They hate us because of our freedom — our meat-eating, fur-wearing freedom.
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December 20, 2005
WB: The Vegan Threat
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They hate your wedding too. But DoD is on the watch:
According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call “suspicious” meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story, first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week, noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school’s LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as “possibly violent” by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a “credible threat” of terrorism.
Good news. The judge in the PA “intelligent design” case slapped down the school board, the law firm looking for a test case for their desire to slide religion into a public school cirriculum, sort of like a frat boy hoping to find a sleeping Tri Delt in the house..
anyway, the judge stated that Intelligent Design is a religious doctrine. The New Yorker had a good article about the case a few weeks back…can’t find it now.
Strangely, CNN now has a reporter who label/beat is “Values” and something else…VERY, VERY, VERY creeeeepy, CNN.
Are “values” that get reported also about treatment of the poor and homeless? How about the ethical implications of a president ignoring the law because his lawyers decided he has unlimited power?
Yoo, Ashcroft and Gonzales…are they the architects of the demise of democracy? so it would seem…they’ve provided the scaffolding. glad they weren’t hearing the case in PA over intelligent design. I’m sure they would have found some way to say that if Bush, as the executive, believes intelligent design makes sense, then it does.
Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 20 2005 18:40 utc | 3
And from Billmon’s NYTimes quote:
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a “Vegan Community Project.” Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group’s “semi-communistic ideology.” A third indicates the bureau’s interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.
–hey, maybe my next-door-neighbor and I can check to see what the FBI wrote about their visit to our places. When I read about Bush authorizing the spying, I knew the FBI visits he and I experienced must have been part of that, since my neighbor signed an answer petition at a rally in DC and I did hang out with (gasp) Quakers at protests…one of whom was the mom of a women I know.
I also get an email from the local chapter of Peace and Justice, which is maintained by the dedication of the son of a Lutheran minister…and he already knows they keep tabs on him.
Let’s see…mr fbi man- my sex life is too vanilla to be of interest. no dressing up like J. Edgar…well, not cross-dressing, at least…
the next few weeks I will be decluttering my house, so if you want to confiscate my back issues of Vanity Fair and Dissent and Mother Jones…here’s your chance. You can wait till I drop them off at recyling to save you some trouble.
Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 20 2005 18:56 utc | 4
They told me that you had gone totally insane and that your methods were unsound
Posted by: Captain Benjamin L. Willard | Dec 20 2005 19:04 utc | 5
Watch out for those mirrors, cap’n.
And don’t forget what you said:
I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable – plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’s memory – any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine.
Posted by: fauxreal | Dec 20 2005 19:17 utc | 6
The strangest, saddest, scariest part of all this is that anyone who has been involved with activist groups knows that they rarely have enough money to buy a pot to piss in. The government is spending far more money monitoring these groups than the groups themselves have or spend. Where that puts us on the road to totalitarianism is anybody’s guess.
And most groups take it for granted that at least one member of the group is a spy. There is also precious little “to find out” about these groups. Actions are publicised as best as can be afforded. Meetings are democratic and public, in fact, meeting minutes are usually published. So what is there to find out?
So what is there to find out?
probably looking for such answers as:
the intimidation/paranoia factor alone also plays a role. hard to feel comfortable w/ being on a watch list. and foia requests alone could break most groups.
here’s the aclu fbi spy files link
Posted by: b real | Dec 20 2005 22:42 utc | 8
This major malefice is exploding all over even the corporate news network, otherwise know as CNN. And yet again, I expect the dems to just sit by and do nothing…
“Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise.” -David Mamet
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 21 2005 0:05 utc | 9
Andras Riedlmayer writes on Juan Cole’s site :
And why would our government care to know about any of this? Because they hate our freedoms!
