Bush Puts Iran in Crosshairs

by Ray McGovern, read whole article,

Bottom Line

In my view, air strikes on Iran are inevitable, unless grassroots America can arrange a backbone transplant for Congress.

The House needs to begin impeachment proceedings without delay. These, in turn, could possibly give our senior military leaders second thoughts about unleashing the dogs of wider war.

Rabies shots recommended: for this time those dogs can, and will, come back and bite us.

Yes, some of us have been saying that for many months. The deterioration of the U.S. position in Iraq; the perceived need for a scapegoat; the continuing deference given to perceived Israeli security concerns; and the fact that time is running out for the Bush/Cheney administration to end Iran's nuclear program together make a volatile mix

Must Listen interview

From Antiwar Radio,

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses the likelihood of war with Iran and his hope that the US military would simply refuse, the Democrats refusal to check the President’s war powers since pleasing the Israel Lobby is more important to her than stopping another aggressive war, the fact that the CIA says Iran is years away from the ability to make a nuclear weapon, the fact that the CIA knew for certain that Iraq had no weapons before the war, why they invaded, and how to withdraw from Iraq.

MP3 here. (41:05)

A speed bump on the road to war?

via Steve Clemens,

This last section, however, is what the United States and France are crying foul over and which remains a major obstacle to more political progress:

25. Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, having continued with the operation of PFEP, and with the construction and operation of FEP. Iran is also continuing with its construction of the IR-40 reactor and operation of the Heavy Water Production Plant.

What is happening now is that there are now at least three, if not more, divergent international tracks in confronting Iran on its nuclear program.

The IAEA track -- which the Iranians themselves have now just applauded (which does raise questions actually) -- is citing enough progress on transparency and possible cooperation with international nuclear protocols that the IAEA is at odds with the third round of economic sanctions that the U.S. and France are trying to rally against Iran.

Then inside American and some European circles, Iran's failure to suspend its enrichment program requires toughened sanctions, each round of which becomes tighter -- harming both Iran as well as firms in nations applying the sanctions.

And third, the neoconservative crowd simply wants to suspend all negotiations and begin bombing.

At a minimum, ElBaradei's report probably stalls somewhat the neoconservative effort to start yet another war -- but I think that the sanctions noose that Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns is feverishly working on will continue.

Pentagon Gives Up; Hands War Over to Bush

by The Angry Rakkasan,

Mark it down. August 29, 2007. That’s the day the Pentagon announced it was done being responsible for Mr. Bush’s waste of lives, time, and money in Iraq. Tonight, the Defense Department has essentially told the President, "Thanks for the war, George, but it’s all you from here on out, buddy."

Read on...

It Can Happen Here

The system of law that our Founders set up is under attack.

With the passage of the Military Commissions Act in October of 2006, this administration, with the help of Congress, essentially nullified the writ of habeas corpus to whomever the president declares "an enemy combatant."

Habeas corpus is the most sacred liberty granted by the Constitution as it protects you from arbitrary imprisonment by the executive.

In existence from the days of the Magna Carta 800 years ago, the Great Writ was guaranteed even under the King of England.

Then came the case of José Padilla, an American citizen branded by the administration as the "dirty bomber."

Apprehended in 2002 with no charges filed against him, Padilla was dragged away to a Navy brig where he would be stripped of all human dignity and systematically tortured until his mind was broken.

For three and a half years Padilla’s completely isolated detention consisted of a 7 x 9 foot cell, bright lights on for days, no mattress on his steel frame bed, “no pillow, no sheet, no clock, no calendar, no radio, no television, no telephone calls, and no visitors,” including seeing a lawyer for almost 2 years, according to the Christian Science Monitor.1

Padilla’s lawyers assert that he was regularly assaulted, hooded while held in extreme stress positions, threatened with imminent executions, subjected to extreme temperatures, and given LSD and PCP during some of his interrogations. 2

"What the government [was] attempting to do,” says Dr. Stuart Grassian, nationally recognized psychiatrist and expert on solitary confinement, “[was] create an atmosphere of dependency and terror."1

Techniques like these are banned under the US Army Field Manual primarily because their efficacy is questionable.

