to Guest Blog his experience here at The BRAD BLOG, has so far similarly gone unanswered.

Beck said he “enjoy[s] watching” Taser videos; O’Reilly rolled out “Don’t Taze me, bro!” bumper stickers
Media Matters
Thu, Sep 20, 2007

Summary: In segments on University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who was shocked with a Taser by campus police, Glenn Beck asserted: “To me, Taser videos are a little like potato chips. I just can’t watch just one,” and Bill O’Reilly announced that “[a]nyone buying anything on BillOReilly.com will receive a ‘Don’t Taze me, bro!’ bumper sticker.”

During the September 19 edition of his CNN Headline News show, Glenn Beck asserted:

“Now, I’d like to say that my sense of humor has evolved past the point where I don’t enjoy watching someone get Tasered. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. To me, Taser videos are a little like potato chips. I just can’t watch just one.”

Beck’s comments came during a segment on the recent incident involving University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who was shocked with a Taser after a confrontation with campus police that began while he was asking questions of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) during a September 17 campus forum. Beck claimed that Meyer “was asking for it and deserved every single volt that he got,” and stated: “I say hit him with another 50,000 volts.”

He later added: “I would have Tasered him just for being stupid enough to listen to John Kerry for two hours, just yammering on. In my opinion, I don’t see Meyer as a victim of an overly aggressively law enforcement agency. It looks as though this guy wanted to get Tasered.” Beck went on to suggest that Meyer “put the idea” in the officer’s “head” by “repeatedly screaming, ‘Don’t Tase me.’ ” The segment was accompanied by on-screen text that read: “Shock and Awesome.”

Additionally, during the September 19 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly announced a new promotional giveaway mocking Meyer: “Well, thanks to Andrew, we now have a new promotion. Anyone buying anything on BillOReilly.com will receive a ‘Don’t Taze me, bro!’ bumper sticker. And you know you want one. Everybody wants one.” The bumper sticker references Meyer’s cry before being Tasered by campus police. As Media Matters for America documented, during the September 18 edition of the program, O’Reilly asserted that Meyer “wanted this to happen” and claimed: “I’ve been Tasered for a story, and all I can say is: He is the biggest wimp in the United States of America.” O’Reilly added: “And I don’t say that with any kind of bravado, but the overreaction to being Tasered — it’s not — it’s an electrical shock is what it is.”

Citing an increase in the number of reported deaths associated with Tasers, the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has launched several studies into the effects of the stun guns, and the Justice Department initiated a “multi-agency technical evaluation of taser technology,” as Media Matters also documented.

From the September 19 edition of CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck:

BECK: And a college student gets Tasered for being extremely annoying.

MEYER [video clip]: Don’t Tase me, bro. Don’t Tase me! I didn’t do anything wrong! Ow!

BECK: I say hit him with another 50,000 volts.

MEYER [video clip]: Ow!

[...]

BECK: Coming up, a college student is Tasered by campus police during a John Kerry event. Some say the action was overly aggressive. I say he was asking for it and deserved every single volt that he got. I’ll explain.

[...]

BECK: Now, I’d like to say that my sense of humor has evolved past the point where I don’t enjoy watching someone get Tasered. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. To me, Taser videos are a little like potato chips. I just can’t watch just one.

But the latest edition to the genre is a little more layered than the usual demonstration video that local newscasters love to make. Andrew Meyer is a pinhead from the University of Florida, who attended a speech by Senator John Kerry.

During the question and answer period, he went off on a long, convoluted rant about why Kerry conceded the 2004 election and then proceeded to accuse Kerry of not trying to impeach President Bush because they’re both members of the Yale Skull and Bones secret society, you know? Ooh.

Campus security then tried to gently escort Meyer out of the building, but he seriously resisted. And they felt a Tasering might do him some good. So they did.

I would have Tasered him just for being stupid enough to listen to John Kerry for two hours, just yammering on. In my opinion, I don’t see Meyer as a victim of an overly aggressively law enforcement agency. Looks as though this guy wanted to get Tasered.
And don’t we live in a world of cell phone cameras and everything else, but there seemed to be more cameras on this guy than we use to tape this national show.

Bottom line: I think Meyer was grandstanding, looking for publicity. What better way in this YouTube culture than to star in your own video? Shocking, isn’t it?