There’s a phrase that needs repeating.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Dec 21 2005 3:03 utc | 10
malooga
i think i have already mentioned this but in the late 60’s-70’s – the maois offshoot of sds – progressive labour party was functioning with a full two thirds of its membership being polie, agents or informers & in holland there also existed a communist party!ùarxisr-leninist) which was created from complete cloth by the dutch intelligence services – it had its own newspapers & had fraternal relations with china & albania etc
if what we were living through was not so bloody & sordid it would constitute a higher form of comedy
unfortunately, it s tragic – tragic beyond comprehension
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 21 2005 3:21 utc | 11
I read a history of SNCC which ended on the fact that historians only knew that the organization still existed after 1970…because an FBI agent was there taking notes at all the meetings.
I still have great difficulty understanding that there are significant groups of people in power who believe that progressive-radical politics are the biggest threat to America. I think it is perhaps that they are a biggest threat to the “American way” than violent radical fundamentalism.
Posted by: Rowan | Dec 21 2005 4:06 utc | 12
So, the media’s finally started to pick up on some of the surveillance stories, but have yet to ask the question “Why?”.
(Hey pal, pass me that tinfoil hat, will ya? Thanks)
Lots of comparisons between the Bushies and the Nazis here… except for the part about murdering millions of humans. Are these folks capable of everything except that? OK, OK… but they don’t have any problems with torture, so would they have any qualms about using any other means at their disposal to weaken the American public’s ability to oppose them? Which would they use , and which would they forsake? What about next week?
Hey, you whistle-blowers out there, if you’ve got anything on these guys, you’d better cough it up quick, before that Soma in your cereal this morning kicks in.
“If they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry much about the answers” Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Posted by: I’m a Drift | Dec 21 2005 4:09 utc | 13
The board seems strangely quiet of late. Best ascribed to R.L (Real Life) intruding in the holiday season. It certainly won’t be paranoia because if some oppressed government worker is putting food on his table by reporting events on the moon, then there’s a people’s servant with a particularly tough row to hoe.
If the US political structure is approaching it’s ethical nadir then perhaps it’s time for thinking inhabitants of that land to suborn a little corporate speak and turn this disaster into a challenge. Then make the challenge an opportunity.
While I’m sure that thinking amerikans aren’t particularly surprised that their elected leaders regard the nation’s founding document as a series of obstacles to be in turn avoided, attacked, ignored and subverted before being finally overcome; the clear evidence of this quickly followed by a defiant admission of divine innocence, must be a shock.
From the outside, looking in and reasonably untainted by exceptionalism, the rest of the world just can’t seem to understand why amerikans didn’t see it coming. Yet why would they? Most people in the end accept that their beliefs come down to a blind faith and if there is one characteristic of inhabitants of the US that outsiders have found both charming and frustrating it is the naive belief amerikans have that their republic always strives to ‘do the right thing’.
The weird compound of charm and frustration arises from the fact that outsiders think this faith has been hung onto despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
By overwhelming evidence I don’t mean nightly coverage of the US military slaughtering unarmed people or it bullying women and children, of which there have been examples. These activities are inevitably Abu Ghraibed. That is they are always blamed on a minority of bad apples. Then the giant stumbling n bumbling machine that is the US military goes back to business as usual.
For all I know in some cases that may well be correct. The frequency of these incidents, the ease with which they can be uncovered and the insouciance of the accused must call that theory into question.
I mean the small incidents of nosiness and intolerence that pass uncommented and accepted. Something that many outsiders have taken to be a firm indication of there being something rotten in the state of Denmark.
I came to own the paperback version of an official or at the least semi official history of the FBI.
It was bought to distract me during some interminable wait somewhere. I found that if I suspended judgement and didn’t try and debate and over-turn every assertion made by this ‘history’, reading it became much less of a chore.
While reasonably honest with the early and more widely known scandals, eg Hoover’s cross dressing and gambling, the bad patch that had been McCarthyism, any of the more recent sieges or shootings were either skipped past with a brief note of self-justification or written off with the ‘bad apple theory’.
It was towards the end of the book in a chapter about bad apples (errors in the recruitment procedure), that I came across a story told without any attempt at either questioning the ‘rightness’ of the action or even a swipe at self justification.