In fact, as the Monitor and others report, these techniques are adapted from the same methods that Soviets used on political dissidents and the North Koreans on POWs, methods that the US once condemned.

Some officials say however, not only are these vital techniques but they do not go far enough.

Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency remarked openly about the interrogation strategy that, “anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool.” 3

Admiral Jacoby goes on to unequivocally state that the introduction of legal counsel "may substantially harm our national security interests.”

"Anything that threatens" the trust and dependency... like maybe the Bill of Rights and Due Process? Legal counsel a threat to national security?

That, quite literally, is straight from George Orwell's 1984. In fact José Padilla is eerily similar to Winston Smith in that in the end they both deeply sympathize with, and are terrified of the government that has broken them.

The moment that the President declared Padilla an "enemy combatant," Mr. Bush had essentially repealed the foundation of the Bill of Rights as he saw fit and assumed powers that surpassed the King of England.

Yale law professor Jack Balkan puts it best when he writes that in claiming these powers over an American citizen, "[the Bush administration argued that] the President always knows best...” and that these powers are that "of a dictator in an authoritarian regime. They are the powers of the old Soviet Union.” 5

Padilla was finally convicted in what can only be described as a show trial based on dubious and vague charges of conspiracy that had nothing to do with the original sensational accusations.

It is shocking that there is little outcry from our leaders that a US citizen was held for 3 1/2 years without Due Process, denied habeas corpus and his fifth and sixth amendment rights, and tortured to the point where he has suffered organic brain damage and a modified version of Stockholm syndrome, all before being charged with the crime. 5,6

The Padilla conviction was a pyrrhic victory for this administration but ultimately, it is a shameful and ominous day for our constitution, our republic, and the sacred principles this country was founded on.

Notes:

1 http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0814/p11s01-usju.html

2 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=2619944&page=2

3 http://www.pegc.us/archive/Padilla_vs_Rumsfeld/Jacoby_declaration_20030109.pdf

4 http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/theres-reason-why-we-call-it-bill-of.html

5 http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/1416242

6 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6682846

Resisting the Guns of August in Eurasia

Talk Nation Radio

Listen to the broadcast here

Francis A. Boyle: Thank you for having me on Dori and my best to your listening audience and regretfully in light of the Guns of August article it is August and last week the third US aircraft carrier task force arrived in the Persian Gulf organized around the USS Enterprise. So there are now three air craft carrier task forces in the Gulf. We have not seen that amount of Naval and aerial fire power in the Gulf since the war against Iraq in March of 2003.

So it’s an extremely dangerous situation. We have President Bush threatening to determine that the Iranian Guards are a terrorist organization. Yesterday Iran entered into a comprehensive work plan with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Today the Bush administration rejected that and said that they are continuing to move toward another round of sanctions at the Security Council. So literally I regret to say anything can happen. Studying the Guns of August by Barbara Tuckman, the allusion to the origins of the First World War I think would scare everyone. We could not rule out another incident along the lines of the so-called Tonkin Gulf incident of 1965. We had the British sailors ultimately admitting that they did stray into waters claimed by Iran and that created another incident so it’s an extremely dangerous situation. We had Vice President Cheney earlier appearing on the Air Craft Carrier Stennis in the Persian Gulf literally threatening Iran. So I really don’t know what to say. Anything is possible at this time.

Bin Laden wanted US to invade Iraq, author says

from ABC via Vox Verax,

As coalition troops continue to die on Iraqi soil and the US Government's military spending on the war bleeds into billions of dollars, a new book says that not only could this have been avoided, but it was all predictable, as long as you had read the Al Qaeda manual.