I’ve got to tell you something: I am so sick of hearing of student’s rights. When are we going to start talking about the responsibility that these people have? And you know what, if he didn’t want to get Tasered, I certainly would have put the idea in security’s head by repeatedly screaming, “Don’t Taser me, no.”

Andrew Meyer, you got your fifteen minutes of fame. Sit down and shut the pie hole.

From the September 19 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:

O’REILLY: Time now for “Pinheads and Patriots”. You have to stay with me on the patriot deal tonight.

Yesterday, we reported on college student Andrew Meyer getting Tasered for disrupting John Kerry’s forum at the University of Florida.

MEYER [video clip]: Don’t Tase me, bro. Don’t Tase me! I didn’t do anything! Ow! Ow! Ow!

O’REILLY: Well, thanks to Andrew, we now have a new promotion. Anyone buying anything on BillOReilly.com will receive a “Don’t Taze me, bro!” bumper sticker. And you know you want one. Everybody wants one.

Since revenue from BillOReilly.com enables us to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity, everybody wins. So because of the charity angle, we have to make Andrew Meyer a patriot, at least for a day.

Don’t Taze me, bro. We’ve got those bumper stickers going on.

Lessons of the Taser
Body-Snatched Nation
BRENDAN COONEY, CounterPunch
September 20, 2007

As scary as it is to watch someone electrocuted for speaking his mind, the most horrifying parts of the Andrew Meyer incident at the University of Florida are the things happening on the periphery…

There is the face of the woman on the right of the aisle, staring obediently ahead to Sen. John Kerry as Meyer is pinned to the ground just behind her. Or the man on the left smiling as the action comes right past him like actors tearing down the fourth wall.

The only person with the power to stop the assault was the man with the microphone, and his affect never rose above flat. Shortly before the cops pressed the volts into Meyer’s chest, Kerry can be heard droning, “Folks, I think if we all just calm down.” The folks he is addressing, of course, are not the police but the few audience members who have risen from their seats.

It’s as if one is watching the end of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” with Meyer coming out as the last human who has not been struck by the pods that replace people with emotionless doubles.

Perhaps half the comments of Youtube viewers support the Tasing as an apt treatment for someone so disruptive. Meyer may have been loud, attention-hungry and an awkward presence in the room, but the awkwardness is nothing compared with that of people trying to work out the concept of free speech in their online comments.

“The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone the right to make a public ass of oneself at the expense of others…” writes Russ Thayer. Joseph (comment 87 on the New York Times site) agrees: “I hate to tell you, but the meaning of Freedom of Speech doesn’t mean you can scream and shout at people. To exercise your right to Freedom of Speech you need to remain calm.” Says Dusty Bottoms, also on the Times site: “Freaking idiot deserved it…. [H]ow many times does one have to be warned? I’m all for free speech, but do it in an intelligent way.”

The proportion of voices sympathetic to Meyer was altogether different among readers of the Times of London. Thirty-three thought the Tasing was wrong, and only three supported it. Should it be any surprise that readers of the foreign press are less authoritarian than readers of our mainstream media?

Duncan Roy, a United Kingdom resident, posts this comment on the New York Times site: “If shouting and agitation were the criteria for tasing then our entire british parliament would be tazed! What is it with you Americans that you have become so frightened of free and passionate speech?”

Police tasing students and others without cause is nothing new. A video of an even scarier incident at UCLA last fall can be watched on Youtube.

Police Tased this student because he didn’t have his student ID in the library. The cell-phone video shows an eerily passive group of zombies, inching slowly forward as the victim cries for help. Only after the student is hauled out of the library, still being tased, do a couple students start asking for badge numbers, to which the reply is: “Back up or you’ll get Tased too.”

The alien pods haven’t gotten us all, however. Based on the volume of comments people posted on the Meyer incident, watching the video clearly hit many Americans a lot harder than it did mainstream journalists.

Mike Bellman of Columbia, Missouri, wrote, “I am ten times ashamed for the spectators who watched this debacle slack-jawed and motionless like they were watching the you-tube video online. Shame on citizens who idly watch this kind of abuse and not recognize it. Shame on all of them including John Kerry who didn’t relieve the police of their duties. And finally shame on anyone who doesn’t have the courage to question authority or believe that another American has the right to speak freely in an open forum. I am ashamed to live in this America and I weep for the US Constitution.”

