Excerpt: "Here are some suggestions: 1. Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy ..."
Ralph Nader being interviewed during his 2008 presidential campaign, 08/01/08. (photo: Scrape TV)
The Empire Is Eating Itself
03 September 11
he commemorative ceremonies that are planned for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 massacre are those of pathos for the victims and their families, of praise for both the pursuit of the supporters of the attackers and the performance of first responders and our soldiers abroad.
Flags and martial music will punctuate the combined atmosphere of sorrow and aggressive defiance to those terrorists who would threaten us. These events will be moments of respectful silence and some expressions of rage and ferocity.
But many Americans might also want to pause to recognize - or unlearn - those reactions and overreactions to 9/11 that have harmed our country. How, in this forward-looking manner, can we respect the day of 9/11?
Here are some suggestions:
- Do not exaggerate our adversaries' strength in order to produce a climate of hysteria that results in repression of civil liberties, embodied in the overwrought USA Patriot Act, and immense long-term damage to our economy. Consider the massive diversion of trillions of dollars from domestic civilian needs because of the huge expansion and misspending in military and security budgets.
- Do not allow our leaders to lie and exaggerate as when they told us there were funded, suicidal and hateful al-Qaeda cells all over our country. They were never here. Actually, the wholesale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan became recruiting grounds for more al-Qaeda branches there and in other countries - a fact acknowledged by both then-Army Chief of Staff George Casey and then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
- Do not create a climate of fear or monopolize a partisan definition of patriotism in order to silence dissent from other political parties, the citizenry or the unfairly arrested or harassed.
- Do not tolerate presidents who violate our Constitution and start wars without congressional deliberation and a declaration of war (article 1, section 8, clause 11). Do not let them disobey federal statutes and international treaties in pursuing unlawful, misdirected quicksand wars, as in Iraq, that produce deaths, destruction and debts that undermine our country's national interests.
- Do not have Congress write a blank check, outside the normal Appropriations Committee hearing process, for the huge budgetary demands from the executive branch for funding of the Iraq, Afghan-Pakistan and other undeclared wars.
- Do not allow the executive branch to engage in unconstitutional and illegal recurrent practices such as wiretapping and other methods of surveillance of Americans without judicial approval, in addition to arrests without charges, indefinite imprisonment, torture and denial of habeas corpus and other due process rights established by our Founding Fathers. Congress has passed no reforms to check the continuing exercise of unchecked dictatorial presidential power.
- Do not let the government hide the horrors of war from the people by prohibiting photographs of U.S. casualties; operating cruel, secret prisons; harassing reporters; and refusing to count civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is too much intimidation of returning soldiers - so many harmed for life - from telling the people what they experienced and think about these wars and their heavy outsourcing to profiteering corporations.
- Do not allow leaders to violate American principles with torture or other war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Nor should top military brass or members of the executive branch be above our laws and escape accountability.
- Do not allow your Congress to abdicate or transfer its own constitutional authorities to the president. We the people have not exercised our civic duties enough to make our representatives in Congress fulfill their obligations under the Constitution to decide whether we go to war and act as a watchdog of the president's conduct. The Libyan war was decided and funded by President Obama without congressional approval.
- Call out those in the news media who become a mouthpiece of the president and his departments involved in these hostilities. What more is the military really doing in Libya, Somali and Yemen as compared with the official line? Under what legal authority?
In addition, demand that news media outlets seek the inconvenient facts, wherever they might lead, unlike the pre-Iraq invasion period.
The celebrated American theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr aptly wrote decades ago that "to the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in the effort to prove that they are indestructible."
All empires eventually eat away at their own and devour themselves.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" He is encouraging people around the country to gather in their own towns or cities on September 10 to discuss ways to avoid overreactions to threats.
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Comments
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The issues he outlines here are the truth of what has transpired in the U.S. as a result of the attack on New York and the Pentagon. Nader is not unaware of all the research on those events. Nader is a man who cannot be fooled.
Nor are a lot of us out here.
Speaking of "coming out of the woodwork", I don't remember reading comments by you before.
Quoting michelle:
Right on, Michelle!