Sometime in the early 90’s some gang of State or City police raided a ‘wife swapping club’ or swingers bar’ or whatever name was given to a pastime which has always struck me as being a rather contradictory attempt to legitimise non-conformity.
Well natch enough they found an FBI agent and his wife partying on down in the depths of iniquity.
It was immediately determined that the Director, from memory I think it was Louis Freeh, had a problem.
His problem wasn’t worrying about whether the stress of this agent’s work had lead him into self destructive behaviour or if he felt that accidental intrusions on an employee’s private life such as this should just be ignored rather than offering up any assistance.
His problem was what rule was he going to use to dismiss this person from the service…
I couldn’t quite understand where the issue was. The person’s work was up to scratch. There was no evidence of an alcohol or drug problem and when the couple were interviewed (I’m not kidding even the spouse who wasn’t even a Federal employee was interogated), it became immediately apparent that both parties were willing participants, the visits were irregular and infrequent so sex addiction wasn’t an issue, the couple understood the need for safe sex etc.
Can an employer really dismiss a staff member for an pretty harmless off the job hubby such as this?
Why would ‘swinging’ be an indicator of moral turpitude? Do agents who get divorced for infidelity also get fired out of hand? Covert infidelity may be an issue because deceit and betrayal can be a part of it, although it’s a bit extreme to extrapolate that back into the workplace.
Maybe it’s a hangover from the bad old days of adultery being a criminal offence.
The book doesn’t mention whether either of them were ‘batting for the other team’. From reading the book I had learned that this would be regarded as sufficient grounds for immediate dismissal, because of, rather than in spite of, the founding director’s rumoured proclivities.
There was no evidence to suggest that either but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the slightest suspicion of an agent being familiar with ‘the homosexual lifestyle’ would result in immediate dismisal.
Phew! I hve come at this the long way around but now we are getting to the crux of the issue.
That is; how can any state no matter how it’s leadership is selected; ie by voting or at the point of a gun be either inclusive or tolerant, if the vast majority of it’s leadership and institutions are from one particular age group, ethnicity, gender and religion. Any of the leaders that may not actually belong to this societal cohort do their best to be accepted by trying to be more white, male, middle-aged and middle class than the genuine article.
So that was the challenge and here’s the opportunity:
The best way forward that I can see would be if all disillusioned amerikans no matter what their personal political beliefs are; got together and demanded a system that would democratically select leaders far more representative of those being lead.
Proportional Representation. Yeah I know I harp on about this ad nauseum but time is running out.
If a movement for systemic change to the democratic methodology in the US is to have any credibility whilst being timely enough to focus the disillusionment in a positive way it must have it’s basic organisation and movement in place well before the ordure hits the ventilator. Otherwise the movement will be written off as more opportunism by an angry and despairing electorate.
That vulnerability combined with the neccesity to unite across the left/right divide and the short time frame, means that the more traditional way of going about major channge by uncovering or placing legislators sympathetic the the ’cause ‘ is out of the question.
The most effective way forward is going to be a mass movement that has just one objective. That objective is to get the highest number of genuine in-person signatures of documented US citizens that has ever been recorded anywhere for a petition.
Potential workers/organizers would need it plainly spelt out that this must never be an exercise in self aggrandisement for budding main chancer pollies. In fact any evidence of such would result in a very public dismissal from the ranks of signature seekers.
The message would be that the current system throws up the same sort of people representing everyone despite the voters own beliefs.
That xtians who want a real xtian representing them not a hack who has jumped on the xtian bandwagon to garner votes could have this with a good proportional representation system.
Similarly minorities would be free to elect leaders whose first duty is the minority that elected them rather than the ‘party’ which offered them the franchise.
Mass communications in concert with cynicism has lead to an almost univeral frustration at the tyranny of the majority.
This is exacerbated by the simple truth that it is likely that few people who share all the beliefs and values of this silent majority actually exist.
That there are plenty of people who hold some of the views that an elected or prospective servant of the people espouses there can be no doubt.
