KATRINA! August 29 2005 Another reason to drive out the Bush regime and repudiate its program of intolerance & greed. You’re against the Bush program? Declare IT NOW! Two years - since the names Katrina and Lower Ninth Ward seared into the world’s vocabulary, along with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Falluja, as one of the monstrous crimes of the Bush Regime. 
Two years - since the world watched in horror as bodies floated in the streets of New Orleans. Two years – since the Bush Regime allowed tens of thousands of people – overwhelmingly Black people – to suffer, starve, dehydrate and die in the unbearable heat and humidity and toxic sludge of a flooded city. Two years – since entire swaths of a city known for the joyous and unique culture it has given as a gift to the world were allowed to be overwhelmed and destroyed. more | |
What’s up with a country where a torturer -- and let’s call a spade a spade -- an architect of a police state and fascist laws can be forced to resign and no one in a position of power calls for the reversal of everything he’s done and for his and his boss’s indictment 
for war crimes?
What’s up is a system that is so hellbent on extending and preserving its empire that a police state that tortures is the program of the whole lot of them. That’s why the Democrats grandstand and garner political advantage over Gonzales’s resignation but have not and will not oppose the essence of his program.
And it is why the people must.
We do not have to -- nor should we want to -- live under a system that enforces its rule through waterboarding (near-drowning) and locking people away without charge or trial. A system that sets this as its norms is one that cries out for revolutionary change!
And right now, while the regime is in disarray -- with first Rove and now Gonzales resigning -- is the time for an "orange uprising," an outpouring of resistance across this country by everyone who doesn‘t want to condemn future generations to a fascist police state. Orange, because this is the color forced on the Guantanamo detainees and torture victims. And this "orange uprising" must not stop until the Bush regime and its program is driven from power. Whether you’re a revolutionary or not, you have to confront the fact that if the Bush regime is not driven from power, then everything Gonzales was part of will remain -- the legalization and institutionalization of wire-tapping, torture, indefinite detentions and so much more -- no matter who becomes the next president.
Far from being defanged, George Bush is still commander in chief and he is still pushing forward new horrors by the day. The Democrats -- the majority in Congress and the line up of viable presidential contenders: Hillary, Barack and Edwards -- are not challenging his fascist program in any of its essential features.
Gonzales called the Geneva Convention ban on torture -- a crime against humanity!! -- "quaint" and is rightly hated for this. But the Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to approve the Military Commission Act last October giving George Bush the right to decide when the Geneva Conventions apply. This came after the photos of Abu Ghraib. This came after the conscience of the world was shocked by the photos of human beings stripped naked, stacked up in pyramids, terrorized by dogs, raped and forced to perform sexual acts on each other, religiously violated. These photos were snapped with the sportsmanship and brazenness of southern Good Ol’ Boys who knew the law would never come for them -- and for good reason. Even Hitler never came out and openly admitted, and made legal, torture!
In a recent New Yorker, Jane Mayer quotes an expert familiar with C.I.A. interrogation protocol, "It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever… At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling."
Gonzales is leaving, but this torture continues as you read, and will continue until the people drive out the Bush regime. If you’re against this, you’ve got to visibly Declare It Now by wearing orange -- spreading loud, visible, resistance to the Bush regime's program. [more]
Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can't Wait / Drive Out the Bush Regime.
Sincerely,
Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime
No comments:
Post a Comment