Abdul Bari Atwan is one of the only Western journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden, spending three days with him in the mountains of Afghanistan in 1996.

He is the editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabia, and the author of The secret history of Al Qaeda.

ABC TV's Lateline presenter Tony Jones interviewed Mr Bari Atwan on the program last night.

TONY JONES: When you met bin Laden, he told you that his long-term plan was to "bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil". That must have sounded like madness at the time, but now we have Iraq.

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: It seems Osama bin Laden had a long-term strategy. He told me personally that he can't go and fight the Americans and their country. But if he manages to provoke them and bring them to the Middle East and to their Muslim worlds, where he can find them or fight them on his own turf, he will actually teach them a lesson. It seems the invasion of Iraq fulfilled Osama bin Laden's wish. That's why the Americans are losing in Iraq, financially and on a human basis, and even their allies, including Australia, are really losing patience, losing money, losing personnel, losing reputation in that part of the world.

TONY JONES: When bin Laden told you this back in 1996, the only thing he had that was close to what he was talking about was [former US president] Bill Clinton's intervention in Somalia. Bin Laden was evidently extremely disappointed the Americans had pulled out?

ABDUL BARI ATWAN: Yes. He told me, again, that he expected the Americans to send troops to Somalia and he sent his people to that country to wait for them in order to fight them. They managed actually to shoot down an American helicopter where 19 soldiers were killed and he regretted that the Clinton Administration decided to pull out their troops from Somalia and run away. He was so saddened by this. He thought they would stay there so he could fight them there. But for his bad luck, according to his definition, they left, and he was planning another provocation in order to drag them to Muslim soil.

And it seems President Bush did not actually give him a lot of hard work to plan for this. Immediately after the bombardment of Afghanistan - which actually destroyed 85 per cent of Al Qaeda infrastructure, personnel, deprived them of a safe haven - after that huge success against Al Qaeda, President Bush made terrible mistakes when he sent his troop to invade Iraq, one of the most difficult countries to be invaded, to be occupied, the worst land for democracy, human rights. And we can see the outcome.

continue reading...

Larry Johnson on Iran

Larry Johnson from No Quarter writes an excellent post on Iran,

Iran is not flat like Iraq. Iran has vast mountainous regions and can easily hide production facilities and weapons inside mountains that we cannot easily attack.

Iran has more robust air defense systems than Iraq ever had. We are likely to lose some pilots and aircraft in an attack on Iran. We can hope for the best, but if the worse comes to past–the shootdown of several aircraft and the capture of several pilots–the Iranians will have some additional leverage that will constrain President Bush.

U.S. tankers required to refuel aircraft involved in any attack on Iran will force a reduction of military operations inside both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army and Marines are incapable of being employed in any significant numbers to support an operation in Iran. Generals are already warning that they cannot (I REPEAT) cannot sustain the current surge in Iraq beyond the Spring of 2008. Who in their right mind would undertake a new military adventure when we cannot handle what we are currently doing? George Bush? But the question of his state of mind is another story.

The withdrawal of British forces from Basra now leaves Shia militia, who have direct ties to Iran, in complete control of the supply routes used to ferry beans, bullets, water, and toilet paper from Kuwait to U.S. troops in Iraq. An attack against Iran will likely see a cutoff of this supply route. That will require a diversion of air assets and ground forces to southern Iraq to reopen the lines of communication.

Dear Leader essentially declares war on Iran

the Times of London reports,

“Iran could conclude that we were weak and could not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons,” Mr Bush said. On Iranian involvement in Iraq, he said: “I have authorised our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

Scott Horton has more here from Harper's.,including the link to former CIA Officer Bob Baer article in Time,

‘There Will Be an Attack on Iran.’ Former senior CIA analyst Bob Baer has a piece in the current Time Magazine called “Prelude to an Attack on Iran.” Baer also sees a quickening pace and an increasing likelihood of a sustained military assault on Iran, driven by the Neocons. Baer develops the scenario, showing how the Revolutionary Guards will be portrayed as terrorists, they will be linked to armor-penetrating projectiles used in Iraq, and this will be taken as a pretext to wage a war against Iran. He quotes an Administration official who says these explosive devices “are a casus belli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran.”