And an “ECartman” wrote that a “lot worse happened in Berkeley in late 60’s and early 70’s…. Wish these students could get more incensed with what we are doing in Iraq everyday…. Don’t expect this to happen though as these kids really got no soul.”

There’s a whole racially charged aspect to the question of police authority that I can’t begin to unpack here, but “Jargon” says on the Times site: “I am so sick of this blind, unquestionable trust that whites hold for police.”

On the spectrum of eeriness, watching Jimmy Kimmel laugh about the incident on late-night TV was strange, but not as bad as reading dismissive accounts of it in the mainstream press.

Shameful ad hominem reporting appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Salon.com. It’s as if these reporters can’t keep these two concepts separate: “he was annoying” and “he deserved to be arrested and assaulted.” This confusion reminds me of people I sometimes meet overseas who can’t treat me as an individual because I come from the loathsome United States. The fact that Meyer’s website features pranks and skits, notably that he carried a “Harry Dies” sign after the release of the last Harry Potter book, seems to have persuaded many people that he deserved what he got.

Someone who exudes such a reclining air that he will probably never be on the receiving end of a Taser is The Washington Post’s Emil Steiner, who writes, “Kerry’s voice, however, was no match for Meyer’s, who despite not having a mic continued to hog the audience’s attention with such glib catch phrases as: Help me! Help!’…”

This smug tone is jolted awake by the first comment below the piece, by a “Mark” from Rhode Island: “One word: FASCISM! Be afraid to ask vital questions in our free republic.”

Steiner refers to the “mysterious” yellow book Meyer recommended for Kerry. The book was Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast. Meyer identified the author as a top investigative journalist; the senator said he’d already read it. What’s the mystery, aside from the stunning disconnect between body-snatched reporters and the citizenry they putatively inform?

In observing the cultural milieu in which this incident took place, from the blank reaction of students and Kerry to online comments to press reports, there was an atavistic smack of the taste of what it was to be living in the United States in 2002 and 2003. It was the most haunting time I have known, when story after story in the mainstream press sold the war, and when friends of mine with college and law and medical and doctoral degrees jumped on the bandwagon, and I looked all around me and saw only pods.

The question is when does it happen; when do the pods take over our souls in this land? Is it in adolescence, when we have individuality pounded out of us by the mob so eager to squelch any deviant thought or behavior? Is it in classrooms or in front of televisions? What is the pod?

Surely Kerry was alive in Vietnam, when he saved his fellow soldiers, and when he came home to protest the war; but somewhere in 37 years of public life he got the lobotomy needed to win elections here. (Politicians with a pulse, such as Ralph Nader and Jessie Jackson, don’t stand a chance.) Even after he had time to reflect, Kerry offered the Associated Press this safe pablum: “Whatever happened, the police had a reason, had made their decision that there was something they needed to do. Then it’s a law enforcement issue, not mine.”

Lost in the melee was one of Meyer’s questions: “Why not impeach Bush before he has a chance to invade Iran?” It’s a question that, if seriously considered, would Tase the brains of zombies everywhere.

Brendan Cooney is an anthropologist living in New York City

Police Too Quick to Taser?
Tasering Seems to Have Surged in Popularity, but It Is a Seemingly Extreme Measure
ABC News
Sept 21, 07

They’ve been touted as the safety weapon of choice.

Nonlethal electroshock Tasers temporarily paralyze victims. They only affect your muscles, not any vital organs like the heart. But getting shocked with 50,000 volts of electricity can feel the same as falling off a two-story building, and more than 150 people have died in the United States after being Tasered.

In the last week, several stun-gun cases caught on camera have many wondering whether law enforcement officers were too quick to use them.

Heidi Gill, 38, said she feared for her life when police Officer Rich Kovach Tasered her over and over again after a bar argument in Warren, Ohio.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it out of there. I just wanted this pain to stop. This electrocuting and Tasering & I didn’t know what Tasering even was,” Gill said.

After a police video of Gill’s Tasering was released, Kovach was placed on paid leave.

And earlier this week, the Taser incident heard ’round the world: Monday, University of Florida student Andrew Meyer’s persistent questions to Sen. John Kerry drew ire from campus police.

