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Written in June 2006
It seems this is what I should confront first, before much else because it is something that is out there hanging over everything else I might do from this time forward. How much I can say is always framed by circumstances external to me, how what I say would be interpreted or misinterpreted by others, and what action they might take against me for what I say. One would think in such circumstances it is better to not say anything than to risk saying things that would greatly piss powerful people off. That is if you think your own life, comfort, pleasure, time, and goals are the most important or deserve your highest attention, and the rest, the important things, are not your concern and will gladly cower when the powers-that-be say, this is off-limits and none of your concern. For me, these are overlapping. What the current powers-that-be would do endangers what I would hope to do or achieve with my life and have spent a lifetime in pursuit of for the future. Nor are what they are doing and trying to cover up in anyone's interests except a very few, so few in fact they cannot see what they hope to achieve is so unworkable without the complete subjugation and domination of almost everyone, all dissenting voices crushed, and a public so misinformed that they are unworthy of even being called human in the sense of being the heirs of those who debated and created and refined democracy to be ever more expansive and a greater benefit to more, and more enlightened, people. What is being done now in the name of promoting “democracy” is not democratic, not for the good of any country, much less my own which is purposely being targeted, not by extremists or terrorists, but by its own government trying to do whatever and as much as it can to provoke attacks against it, against its own citizens and interests which have been reduced to cannon fodder, to justify to them ever and ever greater expansions of military spending, internal political spying, control over lawmakers potential dissent, and unrestrained capacity to make wars because only the highest profit margins companies deserve investment, and the weapons industries markets must expand somehow. From the very start when I left the country in 2003, it was my intention to seek asylum to work against this and to speak out against it. The more time I had, the more well-thought and contemplative approach I could have taken, though I would not have slowed or lessened that drive for all the money and power in the world. But any goals you pursue have to be done in accordance with what is possible at the time. Though what occurred in trying to request asylum to draw attention to things was within the context of what I intended, the circumstances, context, and the country I end up seeking asylum in was different than where I had originally envisioned or intended, the timing was different, and the pace was frantic because the time I had to work within, the space, was very small. Sweden, nice country that it is, is practically the worst place for anyone to seek Political Asylum, and it never was likely to succeed. Thus I was reduced to trying to say as much as I could as quickly as I could in an effort that was doomed to failure from the outset, but only a failure in-so-far as I would not succeed in gaining asylum, but that was never the point. Being on record was the point. Not that asylum I felt was undeserved, but attainable only by saying things which I could not say because they would never have given me the venue, nor would have been willing able to back me up later. It was a situation where what to say and what not to say was always an issue, where keeping silent was not possible, nor would I get any help even if proving everything I might have been able to say, should a hearing have been possible, which it most certainly was not. Given the time restraints and the certainty of failure I tried to say as much as I could as quickly as I could and as safely as I could. The night before handing in the asylum the request, I wrote The Radioactive Cereal Principle, which was a thumbnail overview of what had been driving me to take such a course. That was included as a semi-explanation with my request. But nothing happens in a static world. You cannot think just because you do something today, the world will not be or not do something else you had not intended tomorrow. I was frustrated because nothing was getting through the wall of dis-information of the corporate media affecting how Americans were being told how to think of what was going on. I was told by one of my instructors of alternative media on the Internet, much of which I have been following ardently since, but I said that it did not matter because it is preaching to the choir, and that nothing of the truth is getting through to the general public. That is evident even with the so-called “powerful” people in charge, Congressmen, even when the try to do their jobs as and independent branch of government. Murtha said recently about the Haitha incident, that it was “covered up” and only became an issue when Time magazine wrote about it many months later. Despite the ridiculous and criminal cover-ups of the Haitha incident, I remember reading about it right after it occurred, (I may be confusing it with another “incident”) yet to the American Public as well as its government officials, if something is not in the mainstream press, it did not occur and is not the kind of reality you need to be concerned without, it becomes a lesser reality of people and children being murdered in the beds and cold blood which counts less than a “political reality" of what gets read about by those few left who are not intimidated not to vote. The people who actually are aware of what is going on and willing to do something about it are so few as to be completely irrelevant and inconsequential, and have been sidelined by design to never matter again so long as you can control the mainstream media to never print other than sporadically challenges to things all the world outside the US, never mind outside the Beltway, know to be our own self-serving delusions of “helping” the world by forcing war with whomever has what we want or need, supporting friendly tyrants and despots while decrying “anti-democratic” regimes like Bolivia (they pulled that one out of their hat), Venezuela, Palestine, and Iran. The latter two both for better or worse actually represent what their people have been pushed into being willing to accept in response to our own criminal actions and relentless threats (now in the case of Iran, nuclear threats) and beyond the pale of what any semblance of our own responsibilities as a member of the UN, of its very principles of promoting peace over war, dissuading war crimes, and our own now egregious violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which we have violated completely, yet our own mindless public now thinks that Iran has, 180 degrees away from the reality of the present situation. Granted we are trying to give Iran more reasons every day to think they need nuclear weapons to remain safe because nuclear states pretty much seem to be the only countries presently off-limits to our imminent treats of attack or regime change. While the American public is so completely disinformed, I