Peak Oil stats and graphs

World Oil Forecasts Including Saudi Arabia - Update Aug 2007.

FOX ATTACKS: Iran

Must Read of the day

Ray McGovern on why it's happening again.

It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president.

So our former colleague, operations officer par excellence Robert Baer, reports (in this week's Time) that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran, that Bush's plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike, and that delusional "neoconservative" thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and rise of a more friendly Iran.

Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that administration officials are thinking that "as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities."

Prelude to an Attack on Iran

TIME mags Robert Baer, CIA,

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

Must Read from the soldiers' mouth

read this op-ed by active-duty NCO's serving in Iraq currently.

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

habeas corpus RIP

after the 2006 passage of the Military Commissions Act

Military Interrogators Pose as "Lawyers" in Gitmo to Gather Information

Sherwood Ross at the Smirking Chimp reports,

Military interrogators posing as "lawyers" are attempting to trick Guantanamo prisoners into providing them with information, "The Catholic Worker" (TCW) reports.

As "Newsday," the Long Island, N.Y. daily, reported: "The military has set up a system that delays legal correspondence for weeks and requires lawyers from around the country to write motions at a single secure facility in Virginia. Detainees have alleged that interrogators have tried to turn them against their lawyers."

U.S. Adviser Tells London Paper: Brits Have Lost Basra

From Editor and Publisher,

LONDON An adviser to the U.S. military said British troops have lost control of the Iraqi city of Basra and face an "ugly" withdrawal in the coming months, a British newspaper reported.

Stephen Biddle, a member of a group that advised U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq last year, told the Sunday Times that "insurgents are calling the shots" in the southern city.

"I regret to say that the Basra experience is set to become a major blunder in terms of military history," Biddle was quoted as saying by the newspaper. The insurgents "in a worst-case scenario will chase us out of town."

Biddle, a military analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, said insurgents and militia groups were likely to target British soldiers with ambushes, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades as they leave.

"It will be a hard withdrawal. They want the image of a British defeat," Biddle told the paper. "It will be ugly and embarrassing."

Military Commanders Tell Brown to Withdraw from Iraq Without Delay.

Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay.

videos you won't see on mainstream news

this one is hard for me to watch... just a warning

Gore Vidal interview

Part 1

Part 2

What a bomb does

from David Lindorff,

Just consider one of the weapons being used by American forces, the so-called GBU-31. Marc Herold, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, who has been documenting the violence in Afghanistan, has investigated the use of this weapon and in a new article available at the Traprock Peace Center offers this description of how it works:

"Dropped from a plane and hurtling toward its target at 300 mph, the 14-foot steel bomb uses small gears in its fins to pinpoint its path based on satellite data received by a small antenna and fed into a computer. Just before impact, a fusing device triggers a chemical reaction causing the 14-inch-wide weapon to swell to twice its size. The steel casing shatters, shooting forth 1,000 pounds of white-hot fragments traveling at speeds of 6,000 feet per second. The explosion creates a shock wave exerting thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch (psi). By comparison, a shock wave of 12 psi will knock a person down; and the injury threshold is 15 pounds psi. The pressure from the explosion of a device such as the Mark-84 JDAM can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities and tear off limbs hundreds of feet from the blast site, according to trauma physicians. When it hits, the JDAM generates an 8,500-degree fireball, gouges a 20-foot crater as it displaces 10,000 pounds of dirt and rock and generates enough wind to knock down walls blocks away and hurl metal fragments a mile or more. "

.

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

via Finincial Times, h/t Larisa w/ more,

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”

Mr Walker’s views carry weight because he is a non-partisan figure in charge of the Government Accountability Office, often described as the investigative arm of the US Congress.

