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CounterPunch
November
7, 2002
Resistance!
by WAYNE MADSEN
For all those who, like me, feel that November
6, 2002 is much like December 13, 2000 (Gore's concession speech)
and September 11, 2001, it's time to stop the hand wringing and
get to serious work to save this nation from certain disaster.
But first, some background on families and conspiracies to commit
crimes.
More than any other entity, families
are in the best position to engage in conspiracies. They have
blood-bound loyalty to one another, they can keep secrets, and
they unhesitatingly share their resources. When family conspiracies
engage in criminal enterprises, the FBI and other law enforcement
agencies rely on criminal conspiracy statutes to prosecute the
offenders. When the family name is Gambino, Columbo, or other
names that end in vowels, the news media does not ridicule the
government for using the word conspiracy. But when political
families that trace their ancestries back to the Mayflower are
accused of criminal conspiracy, the accusers are painted as "conspiracy
nuts" and "Grassy Knoll adherents."
Be that as it may. However, it is clear
that the Bush family and their moneyed supporters have staged
a coup d'etat in the United States.  They
did not use tanks or armored personnel carriers as we've seen
in many other countries. The Bushes honed years of deception
operations practiced by the CIA and military to create a perception
that only they could save the country and then proceeded to manage
that perception through a series of dramatic events - planned
and unplanned.
Let's examine how this creeping coup
has progressed since 2000. When Dubya was defeated in the New
Hampshire GOP primary, the Bush deceivers began to pile on his
opponent John McCain and his family. McCain's prisoner-of-war
record was questioned, his wife was accused of being a drug addict,
and his adopted daughter was accused of being fathered by McCain
out of wedlock. I have previously written about how such vicious
attacks are the hallmark of Karl Rove - the star pupil of tricky
Dick Nixon's chief trickster Donald Segretti. After the disinformation
campaign by Dubya and company, McCain was trounced in South Carolina
and his campaign died as a result.
Next target: Al Gore. This operation
began well before the hanging chad ballots were counted in Florida's
questionable vote counting nightmare. Florida Secretary of State
Katherine Harris, a Jeb Bush protégé and sometime
main squeeze, contracted out to DBT, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint,
to scrub Florida's electoral rolls of all ex-convicts. In total,
over 57,000 names were excised from the rolls and, of these,
8000 people who were mostly black and who either never committed
a crime or were only guilty of past misdemeanors, were thrown
off the voters' lists. Some Floridians with common names were
accused of committing crimes in Dallas only because DBT owned
the database for Dallas, Texas criminal histories. Only problem
for the disenfranchised voters, many had never been to Texas,
let alone Dallas! Since most of the barred black voters would
have opted for Gore, the margin of victory for Dubya was guaranteed.
And then there were the curious butterfly ballots in south Florida.
The placement of names in Palm Beach Country was designed by
an election official who quickly left her job after the dirty
deed was done. But she supposedly was a Democrat said the media.
But no one ever checked. As you will read on - in perception
management campaigns, no one every checks anything. There is
no need, just believe what someone who looks and acts official
says. It is all so very convenient and easy.
So it was with Missouri Governor Mel
Carnahan. He evened up the race to replace the far-out extremist
Senator John Ashcroft. But days before the election, his plane
crashed. Carnahan and his son were killed. Rather than fighting
the fact that Carnahan was elected anyway, Ashcroft became Attorney
General under Bush. Carnahan's wife Jean took her husband's place
in the Senate. She voted against Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney
General. She became an enemy of the Bushes. She would be dealt
with at the proper time.
On May 6, 1984, a presidential election
was conducted in a country across the Caribbean from Florida.
A man named Nicolas Ardito Barletta was declared the winner after
receiving only 1, 713 more votes than his opponent. This razor-thin
margin was out of a total of 600,000 votes cast. The opposition
cried foul. They said Panama's military strongman Gen. Manuel
Noriega had rigged the election in favor of Barletta by simply
tampering with the vote tabulation computers. The United States
expressed concern at the time but did not do anything to sanction
Panama. The reason was that Vice President George H. W. Bush
was using Noriega and Panama to funnel arms to Nicragua's contras
in exchange for looking the other way on drug shipments. Later,
when he became President, H. W. Bush invaded Panama, arrested
Noriega. He knew too much about Bush who was running for reelection.
He had to be dealt with and he was. But that computerized vote
counting tampering would come in handy for another Bush in the
future. But more on that later.
Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001
on a Saturday that can only be described as one of the grayest,
coldest, and most foreboding days I have ever experienced in
Washington, DC. Call it an omen, but I had the feeling something
terrible was in store for the country - and it was.