He was physically restrained by campus police before one officer Tasered him.

Meyer yelped during the incident, “Don’t Tase me, bro! I didn’t do anything!”

After the altercation, the university put two campus police officers on leave and asked for a state probe into whether they had used appropriate force.

“I think this incident will cause the university to look closely at our Taser policy when we use it and why,” said Bernard Machen, University of Florida president.

Police insist Tasers are overwhelmingly safe and ask the public to look past their initial reaction.

“Having been Tasered a number of times myself — and I can attest to [the] fact [that] I’m still here — I can say there is no permanent injury,” said Alan Goldberg, commander of the Montgomery County Maryland Police.

But since June 2001, more than 150 people have died in the United States after being shocked by a Taser. Eight states ban their use.

Monday, sheriffs in Orange County, Calif., defended the use of a stun gun on Taylor Karras, an autistic 15-year-old boy who had been darting in and out of traffic.

“I gave up by doing this [hands behind his head], and then they Tasered me and I laid down, I got down. I was on the ground and they Tasered me again,” Karras said.

Today, more than 7,000 law enforcement agencies around the world routinely use Taser guns.

George W. Bush’s Thug Nation
Robert Parry, Smirking Chimp
Sep 21 2007

It’s said that over time Presidents – especially two-termers – imbue the nation with their personalities and priorities, for good or ill. If that’s true, it could help explain the small-minded mean-spiritedness that seems to be pervading the behavior of the United States these days, both at home and abroad.

On a global level, the world reads about trigger-happy Blackwater “security contractors” mowing down civilians in Baghdad, the U.S. military killing unarmed people under loose “rules of engagement” in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and the CIA “rendering” suspected Islamists to secret prisons or to third-country dungeons where torture is practiced.

Inside the United States, too, a police-state mentality is taking hold. After more than six years of having dissent against President George W. Bush equated with disloyalty, police from Capitol Hill to college campuses are treating vocal disagreement as grounds for violently “taking down” citizens, while bouncers at campaign rallies hustle away prospective hecklers and police preemptively detain protesters or stick them in faraway “free-speech zones.”

On Sept. 17 at a University of Florida public forum with Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, journalism student Andrew Meyer asked an animated question about Kerry’s hasty concession after Election 2004.

Meyer then was accosted by several campus police officers who dragged him away and wrestled him to the ground. Despite pleading with police “don’t tase me, bro,” Meyer was “tasered” with powerful electric shocks as he screamed in pain…

Overseas, it now appears that Bush has authorized “rules of engagement” that have transformed U.S. Special Forces into “death squads,” much like those that roamed Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s identifying “subversives” and murdering them.

According to evidence emerging from a military court hearing at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, U.S. Special Forces are empowered to kill individuals who have been designated “enemy combatants,” even if they are unarmed and present no visible threat.

The hearing involves two Special Forces soldiers who took part in the cold-blooded execution of an Afghani who was suspected of leading an insurgent group. Though the Afghani, identified as Nawab Buntangyar, responded to questions and offered no resistance when encountered on Oct. 13, 2006, he was shot dead by Master Sgt. Troy Anderson on orders from his superior officer, Capt. Dave Staffel.

Classified Mission

As described at the hearing, Staffel and Anderson were leading a team of Afghan soldiers when an informant told them where a suspected insurgent leader was hiding. The U.S.-led contingent found a man believed to be Nawab Buntangyar walking outside his compound near the village of Hasan Kheyl.

While the Americans kept their distance out of fear the suspect might be wearing a suicide vest, the man was questioned about his name and the Americans checked his description against a list from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force Afghanistan, known as “the kill-or-capture list.”

Concluding that the man was insurgent leader Nawab Buntangyar, Staffel gave the order to shoot, and Anderson – from a distance of about 100 yards away – fired a bullet through the man’s head, killing him instantly.

The soldiers viewed the killing as “a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement,” the International Herald Tribune reported. “The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.”

Staffel’s civilian lawyer Mark Waple said the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded in April that the shooting was “justifiable homicide,” but a two-star general in Afghanistan instigated a murder charge against the two men. That case, however, has floundered over accusations that the charge was improperly filed. [IHT, Sept. 17, 2007]
The major news media has given the case only minor coverage focusing mostly on the legal sparring. The New York Times’ inside-the-paper, below-the-fold headline on Sept. 19 was “Green Beret Hearing Focuses on How Charges Came About.”