However like the lowest common denominator of TV audiences and marketing there are very few people out there who fit all the criteria of a soccer mom, a generation Xer, or even a baby boomer.
Proportional represntation is a way of making sure that no single gender, race or age ever dominates the culture again.
The idea of a dominant group taking over the enforcement of any particular cultural value to the detriment of others would become inconceivable.
However just as a xtian voter will be able to be sure that the person they are going to vote for is the xtian that they want him/her to be and it is unlikely that there will ever be one unified voice of xtianity dictating their point of view to the rest of the population.
It is also inconceivable that any group of non-xtians could persecute, harass or destroy the xtian culture.
The same goes for any other belief.
I’ve hammered on too long already so I’m not going to go through the pros and cons one by one except to say that I wasn’t here when NZ got a form of PR but I understand it was almost accidental and it has made my home country which I left in the mid 70’s swearing never to live there long term again, a much better place to drop your swag in.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 21 2005 8:48 utc | 14
Spy Court Judge Quits In Protest
Jurist Concerned Bush Order Tainted Work of Secret Panel
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 21 2005 9:42 utc | 15
The board seems strangely quiet of late.
I agree Did, where is our jj, Outraged, Mono, magoo, annie and the rest? The bar seems lonely of late. The slow burning jazz sax in the corner makes it more so. I have an unsalable thirst for knowledge I often drink alone, but this is to much…lol
p.s. have anyone purused my links of late? I haven’t gotten many comments on them and can’t gage wheather they are of interest. The root of all my links is my thirst for knowledge and information. Particularly, this one. I thought was quite enlightening…cheers!
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 21 2005 10:06 utc | 16
Every message board ever gets quiet around Christmas. There are a few of us who have nothing better to do than peruse the internets, but they are by and large dominated by those who have “families” or whatever distracts people around the holidays.
Debs, there is a disadvantage to proportional representation as I understand it, and that is the danger of the far-right, racialist, nationalist parties. Europe, with its proportional parliamentary democracies has far-right parties seizing power in Austria and making headlines in France, Belguim, the Netherlands, to name a few, within the last few years. There is such a vein of racism and exceptionalism in American politics that it seems to me that the disadvantages of a far right fascist party in America would outweigh the potential advantages of truly radical, good parties. The 20-30% of the population that seems to be running things as reactionaries is part an uneasy coalition with fiscal conservatives and voters based on character, steered by the person of George W. Bush. 20% seems vaguely beatable now, even if it by neoliberals, but if you fracture the American political system into myraid parties, the fundamentalist reactionaries may end up on top. There is more than a whiff of fascism in this country – no matter how bad the Republicans seem, the American Christian’s Party, or something equally innocuous, could end up the Amzi’s.
Posted by: Rowan | Dec 21 2005 10:35 utc | 17
@Rowan
That hasn’t been the experience I have witnessed. Germany has had PR since the 40’s and the extreme right hasn’t taken a hold there. Even in Austria they didn’t last long. In some ways Israel is another example. Dissatisfaction with mainstream politicians combined with racist propaganda propelled Likud into power but in the end they couldn’t ever do the really bad shit they wanted to. Yeah they got bad enough but they couldn’t stay in power without compromise. Hence asshole the war crim shifted to the left. If he doesn’t moderate his views someone else will fill the left-right out spot and get his gig.
Imagine if there was PR in US right now. The two big parties would still dominate but smaller groups on the left and right would have influence.
Everyone would be running away from the repugs like they had a disease and the dems wouldn’t be able to sit around saying nothing and hoping that by doing so they would end up governing with a mandate to do whatever they wanted, without having to accept input from the citizens.
With PR political groups have to declare policy to differentiate. Anybody but Bush just won’t cut it. As an idea firmly held by a percentage of the population (NZ has a 5% threshold which is too high but 2% is manageable), can be enough to make the major parties no longer ignore the elephant in the room.
Although there is a chance that the extremes from either side may sometimes end up with proportionally more power than some would care to see, from what I have observed two things make it relatively safe.