Although I had been writing about Bush
administration officials increasing contacts with members of
the Taliban and Pakistan's extreme Islamist leaders in order
to gain a safe footing in Afghanistan to build a pipeline across
the country from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, I had no idea that
the backroom deals involved threats by the United States to attack
the country. Of course, a country that treated women the way
it did, that destroyed ancient and priceless artifacts, and harbored
master terrorist Osama bin Laden should have been attacked for
many reasons other than its foot dragging on a pipeline deal.
But it now appears that these threats emboldened Bin Laden to
carry out his long-planned attack against America. And Bush must
have known that from his briefings by CIA Director George Tenet.
After all, it was Tenet who helped arrange the Taliban-Bush administration
liaisons. And it was Tenet who possessed all the foreign and
other intelligence on Bin Laden's plans.
So when Bush was first told about the
planes striking the World Trade Center and we all saw him nod
his head as if he already knew and when he seemed more engaged
in listening to a seven-year-old girl talk about her freaking
pet goat, it all now makes sense. He pushed the Taliban and they
pushed back. For this Bush, this war would be worldwide, it would
last forever. Unlike his Daddy, his popularity ratings would
remain high, he would have political coat tails, and he would
be re-elected.
On September 12, 2001, I received a call
from a friend from abroad who has close ties to the intelligence
community. I will never forget what my colleague said, "Wayne,
you must understand what happened in your country yesterday was
a coup d'etat." At first, I thought the comment was strange
and that I may have misunderstood its meanings. Today, I do not.
Shortly after 9-11, someone placed lethal
aerosolized anthrax in envelopes and tried to murder Senators
Tom Daschle, the newly-installed Democratic majority leader,
and Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy. Along with members
of the news media, both Democratic leaders received anthrax letters
in the mail. The business of the Congress was severely disrupted
during a time that Bush and Ashcroft were trying to ramrod the
Hitleresque USA PATRIOT Act through the legislative branch. The
gambit worked. Only Senator Russ Feingold voted against the bill
in the Senate. Incidentally, his office was next door to Daschle's.
Two postal workers, an elderly woman in Connecticut, a tabloid
photo journalist who had photos of Dubya's drunken daughters,
and a New York City nurse were killed by the anthrax attack.
For those who carried out the attack it was "collateral
damage." The FBI began to drag their feet on the investigation
as it closed in on the CIA's notorious bio-warfare playground,
Fort Detrick, Maryland. The involvement of government and government
contractors in aerosolized anthrax development was widely reported
abroad. But when one in managing perceptions, it is vitally important
to have the media ignore the story domestically and shrug off
international attention as being within the domain of conspiracy
kooks. Plausible deniability.
Dubya must now deal with an opposition-controlled
Senate and ensure his hold on the House. But he has some cleaning
up to do. The House has some members who question Bush's role
in 9-11 and his commitment to the constitution. Two of them -
Georgia Republican Bob Barr - who has an important subcommittee
chairmanship in the House Judiciary Committee - and Georgia Democrat
Cynthia McKinney, are real trouble for Bush. Barr wants to examine
the privacy impact of Bush's top priority - creating a Department
of Homeland Security (a designation uncomfortably Teutonic-sounding).
McKinney has brought up Bush's ties to oil companies, the Taliban
pipeline deal, and Daddy Bush's ties to Bin Laden and the Saudis
via his membership on the board of The Carlyle Group. Veteran
Georgia State Representative Billy McKinney, the congresswoman's
father, is a powerbroker in Atlanta. To get the daughter, the
father must be dealt with. And two senior Democratic politicians
- Senator Max Cleland and Governor Roy Barnes, largely owe their
jobs to Georgia's black voters. To clean house in Georgia will
involve a political operation to eliminate all these problems
for Bush. And what better way than to use the results of the
recent census that redrew Georgia's political districts. Get
a relatively unknown Republican-turned-Democrat to challenge
McKinney and get former Barr supporters who now live inside McKinney's
district to vote for her challenger. Meanwhile, that siphons
off votes for Barr who is in a primary match off with the pro-Bush
Representative John Linder. It works. Both Barr and McKinney
are defeated. The McKinney father gets knocked out in a primary
run-off. And Cleland and Barnes go down to defeat in the general
election. Cleland suffered from a Republican attack ad that accused
him of coddling Osama bin Laden and Sadaam Hussein because he
opposed Bush's Homeland Security Department, Although he lost
two legs and an arm when he threw himself atop a grenade in Vietnam
in order to save his buddies, Cleland's patriotism was questioned.
