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Title: U.S. gets ‘Sovietized’
Source:
Toronto Sun
URL Source: http://www.torontosun.com/News/Colu ... ric/2006/09/24/pf-1888587.html
Published: Sep 24, 2006
Author: By ERIC MARGOLIS
Post Date: 2006-09-24 20:00:54 by Zipporah
Keywords: None
Views: 173
Comments: 13
In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist allowed into the world’s most dreaded prison, Moscow’s sinister Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB’s headquarters, calling it instead after a nearby toy store, “Detsky Mir.” I still shudder recalling Lubyanka’s underground cells, grim interrogation rooms, and execution cellars where tens of thousands were tortured and shot. I sat at the desk from which the monsters who ran Cheka (Soviet secret police) — Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria — ordered 30 million victims to their deaths. Prisoners taken in the dead of night to Lubyanka were systematically beaten for days with rubber hoses and clubs. There were special cold rooms where prisoners could be frozen to near death. Sleep deprivation was a favourite and most effective Cheka technique. So was near-drowning in water fouled with urine and feces. I recall these past horrors because of what this column has long called the gradual “Sovietization” of the United States. This shameful week, it became clear Canada is also afflicted. We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB used at the Lubyanka. They apparently believe beating, freezing, sleep deprivation and near-drowning are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. So did Stalin. The White House insisted that anyone — including Americans — could be kidnapped and tried in camera using “evidence” obtained by torturing other suspects. Bush & Co. deny the U.S. uses torture but reject the basic law of habeaus corpus and U.S. laws against the evil practice. The UN says Bush’s plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions. This week’s tentative agreement between Bush and Congress may somewhat limit torture, but exempts U.S. officials from having to observe the Geneva Convention. Canadians had a shocking view of similar creeping totalitarianism as the full horror of Maher Arar’s persecution was revealed. Thanks to false information from the RCMP, the U.S. arrested a Canadian citizen and sent him to Syria. Arab states and Pakistan were being used by the Bush administration for outsourced torture. Syria denies the charges. Suspects were kidnapped by the U.S., often on the basis of faulty information or lies, then sent to Arab states to be tortured until they confessed. The apparent objective of this “rendition” program? To find a few kernels of useful information. The Cheka and East Germany’s Stasi used the same practice. I never thought I’d see the United States — champion of human rights and rule of law — legislating torture and Soviet-style kangaroo tribunals. I never thought I’d see Congress and a majority of Americans supporting such police state measures. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln must be turning in their graves. To me, Canada has always been a haven of moderation, decency, and rule of law — until the Maher Arar affair shockingly showed this country could also quickly fall into police state behaviour. Arar’s despicable treatment by Canada and the U.S. was the result of a U.S. witch hunt, plus anti-Muslim racism, stupidity, bureaucratic cowardice and incompetence. We saw Ottawa aiding the outrageous persecution of its citizens, and the U.S. shamefully refusing to aid the Arar inquiry. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who authorized Arar’s arrest, should face justice for this and many other malfeasances. The current U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who denied the Bush administration was responsible for Arar’s abduction and torture, should be ashamed. Canada must demand a thorough U.S. investigation, apology, and guarantee Canadians will never again become victims of such state-run criminal activity. It’s time for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to advise his new best friends in Washington that Canada is not a banana republic. Officials directly involved in the most sordid, disgraceful case in Canada’s modern history, must face justice. They are as much guilty as the torturers who beat Maher Arar mercilessly for 10 months.
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#1. To: Zipporah (#0)
To me, Canada has always been a haven of moderation, decency, and rule of law — until the Maher Arar affair shockingly showed this country could also quickly fall into police state behaviour. Well, I don't know that there's any reason to think that Lincoln would be posthumously upset -- sounds like just his style. About the larger point, though ... I think the United State has been "coasting" for some time on a vague limited-government tradition, which has now pretty much ground to a stop. Canada's a little ways behind, but can catch up quickly if their/our supervisors are so minded. The tree of liberty is just very, very thirsty for the blood of both patriots and tyrants -- that's all.