And just MAYBE Mr. Nader wants us to believe it, too, to stand up against the injustices, not fall into the trap of false patriotism, but find a way into understanding that true patriotism is about the people WORKING THE DEMOCRACY, not this bogus capitalist empire we have ALLOWED to fester and erupt.
He's so right...I said this just yesterday to my husband...we've been allowing our government to swallow up the little people and make them unnecessary...n o jobs -- they're outsourced...go to war for nothing -- come home maimed and depressed with no real help, if you get home at all...we are a RAVENOUS corporate state, truly eating our own.
And I hate to say again, but we have only seen the beginning.
Ralph Nader speaks for me!
N.
Anyway, you get my point.
Fight against injustice, and never, ever stop doing so in whatever way we can!
N.
As an Architect with a strong engineering background, I've been astounded at the uniformly symmetrical collapse of the twin towers since I first witnessed it on film -and some of the rationalization s for it, even by the design structural engineers. -And then there is the "Building Seven" anomaly, which I've never even herd an in-depth discussion about, anywhere. And by the way, the replacements are such a HUGE disappointment, just aesthetically for a start -my daughter (15 at the time) submitted a design concept which was hugely more original and symbolic than what is being built. The age of mediocrity is definitely upon us.
And by the way, great words from Ralph Nader -he has never been afraid to get it out there!
This was just greed to put up more buildings for business like usual attitude.
I never bought the building collapsing as they did. Very bad Steel used or lots of inspectors bought off. But whatever happened, i do hope their is retribution for those who committed these crimes. Because they have not stopped killing yet.
Later, when I began to doubt the orthodox Cheney/Bush explanation it occurred to me that many structural engineers would have seen the falsity of this hypothesis from the very beginning, but, in all the ongoing anti-Muslim hysteria, thought better than to speak out for truth at the risk of their employment. I still feel this is probably the case.
It might be more difficult than you think but not less crutial to survival.
those two flyers that rammed the Twin Towers were sure funded by someone. they learned how to fly right here in the good old USA, They were obviously muslims and I believe it was reported but no one did anything about it.
Perhaps you might ask Dick Cheney that question ... or ask why WTC #7 so convenient collapsed in a controlled demolition takedown.
The point being made here is that the 2 planes that crashed into the 2 WTC towers were essentially pilotless drones, not the actual hijacked airliners. The reason that I make this point is that no American would consciously pilot & commit suicide by flying a large jumbo jet into a skyscraper like the WTC towers, & I know for a fact, based on the multiple videos taken that day of these planes, that they weren't the 2 planes that were actually hijacked by these alleged Muslim hijackers.
If 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush admin to justify the illegal wars of aggression & the dismantling of our Constitution & our Bill of Rights as I firmly believe to be the case, one might wonder what actually did happen to all 4 of the hijacked planes & the passengers who were onboard?
I think the answer is quite obvious, but I leave that answer totally up to your imagination.
I would not have cared if they were Quakers, killing is killing.
Whoever they were, are Yes people learn to fly, drive trucks, cabs, cars everyday...mone y to be made by those who teach and those who get the license.??
Ralph made an error against Gore but he is human. He can be forgiven but Americans using others to Kill Americans, cannot be.
waging wars? I have been using the following
idea here in the D.C. area for the past
two and a half years, and I wish that Mr
Nader, who lives here, would join in.
We sell our gorgeous "No Afghan War" buttons
for a dollar. With the substantial profits
we buy yard signs and offer them free. Lots
of people take them.
We need helpers! with ten co-workers we
could cover the D.C. area in signs!
Alan McConnell, in Silver Spring MD
I'll get a PO box let's start the movement...Chri stmas is coming, great gifts...send some to Congress, Senate, Governors etc. Media also
Never forget this dire warning from the popular New Republic columnist John T. Flynn:
"The test of fascism is not one's rage against the Italian and German war lords. The test is - how many of the essential principles of fascism do you accept and to what extent are you prepared to apply those fascist ideas to American social and economic life? When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government - then you will know you have located the authentic fascist."