saw nothing worth doing more than to do whatever I could to chip away that wall of obliviousness which is killing our country and poisoning the world. Yet everything began to change from the moment I began the asylum process, and these changes began to take the wind out of my sails. On the very day I requested asylum, the Pentagon admitted to using White Phosphorous against people for purposes other than to increase visibility, in other words, in using it as a weapon against people intentionally in direct violations international bans on chemical weapons, bans which like land mines, bans to which the US has not signed. (This was mentioned in RCP) That the Pentagon came clean about it over the protests of the State Department is telling to how bad and dangerous the situation in Washington has deteriorated. If there ever was to be a department of Peace to balance the Pentagon's Department of War, it would have to be the State Department. Yet it was the State Department which had endlessly lied and propagandized to the media saying what they knew to be untrue, that the US was not using such weapons against people intentionally in combat situations. When you have the only branch of the US government which is supposed to be trying to take a diplomatic approach to peaceful solutions run by those who would so openly and brazenly misinform the public and press about the conduct of a war, lying to a point against which even those committing such excesses who will not go so far as to lie about it, you have to wonder who in the world the world has to turn to to negotiate peace when those whose jobs it is to work on such peace deals may want it on terms 100% known to be unacceptable for the other side, and advocate methods of warfare even the most militaristic branches of the government are not comfortable about lying about. Whether they are uncomfortable about doing it, they are not allowed to say, doing it is their job, but unlike the political appointees, are not so comfortable with lying, deceiving the American people, and endlessly covering it up. The more I tried to push what I wanted to talk about, the more other things began coming out. What has been described as “outrage fatigue” has set in. While locked into the process of asylum, I wrote The Radioactive Cereal Principle, Part II, covering as much as I dared knowing that writing that may well have been all that I would get to have done or said. But no longer could I say the mainstream media was completely blind to what was being covered up. It has been one endless stream of “Watergates” since December 2005, constitutional scandals exposing power grabs surpassing the definition of dictatorial rule, which have all crashed and burned before a media which seems to cover them merely like inoculating people to be able to suppress outrage at almost any abuse of power, much as one would inject the flu or poison in small doses to build up a resistance to them. The press may not see it in that light, but that is the effect: a public now convinced they are willing to put up with literally any abuses of power because the principle has now been accepted without meaningful opposition or debate by Congress or the press that the President is free to do whatever he pleases whenever he pleases without any fear of anyone telling him he cannot do something because it is illegal. That he literally and figuratively is above all laws because he is “unimpeachable”. The “ground” of the Administration and most Departments now willingly promoting massive disinformation of the public which I was trying to stand upon gave way to a tide of “Yes, I am damn well am violating the law and the Constitution, and I am going to damn well keep doing it.” The “investigation” over warrant-less wiretapping, now rebranded the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was reduced from an thorough inquiry to “We agree to ask the President's permission to make his violations of the law legal after the fact if he acknowledges that he in some instances, theoretically, he may have to pay attention on occasion to what we do and say about what is legal and not legal.” What is funny is that now anyone thinks there is any rules other than what the President, or Vice-President, thinks he wants to do. Technically they have lawyers on the White House Counsel coming up with dubious arguments on why they can do whatever they want to, in the name of protecting the country and the flag of course, and base it on some remote semblance of law. When even that fails and these, their own lawyers say, “No, doing that would cross the line”, the White House, as in the warrant-less wiretapping program or torture debate, simply fired the lawyers and got new ones after the current legal advisors told them it was illegal. Getting new advisors who would say what you want them too suddenly makes it legal again, especially if you know the Supreme Court would back you up should it ever come to that. But why, knowing they would back you up if you asked for that power, would you do it in violation of the law in the first place? Simply because not wanting Congress to know about the scope of the spying program was the whole point, especially since they would have agreed to almost anything asked of them in the aftermath of 9/11. So if making something which was blatantly illegal become legal just by changing advisors, so too it seems they thought all the worlds problems might go away if you could just get people who might contradict you to go away or not be able to speak up or be heard. Iraq would become a flourishing democracy if we could simply keep all these naysayers at bay and fill the Iraqi “free media” with our government funded propaganda on how willing and excited they were by the prospect of democracy that they would willingly “tighten their belts” and bravely face a lack of basic services, lack clean drinking water, skyrocketing child malnutrition, lacks decent medical care, electricity, gasoline, a complete destruction of local businesses, a wipe-out of its middle class, a Walmartization of its economy at the feet of foreign multinationals all of whom's employees have diplomatic immunity from local prosecution by the local government there for whatever crimes they commit, (including human trafficking crimes by these some of these US government contractors and sub-contractors now admitted to by the US State Department), and a wholesale looting and privatization of its resources, oil fields, banking, etc. by interim occupation governments to US corporations..
When losing the ability to keep the American Press from mentioning that
there was in fact a civil war going on there to which we were now more
than a part of it, but from the worlds point of view, we were one of, if
not THE main instigator of the instability, the Salvador option of supporting
militant death squads, we simply changed the rhetoric to that of open admission.
“Yes, there is a lot of fighting and instability
there, but nothing helps build democracy like a civil war. It is a sign
of our success in how much we have accomplished and have helped these people.”
I kid you not. They actually tried to make that fly and a surprising number
of non-Fox news agencies had no problem with the “Civil
War as a good thing” spin angle.
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© 2002 by Jared DuBois