- - - - - - - - - - - In fact, as reported in the NY Times this week, the US gov't refused to even cooperate with the offical Canadian investigation into the Arar case.
Many Americans have been conned by public schools into not knowing what a monster Lincoln was.
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities also has the power to make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire (1694-1778)
War Powers Act, Executive orders, Federal goob - thank Honest Abe. What a POS.
I hope Canada makes a good scene.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers Anyone who remembers glasnost and perestroika should know this would be the end result.
“The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.” James Fenimore Cooper
I guess the plutocrats who have the real power in this country have decided they can no longer permit the rest of us to have any freedom. They must be really afraid of something.
Katrina was America's Chernobyl.
It took 20 years from the time the first few hundred "Enemies of the People" were arressted and contained in an Island fortress off Saint Petersburg for the Gulag to fully blossum to its seven million prisoners at any given time. And the Cheka, NKVD, and KGB also developed well defined "guidelines" for their "interrogation techniques" (what clear thinking non communist rational people in the West called torture when people in the West stilled believed words had meanings). Yep- the lingering culutural underpinnings about "limited government" that used to restrain even the vastly expanded FDR federal Leviathan we have today is all but gone. And gone with it is a sense that morality transcends what is legal. Now- whatever is "legal" is moral. The State defines morality. DC bomded and killed a bunch of "jap" civilians in World War Two? Thus it is moral and right. So called "Conservatives" believe that what is "legal" is moral and recognize NO limitations on the power of the state whatsover. You see this with people like Rush Limbaugh citing Licoln's law breaking and utter disregard for the constitution when he coyly intimates that all political oppossition to his Dear Leader should be arrested if not killed.
Beltway power elites know and understand the following about this country: - Its existence rests upon very weak ideological foundations. There are no ethnic, tribal, religiouis or even cultural common mores that hold this country together. - The old notion that loosely held this country together when DC was far less powerful were notions of limited government and liberty and more or less free markets. - Government isn't limited anymore. DC's power is unlimited. And this means a new ruling ideology has to be found to hold the country together. And this new ideology? Militarism, extreme parochial even proudly ignorant nationalism, fear of unspecific nebulous enemies half a world away who are everywhere and nowhere, and obediance to washington. Now that DC is an Imperial city controlled by a few thousand powerful individuals and families who suck our liberty and money and are basically parasites there is no reason for Americans to tolerate it or accept this situation- thus the need for hate, fear, and enemies as diversions and controls. Note the new heros of this Imperial DC Nation State ideology? Politicians- not inventors. Generals- not merchants. Stupid bubble headed celebrities with 5 year spotlight life spans- not writers or poets. This is the culture of The United State of America- long gone is the culture of the United States of America.
an excellent article - and too true.
What’s the mystery? HEY; both systems have the same architects guess who they are?