However, the greater significance of the case is its confirmation that the U.S. chain of command, presumably up to President Bush, has approved standing orders that allow the U.S. military to assassinate suspected militants on sight.

In effect, these orders have reestablished what was known during the Vietnam War as Operation Phoenix, a program that assassinated Vietcong cadre, including suspected communist political allies.

Through a Pentagon training program known as “Project X,” the lessons of Operation Phoenix from the 1960s were passed on to Third World armies in Latin America and elsewhere, allegedly giving a green light to some of the “dirty wars” that swept the region in the following decades. [For details, see Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.]

Blackwater Killings

Besides the periodic controversies over U.S. military killings of unarmed Iraqis and Afghanis, the Bush administration also is facing a challenge from the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki over the U.S. Embassy’s reliance on Blackwater security contractors despite their reputation as crude and murderous bullies.

On Sept. 16, Blackwater gunmen accompanying a U.S. diplomatic convoy apparently sensed an ambush and opened fire, spraying a busy Baghdad square with bullets.

Eyewitness accounts, including from an Iraqi police officer, indicated that the Blackwater team apparently overreacted to a car moving into the square and killed at least 11 people.

“Blackwater has no respect for the Iraqi people,” an Iraqi Interior Ministry official told the Washington Post. “They consider Iraqis like animals, although actually I think they may have more respect for animals. We have seen what they do in the streets. When they’re not shooting, they’re throwing water bottles at people and calling them names. If you are terrifying a child or an elderly woman, or you are killing an innocent civilian who is riding in his car, isn’t that terrorism?” [Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2007]

The highhandedness of the Blackwater mercenaries on the streets of Baghdad or the contempt for traditional rules of war in the hills of Afghanistan also resonate back to the marble chambers and well-appointed salons of Washington, where swaggering tough-guyism reigns from the Oval Office to the TV talk shows to Georgetown dinner parties.
Inside the Beltway, it seems there’s little political mileage in standing up for traditional American values, such as the rule of law or even the Founders’ historic concept of inalienable rights for all mankind.

On Sept. 19, Senate Republicans blocked an up-or-down vote on a bill seeking to restore habeas corpus rights against arbitrary imprisonment for people whom Bush unilaterally has designated “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Bush’s supporters portrayed those who favored habeas corpus restoration as impractical coddlers of America’s enemies.

“This is purely a matter of congressional policy and national policy on how we want to conduct warfare now and in the future,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama. “Are we going to do it in a way that allows those we capture to sue us?”

The Republicans also prevented a direct vote on a plan to grant longer home leaves to U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those two factors – obedience to Bush’s claim of unlimited power as he wages his “war on terror” and refusal to relieve some of the pressure on American troops facing repeated deployments to the front lines – are almost certain to keep making matters worse.

The mix of tired and desperate soldiers operating in an environment in which every person on the street is viewed as a potential suicide bomber is a formula for continued abuses, endless slaughter and deepening hatreds.

Back home, Americans who ask too many annoying questions or don’t demonstrate the right attitude toward government leaders can expect to encounter the hostility of an incipient police state, a thug nation that reflects the pugnacious arrogance and the contempt for dissent that is the stock and trade of the nation’s current two-term President.

The Party of Torture, The Tasering, and the New Republican Apartheid
Brent Budowsky, The Hill via Smiking Chimp
Sep 20 2007

It was another day in the life of what is left of the Republican Party.

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) guaranteed his legacy after 29 years in the Senate as the champion and enabler of an Iraq war he long ago knew was wrong but never summoned the courage to oppose. After sabotaging Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) fight on behalf of American troops, he might as well be called Senator George W. Warner.

Meanwhile, having done a disservice to the troops and military families, the Republicans in the Senate, continuing their unprecedented tactic of waging war through filibuster, did a disservice to the rule of law through yet another successful filibuster against even minimal rights for detainees.

Poor Republican Sen. Susan Collins. She was upset because her Maine colleague, Sen. Olympia Snowe, voted in favor of detainee rights but neglected to tell Collins in advance.

Presumably Sen. Collins, facing a severe reelection challenge from Democrats, only votes her conscience for the rule of law when Sen. Snowe tells her in advance that she, too, will uphold the rule of law.

