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September 6, 2002 RELATED EDITORIALS
The Madness of Queen George
By Clinton Fein
April 14, 2003
Devil to Pay
By Clinton Fein
March 19, 2003
Be Ready to Mess with Mesopotamia
By Clinton Fein
February 20, 2003
Dirty Little Dots
By Clinton Fein
October 15, 2002
Engulfed by Tragedy
By Clinton Fein
September 12, 2002
Treason Season
Part One
By Clinton Fein
June 20, 2002
The Second Coming
The Age of bin Laden
By Clinton Fein
September 15, 2001 |  | NOISE
The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser. We already know that the WOT works on domestic groups that use terrorist tactics such as Hamas or the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (Farc). But that's only its most basic application. WOT can be used on any liberation or opposition movement. It can also be applied liberally on unwanted immigrants, pesky human rights activists and even on hard-to-get-out investigative journalists.
Naomi Klein, A Deadly Franchise, AlterNet, September 3, 2003
"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures that have neither the right, nor wisdom, nor virtue... To be governed means that at every move, operation, or transaction one is noted, registered, entered in a census, taxed, stamped, priced, assessed, patented, licensed, authorized, recommended, admonished, prevented, reformed, set right, corrected. Government means to be subjected to tribute, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, pressured, mystified, robbed; all in the name of public utility and the general good. Then, at the first sign of resistance or word of complaint, one is repressed, fined, despised, vexed, pursued, hustled, beaten up, garroted, imprisoned, shot, machine-gunned, judged, sentenced, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to cap all, ridiculed, mocked, outraged and dishonored. That is government, that is its justice and its morality! ...O human personality! How can it be that you have cowered in such subjection for sixty centures?"
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, 1862
For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!’
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?
The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.
Senator John Ashcroft, Keep Big Brother's Hands Off the Internet, USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4, October 1997
Over the past 19 months, Trifecta investigators coordinated and communicated with law enforcement and intelligence counterparts. They also used more than 200 wiretaps and pen registers, and served more than 90 search warrants - including a delayed notification warrant - to help make the cases for the arrests we are announcing today.
Dismantling this complex and dangerous drug network would have been impossible without these tools, which law enforcement has used in these types of cases for many years.
I am highlighting this point because these tools - coordination and cooperation, wiretaps, pen registers and delayed notification warrants - are the same tools provided by the USA PATRIOT Act, which help law enforcement to prosecute successfully the war on terrorism.
The American public should know that these tools that have allowed us to make gains in our war on drugs, are the same tools that allow us to make gains in our war on terrorism.
These are the tools we are using to connect the dots in our anti-terrorism investigations. These are the tools that are helping us protect American lives and take potential terrorists off the streets, just as they have helped us take drug dealers off the streets for many years.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Operation Trifecta Announcement, July 31, 2003
THE White House last night lambasted Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the German justice minister, for describing President Bush's Iraq policy as comparable to the methods of Adolf Hitler. "Bush wants to divert attention from domestic difficulties," she said. "That is a popular method. Hitler has done that before.'
Toby Helm and Toby Harnden, American fury as German justice minister compares Bush to Hitler, The Daily Telegraph, September 20, 2002
We shall not capitulate... no never. We may be destroyed, but if we are, we shall drag a world with us... a world in flames.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
We will not waiver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.
George W. Bush, Presidential Address on Initial Operations in Afghanistan, October 7, 2001
The attack on our nation was also attack on the ideals that make us a nation. Our deepest national conviction is that every life is precious, because every life is the gift of a Creator who intended us to live in liberty and equality. More than anything else, this separates us from the enemy we fight. We value every life; our enemies value none -- not even the innocent, not even their own. And we seek the freedom and opportunity that give meaning and value to life.
There is a line in our time, and in every time, between those who believe all men are created equal, and those who believe that some men and women and children are expendable in the pursuit of power. There is a line in our time, and in every time, between the defenders of human liberty and those who seek to master the minds and souls of others. Our generation has now heard history's call, and we will answer it...
This nation has defeated tyrants and liberated death camps, raised this lamp of liberty to every captive land. We have no intention of ignoring or appeasing history's latest gang of fanatics trying to murder their way to power. They are discovering, as others before them, the resolve of a great country and a great democracy. In the ruins of two towers, under a flag unfurled at the Pentagon, at the funerals of the lost, we have made a sacred promise to ourselves and to the world: we will not relent until justice is done and our nation is secure. What our enemies have begun, we will finish.
George W. Bush, Remarks to the Nation, Ellis Island, New York, New York, September 11, 2002
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
T.S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi," the first in a series of poems Eliot later grouped together as the Ariel Poems, published in August, 1927
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