Fight Fascism - Ron Paul 2012
The "freedom" libertarians demand is illusionary and impossible to sustain. There will always be poor, untrained, physically and mentally disadvantaged, and people that the "free" do not understand and are fearful of. The result? Final solutions. Sound familiar? And the impotent Christians will stand by watching and saying nothing.
The meme.
Even IF we concede the point, one cannot blame Nader for taking impeachment off the table, now can one?
Actions like that proved Nader's point.
Have you got an echo of yereslf out there mate?
This has been and continues to be damned disappointing.
All you commentators, WAKE UP! Its already happened. You live in fascist land deluxe. Don't get your dander up about how its becoming that way. It already is that way. Too late. Question is, "Is this irrevocable?' or are we stuck with this situation for good?
All the ranting and philosophizing is a waste; nothing but hot air. While you give your deep opinions on these sites about how things should be the power folks with the money and power are carrying on with their machinations, locking you and me and everyone else in this "great country of ours" deeper and deeper into their tyrannical plan. Overall goal? (already well on its way) Kill the USA as an middle class country and turn it into just another third world nation: low wages, poverty, collapsing infrastructure, pollution all over the place and a small elite class of super rich living insulated lives, controlling the so called government from behind the scenes with an ongoing propaganda campaign to convince people that things could be lots worse, that we are the best people on earth and we should all be thankful for this miserable existence, because nothing else is really possible; so don't be ungrateful. Besides, its all those other guy's fault.
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ACTION, ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING, YOU SHOULD GO TO: www.actionsources.org. This site is a street sign that DIRECTS YOU TO THE ACTION ORGANIZATIONS (.orgs)that are on the front lines of reversing or ameliorating the Supreme Court's CITIZENS UNITED decision that allows corporations to give unlimited donations to PACs that support their choice of candidates WITHOUT DISCLOSURE!
IF YOU SUPPORT THESE ORGS. THERE IS A CHANCE THAT WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR DEMOCRACY CAN BE SAVED AND IMPROVED UPON. IF NOT, YOU WILL GET TO LIVE AN A 100% FASCIST CORPORATE STATE AFTER VERY FEW MORE ELECTIONS. We are nearly there already.
The deadness is the result of the control of our lives that the corporate, military, and big finance interests have.
Combine this control with a propagandized media and what we are left with is a dumbed down middle and lower class population that is force fed what to believe. Many, of course, are completely confused and would likely be unable to explain the philosophic differences between liberals and conservatives. Many of these same folks would "test out " as liberal but define themselves as conservative. Only because it sounds more grounded in patriotism.
I think the country has been lost. Without a core belief system of who we are and what we stand for the powered interests will continue to roll the dice. And the dice they roll are fixed.
I live and work among these lost souls I have described as being ignorant of politics. Do I blame them? I don't know. I know that without a politicized and radicalized working class we are in for dangerous times.
We are a nation of fools that elected a fool as president.
Gore had no right to concede he was supposed to be our leader. He would have been it he had not conceded. what was that all about. What about those that did vote for him.
As Toquaville said the leadership of the US represents the will of the people better then any country in the world.
Maybe fools don't have a will.
What a great country it would be if it would only elect a Nader as leader.
Gore loses Florida by 97,000 votes that go to 3rd party Nader and Bush wins election:
Economic collapse
Housing market collapse
Labor market collapse
Banking collapse
Just minor problems for the last 10 years caused by NADER and his ego trip...It would be laughable if it wasn't so serious...
The mistake folks make has to do with assuming all is well "out there". The U.S. government never lies, there are no witnesses, other countries are never interested or investigate operations by the U.S. domestically or internationally .
Nader's poisonous cynicism and blind egotism helped deal a lethal blow to a country already well on its path to ruin. I spit on him.
Go back to being a consumer advocate,
You, in my humble opinion did as much or more than any right wing PAC to put Dick Cheney at the helm, (with the retarded chimp as his puppet).
You sir, through political naivety, or massive ego, played a huge part in creating the mess these greedy buzzards have put the American people and people around the world into.
But, in #2 - #9, it is suggested 'do not allow'.
I'm wondering, just 'how' we should 'not allow'?
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