While the George W. Bush Republicans in the Senate spend their day disserving the troops and the rule of law, we learn that the State Department has given certain mercenary forces carte blanche in Iraq.

Blackwater may be hated by the Iraqi people and what is known as the Iraqi government, but in this war sold as a defense of democracy, anything goes in what retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones has properly called an occupation that should end.

Feeling left out of this day in the life of the Republican Party, the white men running for the Republican presidential nomination continued their apartheid-like boycott of debates seeking to reach Hispanic and black voters.

It is astounding, bizarre and a sign of the magnitude of their collapse that Republican candidates do not even pretend to care about the opinions and votes of either Hispanics or blacks.

In their world, African-Americans hardly exist at all; they’re little more than objects of voter suppression plans on Election Day. Hispanics are treated like the background music for right-wing immigration politics.

Meanwhile, in the latest expression of extreme intolerance, a college student gets the Taser treatment at a political forum on a college campus.

It is true that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity to rise to the occasion, did not distinguish himself.

It is also true, and far more true, and light years more important, that the Taser incident is only the latest example of an aggressive, extreme and un-American intolerance of alternative opinion and dissenting voices in which patriotic Americans in opposition to policy have been demeaned, ridiculed and at times beaten to a pulp.

President Bush presides over a government that commits illegal acts of torture, and then, according to the universally respected Gen. Antonio Taguba, commits illegal acts of cover-up to protect the guilty from their punishment under law, for their illegal acts of torture.

There is a lineage of repression, from the crimes at Abu Ghraib to the beatings with the Taser guns, and to the sins of Blackwater and the attacks on democracy in the name of democracy, which have the common thread of disrespect for the core values, and the core ideals and notions of diversity and mutual respect that have been the soul of Americanism since the Liberty Bell first rang in Philadelphia.

Yesterday on the floor of the United States Senate the victory belonged to George W. Bush, and to Republican Sen. George W. Warner, and to the sycophants and shills who have enabled through their actions what they know is wrong on matters of private conscience, national security and honor.

In November 2008 in the voting booths of America, the bell will toll for those who bring these disasters to the nation, and American democracy will be cleansed of the abuses that should never have taken place in our country, and hopefully will never take place again.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union …

Why Authoritarians Now Control the Republican Party:
The Rise of Authoritarian Conservatism
John W. Dean, FindLaw via Smirking Chimp
Sep 21 2007

This is the second in a three-part series of columns in which FindLaw columnist John Dean discusses his most recent book, Conservatives Without Conscience. - Ed.

Today, the Grand Old Republican Party is controlled by authoritarian conservatives. (As I mentioned in my prior column, the first in this three-part series, to my knowledge no person in the GOP has ever denied that fact - and they are well-aware of my book.) More specifically, as I broadly outlined in my last column, the research of social scientists such as Bob Altemeyer has revealed the personality traits of both those authoritarians who are followers, and those who are their leaders.

The Followers: Right-Wing Authoritarians

Princeton political scientist Fred I. Greenstein has cautioned about the uses of personality in analyzing political activity; in fact, he directly addressed “the tangled history of studies of authoritarianism.” He noted, however, that while the study of authoritarian personalities once seemed to be at a “dead end,” that has proven not to be the case. Rather, “in the 1980s an ingenious and rigorous program of inquiry by Altemeyer (1981, 1988) furnished persuasive empirical evidence that the original authoritarian construct was an approximation of an important political-psychological regularity–the existence in some individuals of an inner makeup that disposes them to defer to authority figures.”

These, of course, are followers. Altemeyer labeled these people “right-wing authoritarians” not because he was looking to target political conservatives, but rather because he was drawing broadly on the historical terms that identify those who openly submit to established authorities, and whether those authorities are political, economic or religious, those who submit to them are traditionally described as being on the right wing. As Altemeyer developed and refined his testing, however, it became apparent that those who tested as highly submissive to economic or religious authorities also proved to be hard-right political conservatives.

