US Abuses, Sense of Irony Missing in Rights Report

A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family,
each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its
self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and
think its own thoughts."
James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) Author and historian
Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects

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'BRAND AMERICA,' NOW WITH MORE TERROR
While George W. Bush's domestic poll numbers find a new low, the U.S. image abroad continues to scrape bottom. Addressing the White House's failure to win "hearts and minds," John Brown writes, "Personnel and programs matter in foreign policy, but what counts most is policy itself. ... This policy, no matter how public diplomacy or propaganda 'explains' it, cannot possibly win the world over because of its appalling consequences, shocking and sickening to non-Americans if not to Americans as well ... . Thanks to the mass media and the Internet, the abominations of a terror-obsessed U.S. policy have become the new American 'brand' worldwide, with the administration's calls for planetary democratization -- so selectively implemented -- widely seen as fake packaging, hypocrisy at its worst." SOURCE: TomPaine.com, March 10, 2006 For more information or to comment on this story, visit: PR Watch

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"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by
the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets,
to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally
into their oil wells."
John Flynn, 1944

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WHITEWASHING GUANTANAMO IN THE UK
"The innocence of (Moazzam) Begg, the Tipton Three and the other British detainees who have come home is a part of the story of Guantanamo that no official wants people to hear," writes Victoria Brittain, the co-author with Begg of the book Enemy Combatant. Brittain points to a Daily Telegraph story titled, "Begg told FBI he trained with al-Qaeda." The story was based on an FBI report of a confession that Begg signed after he "had been tortured, threatened with death, offered a job undercover by the CIA, and come to believe he would never see his family again." The U.S. deputy assistant for public diplomacy, Colleen Graffy, recently gave a BBC radio interview about how she "had visited Guantanamo and witness no unpleasant interrogation, no torture and plenty of sports facilities," writes Brittain. Graffy showed her interviewer "a sample tube used for force-feeding prisoners and explained ... that it had no metal edges and was therefore humane." SOURCE: Guardian (UK), March 14, 2006 For more information or to comment on this story, visit: PR Watch

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"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
James Bovard
1994 Source: Lost Rights. The Destruction of
American Liberty (St. Martin's Press: New York, 1994), p. 333

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Lessons of Iraq War start with U.S. history
By Howard Zinn
On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.


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“The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast;
ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in
conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace
James Madison

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The Cost Of Incompetence
Two stories this week show how dangerous it is to have people who detest government running it.


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Patriotism is a religion, the egg from which wars are hatched."
Guy de Maupassant

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US Abuses, Sense of Irony Missing in Rights Report
How can it now be seen as anything more than a sham when the Bush administration consistently breaks our own laws -- from illegal wiretaps at home to renditions abroad -- yet still tries to portray itself as the protector of freedom, democracy and liberty for all?

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"Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by 'a world of enemies' - 'one against all' - and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man."
Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism p.227