06/13/2003
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX: Facing Reality In Our Time
Sam Hamod
(We may have to go to the UN or the Hague to stop the fascism of Bush and Ashcroft before it’s too late for our American democracy. At present, neither our speaking or writing is having the effect necessary to stop this fascistic steamrollering of democracy and civil rights in America and the world.)
We come now, sober from anger, sober from reading, from writing our hearts out, from facing the lies we have been told, facing the hard cold facts that our nation is but one step away from fascism, from a Hitlerian dictatorship that has pushed America into the permanent war that Orwell wrote about a half-century ago.
How could we have come to this pass? How could the American people have become so dumbed down that many do not have any sense of what is happening? How could we come to a time when parents who lost their children in needless wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq are among those waving flags to cheer Bush on? How can people who have been out of work, who may lose their homes, who may never find another good paying job, continue to come out to cheer and wave flags for Bush and the men who have busted the economy and who are setting it up for the longest running depression in history? How can the American people sit night after night and watch “news casts” that are but reports allowing Bush and his cronies to monopolize the air-waves with pseudo-event stories that are but embellishments of their designs and desires, replete with false “evidence”, with outright lies and comments about fears that have no basis in fact, but are still believed by the American people?
What has caused this easy malaise, this feeling that whatever our president says must be supported? What has caused supposedly educated men in the senate, men of means who do not need to take further bribes from big business, from big pharmacy companies, from big defense contractors, to wallow about like overgrown pigs in a slough grasping for another morsel of payola, while ignoring their to God sworn obligation to this democracy that was won on the back of brave men under Washington, under Grant, under Eisenhower, Patton in the fields, on the beaches of Normandy, in the Ardennes, and the snows of Korean winters? How is it that the media, which is owned by the public, is no longer owned by the public, but by an FCC that is corrupted by payola from big media giants and even a foreigner who came here while going bankrupt in Australia and England and became the biggest single media owner in American history, Rupert Murdoch? How is it that there is no longer an honest “paper of record” in this land—the lies the NY Times has been spewing all these years, and the corruption at the Washington Post are but showing a small sliver of their actual biases and corruptions? How did the fabled “fourth estate” suddenly disappear in dollar signs as the corporatocracy took over every shred of our government and media while the citizenry slept?
There are so many things wrong in this land that was once ours, that is now in the grip of the Bush madmen that it is hard to find out where one must start. It is easy to say, become involved—but, involved in what? You can’t turn to the major two parties—both are corrupt and complicitous in this evil venture of taking away and allowing our government to be taken from the people and sold to the highest bidders in every sphere.
Our Supreme Court is no longer a balance of power—it is full of ideologues and third rate judges who are praised by the know-nothing columnists who write for the “news” papers. Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist—none would ever make a good law school faculty, let alone be thought of as good lawyers or jurists by such men as Learned Hand, Justice Cardozo or Justice Holmes. Frankly, if they’d come to my class in cross examination, I would have wondered how they got into law school in the first place; but they must have known how to suck up to some people or had good memories but no thinking matter in their skulls as is evidenced by their decisions over the past several years.
What is worse, this Bush administration is now “seeding” the juridical realm by putting Chertoff, one of Ashcroft’s top fascistic lieutenants into an appeals court role, and taking another top lieutenant, Viet Linh and putting him on the Georgetown Law School faculty to teach Constitutional Law. Linh had been at Georgetown in the past, but he now returns with more connections to an ideological administration, rather than working as a more objective academic with court experience. Thus, even if this evil empire Bush and Ashcroft have constructed that is tearing away at the fabric of our democracy, crumbles from the top, they will have put their evil minions into the infrastructure so that the virus will continue even if the feverish surface is dealt with.
The problem is compounded by the fact that a person, or a group, must get a court to judge that something Ashcroft or others have done is illegal or wrong. Unfortunately, as we are aware from a plethora of articles, Bush is trying to seed the courts with his ideological type nominees—not with jurists who are committed to the law as we know it, i.e., Chertoff is in place and others are in the pipeline. Linh, while teaching Constitutional Law at Georgetown will have the prestige of a university behind him when he writes articles defending these biases. And, when judges go against Ashcroft and his opinions, he has been known to put pressure on them and to ask the Department of Justice to look into their opinions in order to see if the judges are “qualified” to render those decisions or what may be done to either appeal the decision, or have the judge removed from the case or even from the bench.