FPF - Sept. 25th - 2006 - Canadian writer and correspondent Eric Margolis warns in this article for the same negative development as in the former Soviet Union, even if it's a little bit like 'mustard after the meal'. According to 'Project for a New American Century' Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff - who prefers double nationality - a vast electronic control net covering the US is nearly completed. It¹s called the ŒHomeland Security Information Network¹ (HSIN)* - And it, says Chertoff: " now includes 50 states, five territories, 53 major urban areas, local officials and officials from Britain, Canada and Australia. It connects Homeland Security advisors, governor¹s offices, and emergency management agencies all across the country." THE SOUND OF THE MARCHING BOOTS, KLICKING HEELS AND CRACKING WHIPS GETS LOUDER AND LOUDER.* A LOT ABOUT BEING 'SOVIETIZED' COULD BE LEARNED FROM RUSSIAN WRITER AND ICON ALEXANDRE SOLZJENITSYN. As chairman of the 'Foreign Press Association', the correspondents in Sweden, I organized the first press conference in the 'West' for Alexandre Solzjenitsyn in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, when he in 1974 was forced to leave the Soviet Union, and first came to the Swedish capital. He finally could collect the Nobel Prize for Literature which he had been awarded in 1970 by the Swedish Nobel committee, but couldn't collect at the time. Solzjenitsyn explained that he was afraid not to be allowed to return to the USSR, which for him is 'Mother Russia' - a name that is used to describe the country of Russia with affection. There still are many 'Mother Russia' statues in various cities throughout the former Soviet Union. But the story he told about 'Mother Russia' and being 'Sovietized' was also the reason why former Gulag prisoner and Nobel Laureate Solzjenitsyn in the mainstream media globally is never heard of again. After decades of research he published a new book, this one called 'Dvesti Let Vmeste' - 'Two Hundred Years Together', about the history of Jews in Russia and how they 'Sovietized' it. With Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotzky) founding the Red Army and - as Margolis points out - with the help of henchmen like Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria killing around 66 million people in their Gulag prison system.* The Moscow stenographer of the New York Times, Walter Duranty, got a Pulitzer prize by this group, because of his silence and denial concerning another Holocaust they perpetrated.* CONTROL OVER THE AMERICAN PEOPLE Former Soviet/Russian PM and Foreign minister Yevgenij Primakov 20 years ago visited Stockholm, and in an interview I asked him if it wasn't difficult for jewish people like him to get around in the Soviet Union. He only laughed and told me to look at the Soviet Academy of Science: "Look at who has all the titles and medals. We're taking care of that too." - In a later interview, Primakov said the US National Identity Card act (NICA) overturned the 'Posse Comitatus Act' now other forms of repressive legislation are approved: "The White House will have acquired greater control over the American people than the Kremlin could exert when Stalin was alive." Primakov stated.* The group claiming to be in charge in the United States, with the US/Israeli war machine wrecking our earth by all inhumane means, must be stopped, before they have 'Sovietized' the whole world. Just look around you and see what it happening.
“The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.” James Fenimore Cooper
I understand Solzjenitsyn's latest book is still not available in English.
"If there’s another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country." - Daniel Ellsberg Author, Pentagon Papers I never thought I’d see the United States — champion of human rights and rule of law — legislating torture and Soviet-style kangaroo tribunals. I never thought I’d see Congress and a majority of Americans supporting such police state measures. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln must be turning in their graves.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. -- H. L. Mencken
#2. To: Zipporah (#0)
Canada must demand a thorough U.S. investigation, apology, and guarantee Canadians will never again become victims of such state-run criminal activity.
I've already said too much.
#3. To: Enderby (#1)
Well, I don't know that there's any reason to think that Lincoln would be posthumously upset -- sounds like just his style.
#4. To: YertleTurtle. all (#3)
Many Americans have been conned by public schools into not knowing what a monster Lincoln was.
#5. To: buffycat (#0)
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who authorized Arar’s arrest, should face justice for this and many other malfeasances. The current U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who denied the Bush administration was responsible for Arar’s abduction and torture, should be ashamed.
#6. To: Zipporah (#0)
U.S. gets ‘Sovietized’
#7. To: Zipporah (#0)
#8. To: Enderby (#1)
#9. To: aristeides (#7)
#10. To: Zipporah (#0)
#11. To: Zipporah (#0)
U.S. gets ‘Sovietized’
#12. To: Zipporah (#0)
Comment from Henk Ruyssenaars
#13. To: BTP Holdings, *US is Proxy State For Israel* (#12)
(Edited)
But the story he told about 'Mother Russia' and being 'Sovietized' was also the reason why former Gulag prisoner and Nobel Laureate Solzjenitsyn in the mainstream media globally is never heard of again. After decades of research he published a new book, this one called 'Dvesti Let Vmeste' - 'Two Hundred Years Together', about the history of Jews in Russia and how they 'Sovietized' it. With Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Trotzky) founding the Red Army and - as Margolis points out - with the help of henchmen like Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria killing around 66 million people in their Gulag prison system.* The Moscow stenographer of the New York Times, Walter Duranty, got a Pulitzer prize by this group, because of his silence and denial concerning another Holocaust they perpetrated.*
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