Recent war games on withdrawal

McClatchy cites a recent war game that rports,

Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a retired Navy vice admiral who was director of defense policy for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said he believes that drawing down or withdrawing troops could be one of the most dangerous periods of the Iraq war.

"The military will be vulnerable ... You are going to go out in a combat situation," Sestak said. "I think we can do greater damage if we don't have a firm grasp on the military implications."

U.S. troops are likely to leave an Iraq that's still embroiled in fierce sectarian violence, he said. "How quickly can the military move its 160,000 troops out? What about the 100,000-plus contractors? How many of the military's 45,000 Humvees should be left behind for the Iraqi Army? Which of 64 military bases should be closed? [ALL OF THEM!!!] How does the military protect its main route out of Iraq toward Kuwait?"

Sestak estimates that it would take at long as two years to withdraw.

Oil

Check out this interview on oil (lots of economics).

heres more.

A challenge to the FISA bill recently passed

Think Progress has the details.

Yesterday, lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees asked a federal judge in San Francisco to invalidate the recently-passed FISA law that lets the Bush administration conduct warrantless surveillance on suspected terrorists without first getting court-approved warrants.

“We are asking your honor, as swiftly as possible, to declare this statute unconstitutional,” said Michael Avery, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. … “Neither Congress nor the president has the power to repeal the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirements,” Avery said.

Sunni v. Shia perspective

Frontline has an excellent short video (12 minutes) with perspectives from two sides in the Civil War.

Wes Clark

Chalmers Johnson

I should note that when Chalmers Johnson speaks about the end of the Republic, he doesn't mean that everyone's going to die. Rather, he suggests that because of our rampant militarism and the global actions we set forth on the world, we will sooner or later be attacked and this country will not know why -- this is what he refers to as blowback -- us being attacked and due to be actions of our government that were taken SECRETLY without anyone's knowledge.When we are attacked, people cannot put the attack in context and ask questions like "why do they hate us." This will lead to end of our constitutional republic. Both the Roman and British empires faced a choice between keeping their democracy at home or their empire abroad, a historically unstable combination. The British chose their democracy and gave up their empire, the Romans did the opposite. Which will be the way the US goes?

Chalmers Johnson essay on Empire v. Democracy.

Chalmers Johnson interview with world public radio (GOOD ONE).

Chalmers Johnson short interview.

Chalmers Johnson long interview.

Chalmers Johnson long interview with Charles Goyette.

And here's another one I found with a little on the press, the Roman Republic, and war with Iran.

Gingrich: War on Terror is Phony

Scott Horton quotes Newt,

So even inside of the Bush Administration, the war on terror has been written off as a scam that served its limited political purpose and is finished.

In the last couple of weeks, Gingrich, Cheney, and several other major architects have “revealed” that the war was always just about oil. And you thought it was weapons of mass destruction . . .

Iraq crumbling.

Juan Cole has the details,

122 Dead in Civil War Violence;
The Collapse of the al-Maliki Cabinet

Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks at WaPo have an excellent overview of the collapsing security and political situation in Basra. What most American observers do not realize is that as Basra goes, so goes Iraq. Meanwhile, As the British withdraw, they are leaving behind dozens of Iraqi interpreters whose lives are in danger because they are seen as collaborators by Shiite militiamen.

Chris Hedges opines,

The war in Iraq is about to get worse—much worse. The Democrats’ decision to let the war run its course, while they frantically wash their hands of responsibility, means that it will sputter and stagger forward until the mission collapses. This will be sudden. The security of the Green Zone, our imperial city, will be increasingly breached. Command and control will disintegrate. And we will back out of Iraq humiliated and defeated. But this will not be the end of the conflict. It will, in fact, signal a phase of the war far deadlier and more dangerous to American interests.

