wasteward the course of empire!

An interesting book review in today's NY Times begins:

In August 2001, a month before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, [emphasis added by rc] a study conducted for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office was issued on "Strategies for Maintaining U.S. Predominance." In a section titled "Lessons of History," which used the British, Roman, Chinese and Ottoman Empires as case studies, the report asked, "What does history suggest about the maintenance or failure of powers to hold similar positions of dominance?"

--significant, I thought, that von Rumsfeld was thinking in terms of empire even before The Appalling Events of 9/11 That Now Serve as Justification for the USA to Do Any Damn Thing It Feels Like.

The review goes on to discuss Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, the thesis of which, I gather, is that the British Empire was a Good Thing and that the American Empire can be a Better Thing. It sounds like an interesting read: I might go looking for it. The review concludes:

Mr. Ferguson...exhorts [the USA] to face up to its imperial duties; he calls the United States "an empire in denial," an empire "that dare not speak its name."

Having traced in this volume how Britain gradually evolved from an informal to a formal empire (as trade and business propositions gave way to governance, as coastal bases and spheres of influence gave way to more codified rule, in the face of "real and perceived threats" to British commercial interests), Mr. Ferguson concludes this volume with the suggestion that a new era of globalization is occurring, with Americans having "taken our old role without yet facing the fact that an empire comes with it."

"The technology of overseas rule may have changed \ufffd the Dreadnoughts may have given way to F-15's," he writes. "But like it or not, and deny it who will, empire is as much a reality today as it was throughout the 300 years when Britain ruled, and made, the modern world." It's sure to be a chilling assertion to both those in Washington eager to deny imperial ambitions and those in the Arab world suspicious of America's motives.

cordially,

from Constitutional Republic with balance of power shared among Tripartite branches + a [Free Press] Fourth Estate ---> One-Branch rule, on a theological mission headed by a wannabe-Messiah; propagandized by monopoly-Corp Media conglomerates who seek their material directly from Government.

(Thanks to a recent kind gift of access to)

[link|http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/18/patriot_act/index.html|This Salon] article, part of which reads:

The secret society

Under Attorney General John Ashcroft, America is becoming an Orwellian state where people are locked up and no one can find out why -- least of all a compliant Congress.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Tim Grieve

April 18, 2003 |

Mike Hawash was on his way home from his job at Intel in Portland, Ore., last month when FBI agents surrounded him in the company parking lot and took him into custody. At the same moment, agents armed with assault rifles were storming through Hawash's home, terrifying his wife and three small children waiting for their father to come home.

The agents took Hawash to a federal prison outside of Portland, where he has been held in solitary confinement for nearly a month. Hawash is a 38-year-old immigrant -- born on the West Bank and raised in Kuwait -- who has been a U.S. citizen for 15 years. He has not been charged with any crime, and there has not been any suggestion that he committed one. The Justice Department says Hawash is a witness, but it won't say to what. It won't say what information it wants from him, it won't say what agents were hoping to find when they searched his house, it won't say why he needs to be in custody, and it won't say how long it plans to keep him there.

These aren't the only things the Bush administration won't say. It won't say why it's holding individual detainees at Guant\ufffdnamo Bay; it won't disclose the factual basis for its prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui; and it won't say how many immigrants it has detained or deported in INS proceedings. It won't say how many of us are having our telephones tapped, our e-mail messages monitored or our library checkout records examined by federal agents. The administration's defenders say such secrecy is an unavoidable cost of the war on terror, but it's an orientation that predated Sept. 11 and that extends beyond the terror threat. The White House won't reveal who Vice President Dick Cheney consulted in concocting the administration's energy policy; it won't disclose what Miguel Estrada wrote while working for the solicitor general; it won't even release documents related to the pardons that former President Bill Clinton granted during his last days in office.

It won't disclose any of these things because it doesn't have to. In the war on terror -- and outside of it -- the Bush administration is finding increasing latitude to operate with secrecy as the norm, and accountability the exception. Congress has handed the administration broad new powers without requiring it to account for their use, while courts have repeatedly granted the government the right to operate outside the public view and -- at times -- without any possibility of judicial review.

And goes on..

And if Attorney General John Ashcroft and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch have their way, the situation may soon get much worse. Ashcroft's Justice Department is apparently eyeing legislation -- dubbed PATRIOT Act II -- that would further expand the administration's powers to act in unilateral silence. Meanwhile, Hatch is working to make PATRIOT Act I permanent now -- it is currently set to expire in 2005 -- before Congress can consider whether the Justice Department is making appropriate use of the broad surveillance powers provided by it.

Steven Aftergood, a researcher who monitors government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, calls Hatch's proposal a "direct assault" on Congress' ability to monitor the Justice Department. "If it goes through, we might as well go home," he told Salon. "The administration will have whatever authority it wants, and there won't be any separation of powers at all."

It is a dire prediction. But in some ways, it has already come true. Congressional aides complain that the Justice Department has denied Congress the information it needs to serve as a meaningful check on possible executive branch abuses, and the federal courts are increasingly refusing to involve themselves in cases in which the administration's policies -- on secrecy, on terror or on executive authority more generally -- have been questioned. As a result, the executive branch is increasingly free to act on its own, without the checks and balances typically imposed by a separated government.
. . .

And still.. and yet, for the most part the 'public' ovinely averts eyes briefly from 500 Channels-with-Nothing-On - to watch the latest HDTV pictures taken by 'embedded' flacks; then back to the laugh track. Let someone else pay attention to this complicated government stuff; where's the fun in that?

As suggested before: clearly this-all will demand some sort of *SHOCK*, before voices are matched with other actions collaring the snoozing disconnected 'representatives'. May the shock be a bearable one, because any next local Chaos leads inexorably towards ---> completion of this Programme, we see from all previous Master Plans.

[the rest of the essay describes the frustration of members of Congress! in being denied access to information.. these guys formerly 'made laws' n'stuff. We could save some salaries next - and the heating of the Capitol dome, etc.] Tidbit:

Some in the civil liberties community see the oversight efforts being made by Leahy, Grassley and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., as a resurgence of congressional authority after a period of acquiescence to administration demands. They view the Hatch proposal as a check on that trend. "It's a frontal challenge," said the FAS's Aftergood. "It's a test of the backbone that we're beginning to see. And if it works, congressional oversight will be just a courtesy extended by the executive branch, with no rigor or mandatory character to it."

Flip. Coin. 1 or 3 branches next..

Ashton

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