But remember back to the Bush campaign against McCain? It fit
a pattern of continual perception management. As for Barnes,
he was aware that the entire political operation to cull anti-Bush
politicians in Georgia was staged out of the office of Senator
Zell Miller, ostensibly a Democrat but one of Bush's biggest
boosters in the Senate. I reported on this Miller operation during
the summer before the August primaries in Georgia and knew it
did not auger well for the future of the country.
Which brings us to the November 5 election.
By all indications, a heavy voter turnout was to benefit the
Democrats. And during the day, the reports came in that voter
turnout was heavy in the key states that could determine who
would control the Senate. But this election had already raised
questions ten days before when Minnesota's Senator Paul Wellstone,
who had recently voted against Bush's Iraq War Resolution and
received a boost in the polls, died along with his wife, daughter,
staff, and pilots in a plane crash while en route to a campaign
stop. Perception management fell into high gear when a Minneapolis
memorial service for Wellstone and his family was billed as a
pep rally. It wasn't Lutheran, Catholic, or otherwise staid enough
for the Republicans in attendance. The African American choruses
must have grated on the nerves of Trent Lott and company. So
the GOP trashed the service as a campaign rally and demanded
equal time on Minnesota television. When former Vice President
Walter Mondale was chosen to replace Wellstone, the attacks came
fast and furious. During a last minute debate on a woman's right
to choose an abortion, Mondale was caught off guard when his
smarmy opponent Norm Coleman sought sympathy because he and his
wife had lost two children. Everyone broke out the violins. But
Coleman's official biography on his web site said nothing about
such a tragedy. The media though Mondale should have known anyway.
But how do any of us know? It should be mentioned that Coleman
has a cousin who regularly appears on the Imus in the Morning
radio and cable television show. Although we all know the Imus
show as nothing more than a slimy vat of mostly pro-Bush politicians
and commentators, Coleman's cousin is often accused by his radio
colleagues of making up stories and in one case stealing mis-delivered
shirts from a laundry. Could such a propensity for telling untruths
run in the family? In any case, there was never any proof that
Coleman's emotive plea for sympathy had any grounds.
But something else occurred just before
the election. Two snipers, later said to be homeless, shot at
least 13 people in and around Washington, DC. Ten of them died.
Meanwhile, as the capital city of the United States went into
a traumatized state, Bush was busy hopping around the country
campaigning for GOP candidates. Not once did he make an announcement
that the investigation would be federalized. Not once did he
attend a funeral of a victim. But when Maryland police finally
captured John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, the feds immediately
moved in to take over. At the same time we learned that Muhammad
was a former US Army Sergeant who served in the Gulf War and
that he may have once been stationed with another US Army Special
Forces Sergeant named Ali Mohammed who later became the chief
training officer for Al Qaeda. It also was clear that Muhammad
was far from homeless - he spent a large amount of time in the
Caribbean (where Ali Mohammed had recruited Al Qaeda members)
and had been involved in a plot to kidnap Antigua's Prime Minister.
Muhammad was apparently involved in a document forgery scheme
on the island to get people illegally into the United States.
The two possessed a Global Positioning System device and lap
top computer. Not the normal paraphernalia for homeless people.
While Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Washington
State prosecutors were eager to get their hands on the two snipers,
the Federal government began taking a keen interest in the two.
For the local prosecutors, Muhammad and Malvo became a virtual
"X File."
Had the snipers not been caught, the
close Maryland elections would have driven people away from the
polls in Montgomery and Prince George's County. That was the
perception and it started to be managed by the local media until
the snipers were arrested.
The heavy turnout on November 5 excited
the Democrats, especially in states where a heavy black turnout
would help them. There had been problems reported in Baltimore
with black voter intimidation. One leaflet distributed in African
American precincts exhorted people to vote on November 6 but
only if they had paid their rent and taxes. In Tennessee, the
GOP sent out a letter to poll workers telling them to turn away
anyone who had registered via the motor-voter process. But after
the thrown 2000 election, this was small potatoes. What was not
is what occurred just before the polls closed. The Voter News
Service - a consortium of media outlets that tally voter responses
from sample precincts to project winners - announced that its
computer systems had crashed and therefore the vote tallies would
have to come from the Secretaries of State. Secretaries of State
and computer glitches. All so familiar. Remember Katherine Harris
in 2000 and what H. W. Bush's buddy Noriega did in Panama in
1984?
As the venerable Senator Robert Byrd
has warned on many occasions. This country is on the precipice
of the same fate that befell the Roman Republic. He said we might
as well hand a sign on the Statue of Liberty saying "Closed
for Business." Byrd is right. But he is just one man now
in a Senate that will be dominated by the far right that is intent
on destroying the United States.