In addition to being especially submissive to established authority, Altemeyer’s research revealed that those he calls right-wing authoritarians also show “general aggressiveness” towards others, when such behavior is “perceived to be sanctioned” by established authorities. Finally, these people are always highly compliant with the social conventions endorsed by society and established authorities. These basic traits, submissiveness to authority and conventionality, are the essence of those Altemeyer describes as right-wing authoritarians. If these traits are not present in some significant (albeit varying) degree, he does not consider the subject to be a right-wing authoritarian. However, these people can, and often do, consistently reveal they have many other interesting traits as well.

Based on Altemeyer’s study, as well as those of other social psychologists, I prepared a list of the additional traits that these personalities, both men and women who test high as right-wing authoritarians, often evidence: highly religious, moderate to little education, trust untrustworthy authorities, prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals, women, and followers of religions other than their own), mean-spirited, narrow-minded, intolerant, bullying, zealous, dogmatic, uncritical toward their chosen authority, hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory, prone to panic easily, highly self-righteous, moralistic, strict disciplinarian, severely punitive, demands loyalty and returns it, little self-awareness, usually politically and economically conservative/Republican.

The Leaders: Social Dominators

Much of the work on authoritarianism focused on followers, and only in recent decades have social psychologists developed tests to measure the traits of authoritarian leaders, or as Altemeyer states, “person who wanted to be submitted to.” These people, because of their inclination and desire to dominate others and to dominate social situations in which they find themselves, are said to have a “social dominance orientation,” given their take-charge natures.

The term “social dominance orientation” may sound like academic jargon, but actually it is highly descriptive of the personalities of many who run social and political situations and organizations–the leaders who insist on running the show. The word “social,” of course, refers to the general organization of society; “dominance” relates to control or command over other people; and “orientation,” as used here, means their inclination or disposition. These are people who seize every opportunity to lead, who enjoy having power over others, and who will seek it both fairly and not so fairly.

People who test high as social dominators are also economically conservative and have little tolerance for equality. They consistently agree when asked about statements such as the following: “Some people are just more worthy than others”; “This country would be better off if we cared less about how equal all people were”; and “To get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on others.” In addition, they will respond in the negative to the proposition that “All humans should be treated equally.” (In fact, they are given many more questions when tested; I am merely providing a very small sample.)

Again, I have prepared a listing of the traits revealed in the testing of these remarkably manipulative and cunning personalities, who are typically men: dominating, opposes equality, desirous of personal power, amoral, intimidating and bullying, faintly hedonistic, vengeful, pitiless, exploitive, manipulative, dishonest, cheats to win, highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic), mean-spirited, militant, nationalistic, tells others what they want to hear, takes advantage of “suckers,” specializes in creating false images to sell self, may or may not be religious, usually politically and economically conservative/Republican.

These lists of traits for both right-wing authoritarian followers, and social dominating authoritarian leaders, should be understood as not necessarily describing every person who falls into the type. While many have all the traits, not all will have all, or even most, of them. Most people who test high as authoritarians, whether followers or leaders, have some of these traits, however.

(I will not deal, here, with another group which I address in Conservatives Without Conscience at some length: the groups of those who uniquely test high for all these traits - both those of a leader and those of a follower. This happens with a small number of social dominators when given both tests. Seeing themselves as running the world, they respond as high as followers do on certain traits, because they want people to follow them. These so-called “double highs” are people I labeled as “conservatives without conscience,” but they are beyond this summary. Nonetheless, they too fall under the general description of those leaders and followers who subscribe to authoritarian conservatism.)

Authoritarian Conservatism

No one familiar with the findings of social scientists who study authoritarianism relating to the social-dominating leaders was surprised when they became the leaders in control of the Republican Party, nor when they demanded strict adherence to their conservative political, religious and economic worldview. Nor was there any surprise among social scientists when the right-wing authoritarian followers went along with their leaders, not to mention aggressively pushing the message and turning against those who were not believers.

Needless to say, Republicans have not come anywhere close to pursuing the type of political authoritarianism found in countries like China and Russia, or in any of the many semi-dictatorial or quasi-totalitarian governments. Our constitutional system makes that nearly impossible. Nor is authoritarian conservatism new in our country.

Alexander Hamilton, the monarchist-leaning founding father, can justifiably be considered America’s first prominent authoritarian conservative. Political scientists Charles W. Dunn and J. David Woodard reported in their study The Conservative Tradition in America that Hamilton’s “brand of conservatism may be properly labeled authoritarian conservatism.”