The first is that people are kinder and more tolerant than the big parties would have you believe. That is they get caught up voting on issues like gay marriage because under the two factions one party system, that is all that is on offer to diferentiate between the factions.
Going into next years half term elections the dems would have to have a stance on withdrawal a lot more explicit that they currently have because if they didn’t parties to the left and right of them would soak up their votes.
NZ was always a country that swung in extremes some were good ie fist place to have universal suffrage, old age pensions and state health care. But they would swing the other way too and when monetarist policy and privatisation were the buzzwords every asset was sold, often far too cheaply. User pays applied to all government services there was no leeway for a government to cover the cost of some goods and services for the public benefit. The only way that some of this was turned around was by PR.
Neither big party wanted to be in charge of any of the telecommunications, finance, insurance, transportation and energy state owned enterprises any more and not because of a particular philosophical bent which is what they claimed. They got rid of them chiefly because they didn’t want to have to make decisions to the benefit of the organisation and community in the long term but which would have people pissed at them in the short term.
So NZ went from having two major state owned banks and 3 or 4 large privately owned but NZ banks to none state owned and only 1 small wholly NZ owned private bank in the space of five years.
Just maintaining a basic bank account to pay bills thru and access cash cost NZ$50(at the moment about US$35) a month when previously the banks would pay you for leaving your money with them. Now I realise that bank charges have skyrocketed elsewhere too so it wasn’t just privatisation killed this but when the Labour Party got into power they had to form a coalition with a more leftish party who made the re-establishment of a state owned bank conditional on their support.
The clock hasn’t been wound back and all is sweetness and light, but bank charges have dropped and stayed down at the same time as the customers are finding that service to them is a priority again.
We didn’t end up re-nationalising everything for a lot of reasons some good and many cowardly but NZ has managed get some of the important silver back and is currently enjoying the strongest economy it has had since I shuffled on here.
Extremist parties just can’t keep support from the other parties to do much over the long term. Voters remember who gets into bed with the loonies and that tends to stop too much bad shit.
When people get genuine choice they become much more discriminating on who they will support.
The whole community becomes re-energised and re-engages politically when people are presented with the opportunity to vote for someone/something that is genuine.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 21 2005 11:59 utc | 18
“The board seems strangely quiet of late.
I agree Did, where is our jj, Outraged, Mono, magoo, annie and the rest? The bar seems lonely of late.”
Uncle $cam. I also “drink alone” not having much to add to discussion but I read as many links as I can and thank you for providing them. As I’ve told Bernhard more than once, this is a lifeline. Thanks to everyone.
Posted by: beq | Dec 21 2005 13:05 utc | 19
I also follow your links, Uncle. Thanks for providing so many of them.
Posted by: lonesomeG | Dec 21 2005 16:12 utc | 20
Debs,
“Asshole the war crim” is a good name for him, but when I want to give him a nickname I like Ariel “The Little Mermaid” Sharon.
The case of modern Germany is I think an anomoly, as they have laws specifically banning the existence of far-right racialist parties – a fine law to have. If that got discussed in America, the talking heads would try to ensure that anything to the left of the Democrats was banned on grounds of “balance.”
Perhaps the greatest advantage of parliamentary representation would be the collapse of governments in the face of disasters. Katrina, I think, would have certainly forced new elections to be called. Don’t get me wrong, I think it has massive advantages, but also massive potential disadvantages, as its most famous historical abuse demonstrates. I think that Instant Runoff Voting might be a better solution for America – although I find it fascinating that countries which America brings democracy to – Iraq, Germany, Japan – are given parliamentary style governments instead of the kind based on our goddamned piece of paper of the Constitution.
Another reason that I can’t get entirely behind parliamentary representation is that there is a tendency for American leftists to look to Europe as the model of what should be done in a kind of knee-jerk fashion. France is held up as a great country for its opposition to the Iraq War, but Le Pen got a quarter of the vote in the last election and finished second – frightening.
Posted by: Rowan | Dec 22 2005 0:12 utc | 21