Iraq no longer exists as a unified country. The experiment that was Iraq, the cobbling together of disparate and antagonistic patches of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious powers in the wake of World War I, belongs to the history books. It will never come back. The Kurds have set up a de facto state in the north, the Shiites control most of the south and the center of the country is a battleground. There are 2 million Iraqis who have fled their homes and are internally displaced. Another 2 million have left the country, most to Syria and Jordan, which now has the largest number of refugees per capita of any country on Earth. An Oxfam report estimates that one in three Iraqis are in need of emergency aid, but the chaos and violence is so widespread that assistance is impossible. Iraq is in a state of anarchy. The American occupation forces are one more source of terror tossed into the caldron of suicide bombings, mercenary armies, militias, massive explosions, ambushes, kidnappings and mass executions. But wait until we leave.

inside the "black sites"

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer goes in to the dark side of the CIA's hidden torture sites. (intense and disturbing)

long live the decider!

In lieu of the recent Chamberlain-esqe appeasement by 57 Democratic congressmen and women I thought it would be appropriate to bring in an old quote. It's in oldie but a goodie.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. --Hermann Goering

TPMtv Talks to Wesley Clark

Guantánamo: Doing more harm than good

PBS has an excellent interview with an American hero, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift.

The last days of democracy and what you should do

Truthdig speaks with Elliot Cohen, author of “The Last Days of Democracy,” who argues that the United States is in political and cultural decline, with media and telecommunications giants engaged in “a well-organized effort to hijack America.”

Scheer: But, I want to know, does that mean you have hope? Do you have hope that this system can be changed or do you think that it’s hopeless and we should just kind of cower and go away?

Cohen: Never cower. Never cower. It’s not over until it’s over, and right now we need to understand that that’s where we’re heading. And it’s easy enough to say, “Well, you know it happened in [Nazi] Germany, but we’re different.” That’s a very pompous attitude. As though Americans are somehow different than Germans. They’re not. They’re people. And if we don’t watch it, this is where we’re heading. Well, what do we do about it? There’s thing we can do. Well, one thing is for the average person to make sure that they’re informed: To stop relying on mainstream media as much as they do, and to get their information from independent media. Then really when you look at the survival of dictatorships, and whether they thrive or not. They thrive on keeping people ignorant. And if the masses of people are just ignorant and they don’t take responsibility for their failure to know, then we aren’t looking in the face of hopeless dictatorship; people need to wake up. They need to start learning about what’s going on and they need to say, “We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it.” They need to join activist movements like, for instance, Free Press , which is an organization that’s been really doing a lot to try to counteract the taking-over of the free Internet and the destruction of Internet neutrality. And a lot of other causes about media ... [like] organizing massive letter-writings to Congress. People need to start thinking in terms of doing these sorts of things. Peaceful assemblies. And demonstrations. These are constitutional rights, and as long as we have these rights in our Constitution we should make sure that we see that through. These are things that we need to do. Educators should stop placating and looking for fair and balanced and start speaking out because there’s danger here and every educator has an obligation to step up onto the plate as a vanguard of democracy. The lawyers of this nation, including the American Bar Association, need to present a unified front against violations of the rule of law. They did that at one point where they denounced Bush’s instituting signing statements to do away with the congressional lawmaking authority and they made it clear that it was illegal and unconstitutional. But we need to be more unified as educators as citizens. As journalists too. I think the journalists associations and the schools of journalism need to start making a unified stand that, you know, journalists need to be vanguards of democracy. We need to get back the Fourth Estate, and we can’t simply support these large corporations allowing this go down the tubes and that’s exactly what’s going on. I think we need to take the unified stand. Is it going to happen? Well, you know, people like us, you and your site and the things that I’m trying to do with the book and doing these kinds of interview are the things that more of us need to take seriously. And listen and learn. Is that going to work? Well, I think that we better do that. It’s better than laying down and playing dead.

read the full transcript here.

Or just Listen Here.