Dunn and Woodard trace the ideology of authoritarian conservatism to Joseph de Maistre, a French nobleman and political polemicist who became an outspoken opponent of Enlightenment thinking, and who favored a strong central government. De Maistre was more famously known by later generations for his admiration of hangmen, whom he felt were essential for social order.

Conservative scholar Peter Viereck examined authoritarian conservatism in his work Conservatism: From John Adams to Churchill, in which he reported the “rival brands” of early conservatism, dividing them into two founding schools: that of Edmund Burke, and that of Maistre. Viereck characterized Burkean conservatism as “the moderate brand,” while characterizing Maistre’s as “reactionary.” Burkean conservatism was not authoritarian but constitutionalist, while Maistrean conservatism was “authoritarian in its stress on the authority” being granted to “some traditional elite.” Although most conservative scholars choose to ignore Maistre, treating him as an unwelcome member of the family, his work is significant in that it suggests that authoritarianism was an integral component of conservatism at the time of its founding.

As one sifts through the conservative philosophy of the religious right and of the neo-conservatives, the Maistrean philosophy is conspicuously present. Unlike traditional conservatives who embrace varying degrees of libertarianism - drawn from the core beliefs of classic Nineteenth Century liberalism - the authoritarian conservative wants an all-powerful chief executive who runs a mighty military that implements his will.

Authoritarian conservatism was growing in force in Washington for a decade before Bush and Cheney arrived at the White House, but their administration has taken it to its highest and most dangerous level in American history. It is doubtful they could have accomplished this, had authoritarian conservatism not already taken hold in Congress and the federal judiciary. In the final segment of this three-part series of columns, I will highlight a few of the aspects of authoritarian conservatism that are troubling for American government.

Stephen Colbert and Naomi Wolf
Colbert Report, Comedy Central

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
Naomi Wolf, The Guardian UK
Tuesday April 24, 2007

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations.

Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don’t learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of “homeland” security - remember who else was keen on the word “homeland” - didn’t raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a “war footing”; we were in a “global war” against a “global caliphate” intending to “wipe out civilisation”. There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. “This time,” Fein says, “there will be no defined end.”

Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler’s invocation of a communist threat to the nation’s security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the “global conspiracy of world Jewry”, on myth.

It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

2. Create a gulag

Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal “outer space”) - where torture takes place.

At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, “enemies of the people” or “criminals”. Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.

This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA “black site” prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can’t investigate adequately.

But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don’t generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: “First they came for the Jews.” Most Americans don’t understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People’s Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

3. Develop a thug caste

When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America’s security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution

Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration’s endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.

Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for “public order” on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station “to restore public order”.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

In Mussolini’s Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens’ phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about “national security”; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. Harass citizens’ groups

The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens’ groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.

Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 “suspicious incidents”. The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track “potential terrorist threats” as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as “terrorism”. So the definition of “terrorist” slowly expands to include the opposition.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a “list” of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

In 2004, America’s Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela’s government - after Venezuela’s president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.

Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, “because I was on the Terrorist Watch list”.

“Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that,” asked the airline employee.

“I explained,” said Murphy, “that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution.”

“That’ll do it,” the man said.

Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of “enemy of the people” tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can’t get off.

7. Target key individuals

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don’t toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile’s Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not “coordinate”, in Goebbels’ term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically “coordinate” early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.

Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that “waterboarding is torture” was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were “coordinated” too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

8. Control the press

Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC’s Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN’s Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

9. Dissent equals treason

Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage’. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of “spy” and “traitor”. When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times’ leaking of classified information “disgraceful”, while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the “treason” drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and “beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death”, according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, dissidents were “enemies of the people”. National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy “November traitors”.

And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an “enemy combatant”. He has the power to define what “enemy combatant” means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define “enemy combatant” any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin’s gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo’s, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. “Enemy combatant” is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. “We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we’re going to hold you,” says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn’t real dissent. There just isn’t freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

10. Suspend the rule of law

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s governor and its citizens.

Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears’s meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole’s baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: “A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night … Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition’.”

Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch’s soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias’ power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini’s march on Rome or Hitler’s roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war” in a “long war” - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the “what ifs”.

What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.

Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody’s help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

We need to look at history and face the “what ifs”. For if we keep going down this road, the “end of America” could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny,” wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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