At this time, the do-nothing Democrats have been of little help. They did not raise one question or objection to the Patriot Act, even though the ACLU and other civil liberties groups warned them of the great harm this act would wreak upon our nation and its civil liberties. They have not raised a big stink on Patriot II or even when Ashcroft went before the Congress to ask for even more power to “combat terrorism”—even though he has shown no proof that there are large numbers, or even small numbers, of terrorists in our land. Someone has to light a fire under the Democrats and it may be you and your friends; otherwise, they will go along as docile dogs waiting for the bones the Bush team throws them or the media allows them. This is true of the presidential candidates, aside from Kucinich, Sharpton and at times, Dean. They have not raised a stink about the terrible situation at Guantanamo where even children are being held as “terrorists”—even as they hear of it as a possible death and execution chamber.
But let’s consider what must be done if the Congress does not act. THEN, WE MUST FORM DELEGATIONS, OR ONE VERY LARGE DELEGATION TO GO TO T HE UNITED NATIONS AND THE INTERNATIONAL COURT AT THE HAGUE.
What I see as wrong in the thinking of some is that they are still trying to work within a corrupted and twisted system in the congress and in the courts. I think we should take the tack adopted by Malcolm X (Malik Al Shabazz), when he decided to take the case of the discrimination against American blacks to the United Nations. Unfortunately, I am sure the government was complicitious in his death, and probably was behind it, because he was only days away from presenting his speech to the UN (supported by Nasser, Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nehru and other third world national leaders from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Africa). It appears this may be the only solution to the massive fascism taking place in the U.S. at this time. I’m sure we could get enough support from the UN General Assembly to present the case against Bush and Ashcroft of fascism and discrimination. This would take a tremendous amount of courage from the Arab and Muslims communities to help participate, because there is so much fear in those communities at this time—both among naturalized citizens, green card holders and even those born in America because of the unbridled power of Ashcroft and his minions; but they would have to be in the forefront because they, like the Japanese in WWII, are the primary targets of this new discrimination, as was the case for so many centuries of the blacks in America that Malcolm X wanted to present to the UN.
I am not sure how much good it will do us legally to do this, but at least it will alert the world to the situation in a stronger way and let them know that the American people are not behind Bush and his devilment. It may also put pressure on the US to do something to at least correct some small part of matters, because the US delegation at the UN and elsewhere will no longer be able to criticize other nations for their civil, legal and human rights abuses; they can point an accurate and strong finger a the US and say, “Clean up your own illegal and immoral activities!” As to the Hague, I am not sure if they will take the case, but it will cause a stir in international judicial circles that may put an onus on the US to clean up its act. I know these are long shots, but they are better than trying to clean up corruption with corrupt judges making the decisions; no reason to go to the fox to ask him to help protect the chicken coop.
There you have it, this may be the only alternative. At this point, the media is owned by the likes of Murdoch and his Faux News and other corporate supporters and beneficiaries of Bush’s largesse (as they also help him with large donations); the newspapers of “record”, the NY Times and Washington Post have both been flag wavers for Bush’s wars and other lies; the Congress, on both sides of the aisle, bow down to King Bush whenever he speaks. This is not to say that the presentation to the UN or the Hague will totally solve the problem, but it might wake more people up in the world and in the U.S. and might even embarrass the congress into action to stop this rape of America by this team of terrorists and vandals, these uncivilized and undemocratic huns.
At this point, we can either do this, or we can bury our heads in the sand like the ostriches that many have become, and just let it continue. We can even continue writing our articles, preaching to the choir, but that will not be sufficient because the positions in America have become so diametrically opposed that neither side wants to argue rationally any more, but rather wants to shout one another down or to hear applause from their own supporters.
Thus, I propose we have a conference, not with speeches, but with ideas, so that we may go forward to make a plan and a representation that might get a hearing either at the UN General Assembly or at the Hague. Nations whose nationals must also participate in this appeal to go to the UN or the Hague, so as to demand democratic and juridical rights for their nationals who are being abused at Guantanamo and other places in the world at this time by the Bush illegals. This is one way of dealing with this intolerable situation that will definitely get worse before it gets better. It’s as I used to say to other property owners, “The leaking faucet doesn’t get better, it only gets worse—so you’d better fix it sooner before it leads to more damage than just a leaky faucet.” We have a leaky democracy that must be fixed, and it’s on the second floor—if we don’t fix it, it may keep leaking in such a way as to cave in the ceiling of the first floor.