I am proposing that we create a mass
political movement modeled on that of Solidarity in Poland, of
the Maquis in Vichy France, of the African National Congress
in South Africa, and of Falun Gong in China. I propose this movement
merely be called "Resistance." It cannot be based on
the model used by the anti-globalists -- a coalition of small
and large groups with varying agendas. Coalitions are historically
weak and ultimately fail. Mass movements, however, have often
met with success.
We must organize and resist an obvious
attempt to continue the Bush coup d'etat. I am a journalist and
not the most tech-savvy person in the world. But before this
administration carries out its plans to place curbs on the Internet,
we must take the little time we have left to use this resource
to organize our resistance movement. Many of us feel like crawling
into a cocoon and just wait out Bush. This option is impossible.
Because with Jeb Bush's re-election in Florida look for four
more years of Dubya and eight years of Jeb. This country can't
afford an oligarchy like that.
So with an impending never-ending war
for Middle East oil (which will begin with Iraq but will not
end there), the re-emergence of a draft, further curtailment
of civil liberties, more and more Americans being placed in prisons
and detention camps, more corporatization of a Bush-beholden
news media, more political and character assassinations, and
more influence over our government by extreme religious fundamentalists
- Resistance must stand in the way.
This Resistance movement must be grass
roots, it must remain non-partisan and open to all who feel this
administration is a menace, it must not be totally reliant on
the Internet for the sake of those who are not trained in computer
use, especially our senior citizens and lower wage scale communities,
and first and foremost it must take its lessons from the non-violence
exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
But that doesn't mean it has to be passive
either. Using the web we can inform people about what is occurring
in various parts of the country, blow the whistle on government
officials carrying out the Bush agenda and pressure radio stations
and advertisers to get rid of the right-wing gabfest hosts that
plague the government-licensed radio waves. We can at the local
level dig up anything from the past of the Bushites that will
damage their credibility and force them from office. We must
organize and stay that way. Our Founding Fathers and Mothers
showed us the way. If they did not stand together, surely they
would have all hung separately. So said Benjamin Franklin.
We must invite help from our friends
in other countries, particularly Canada. When Bush restores the
draft, we must set up routes of safe passage and refuge for our
young people. We ask our Canadian friends to help in this effort.
If people are rounded up because of their
religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs, we must restore the
Underground Railroad of the pre-Civil War days. We would ask
our Canadian and Mexican friends for help.
We must help those political leaders
still in office who share our fears and goals to stay in office
and not be picked off as the Bushites have done with so many
others.
Everyone can make a contribution. Homemakers
can take a bit of time to check out local libraries and government
records offices for adverse information on politicians who promote
the Bush agenda or just merely "ask around." Graphic
designers can help with Resistance movement logos (symbols for
a movement are vitally important). Web designers and network
specialists can help with web site development and maintenance.
The clergy can help with outreach as they have done so many times
in the past. Social and religious groups can help with providing
meeting facilities. Or anyone can help with just plain ideas.
On the other hand, we can all sit back
and complain and watch the situation worsen. It is the easier
way. But too many have sacrificed for this country to take that
path. I am raising my hand to volunteer to stop what is happening
to the United States. Is there anyone else willing to join me?
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth.
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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by the Right
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Hypocrisy
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Mayor Walid Hamad
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October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
The Great Containment:
GM Fallout from Mexico to Zambia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Wolf Who Cried Wolf:
Charging Anti-Semitism & Extending the Iron Wall
Gavin Keeney
The Fusion Thing:
Landscape + Architecture
Adam Engel
A Good Man is Hard to Misfit
Anis Shivani
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Jason Leopold
Is Thomas White Fit to Lead the Army?
Philip Farruggio
Let Them Eat (Crumb) Cake
Josh Frank
The Grassroots of Hope
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: episode 5
Night School
M. Shahid
Alam
The Civilizing Mission
October 25, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
"Who Is This Chickenshit?"
Stuart Timmons
Harry
Hay Dead at 90:
He Paved the Way for Modern Gay Activism
Vanessa Jones
Australia
Votes Green:
Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
Rep.
Tom Lantos' Big Lie
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Behind
the Drive for War:
The Escalating Bush Military Budget
Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
on the Verge
October 24,
2002
Jo Freeman
How the
Christian Coalition Boosts Israel
Ben Tripp
George
W.: Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Harry Browne
Ireland's Dreary Yes to Nice
Anis Shivani
A Guide
for the Perplexed:
the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
New Improved War
William Hughes
A Free
Press, But for Whom?
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
Arabia
Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
Say "Not Until We're Married":
Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
Mongering:
A Game of Chess with Lives at Stake
Roger Peacock
Marketing the War on Iraq
Resources:
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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