many millions marching madly

the other day i pointed to a Tribune Media Services article on the stolen election - which of course, apparently didnt get syndicated.

the same writer has just written another article where he asks whether the constitution will get 'suspended'
"This is the disquieting question I hesitate to ask because, once asked, it pretty much changes everything. The answer roars in behind it, as obvious as a Florida hurricane, an Ohio twister, ripping up the complacent heart. What if it could? What if it did? I think of my daughter, quickly, guiltily, and the country she’d inherit. I can no longer stay on the sidelines. No breath comes easily afterward... I fear that a force is loose in the land that will stop at nothing to impose its agenda on the nation."

its pretty chilling - go read.

and its probably a good opportunity to launch into a speculative rant about, ummm, the cancelling of the constitution... cos

the 'good' news is that martial law wasnt installed prior to the last election... it wasnt necessary, cos they already knew that they could steal the election. i dont doubt for a minute that they would have cancelled the election if they feared losing. (in fact, our friend deforest soaries is back in the news this week - he has resigned from the baker/carter commission)

more good news: the next presidential election isnt for 3.5 years
more good news: the machines will still be in place in 08
congressional elections? the machines will still be in place in 06

so the good news (in summary) is that they wont have to impose martial law to cancel/steal any elections - the only charade they need to be able to keep up is that there really are so many dumb americans - which shouldnt be too difficult. rove just needs to pretend that there are lots of crazy fetusfolk...

so the next question is whether they'd wanna cancel the constitution for any other reasons...

the obvious reasons are: a) their power is too limited b) people get sick of them - so lets look at each of those:
a) their power is too limited - can we envisage a situation where this is true? well, lets break it up into its constituent parts... we know that they will always want absolute power, so as far as they are concerned, their power will always be too limited, until it is approximates absolute power. so the next issue is whether there are any brakes on their need to get more power. conceptually at least, the brakes on executive power could come from 1) congress, 2) the courts, and 3) the media - so lets break these down...
1) congress? ha! surely u jest! firstly, the entire bunch is corrupt - we need look no further than the bankruptcy bill and the paris hilton bill. how about the dems? they dont have the votes. how about the filibuster? its dead. isnt that just for judicial nominations? only for the moment. how about the so-called 'moderate repugs'? repugs arent allowed to be moderate. look at the smack down that voinovich received this week. how about the 06 elections (look at chafees poll numbers, and santorum etc)? the repugs will steal more elections. how about harry reids threat to shut down the senate? ok - heres where it gets interesting... theres not a snowflakes chance that the repugs will let them get away with this - altho its not obvious how they will respond. they could roll everything into omnibus bills with important budget or defense components. or the president could just start signing Executive Orders willynilly. or they could demand up/down votes on everything. but arent there rules against that? rules are for fools. these people will stop at nothing - so this is where we start envisaging the cancellation of the constitution - and they'll justify it as necessary cos of the 'obstructionist minority'.
2) the courts? i hardly feel like i even need to discuss this - but briefly, we've got up and down votes, and we've got DeLay calling for impeachment of judges who they dont like. and if that doesnt work, they can just murder a couple until the living judges get the message... of course, the shitehouse has already stopped listening to the courts - cf padilla.
3) the media? yada yada. of course not.

so i think we can safely say that the repugs will always want more power, and there isnt an institution that can get in their way. theres some chance that if harry reid actually tries to do his constitutional duty, then they'll have to do some 'extra-constitutional' shenanigans - but theyll probably find some quasi-legal mechanisms to dispose of his objections...

so lets look at the other reason why they might cancel the constitution:
b) people get sick of them
at some point, the people will be pissed - tho the american public apparently have a pretty high threshold. at some point tho, the people will be sufficiently pissed that they'll try to do something. first, itll be peaceful marches. then we'll have the riots. how will the egadministration responds when there are many millions marching madly up pennsylvania avenue.

they'll have a choice of jumping on a jet to Equatorial Guinea or somewhere, or they pop their cyanide pills (or sign their own death warrant by turning themselves in), or they call in the military, posse comitatus notwithstanding.

the military would then have to decide whether to play along with the authorities, or if they'll be on the good side of the redwhiteblue democracy revolution... who knows the answer to that???

theres another possible scenario where the military doesnt wait for the peoplepower movement, but gets totally fed up with the bush crew and decides to instigate a military coup. this could conceivably be one of the better outcomes, oddly... what a world.

of course, the radministration would be silly to wait for the street protests and rioting - which points to pre-emptive martial law...

what would that look like? presumably a terrorist attack would probably just about do the trick - actual or feared, really serious or trumped up, reichstadt or external enemies...

Michel Chossudovsky recently wrote an article called "Is America Preparing for Martial Law?" his scenario is largely based on the fact that "The Department of Homeland Security recently carried out an extensive anti-terrorist exercise entitled TOPOFF 3 (April 4-8, 2005)." (i dont know the author - ftr, heres what xymphora said about him: "Michel Chossudovsky writes excellent stuff which reminds me of the work of Peter Dale Scott (no higher praise is possible)" (ftr i dont know Peter Dale Scott either))

Chossudovsky doesnt actually make the case very well (if at all), but the broader point is still valid.

let me make a few random points about TOPOFF 3:
firstly, i didnt even know that this exercise had been undertaken - which is mildly odd, cos i see a lot of media. news.googling the term "TOPOFF 3" gets 500 returns. so perhaps i have been asleep for a fortnight, or perhaps it missed both the major media and the blogosphere. given that this administration is famous for using fear as a tool, it seems odd that they didnt paint nightmare scenarios, and separately, given that this administration is famous for 'keeping us safe', it seems odd that they didnt publicise their fabulous efforts to demonstrate what a good job they are doing - particularly in a fortnight when they got slammed for the fact that airport security is no better now than at 91101, and the uk ricin scare campaign was scaring us all.
secondly, the name of the program is spooky given the gangster expression "to top someone" (officially it's an abbreviation of "top officials").
thirdly, the dhs gave a background press briefing to announce the end of their exercise which prompted a journo to ask: "Question: I have, first, a procedural question. I'm just wondering why this briefing had to be on background. "
fifthly, astute observers will remember that norad was conducting drills about hijacked planes hitting buildings on the day that hijacked planes hit buildings. lets hope the same coincidence doesnt happen when they are conducting biochem drills.
sixthly, (is that a word? 5 consecutive consonants!) - fema is spooky. you might remember that odd scenario where fema arrived in nyc on sep10, and giuliani lied about it, and his testimony was 'unavailable' on the 911comm website...

anyway - enough about topoff and that Chossudovsky article - i dont have any specific thoughts on the matter - but back to my previous question about what it would take to install martial law (given the sex fetish that has taken over the nation, ill try to avoid mis-typing and getting 'marital law' - altho the similarities are too spooky to consider):
"what would that look like? presumably a terrorist attack would probably just about do the trick - actual or feared, really serious or trumped up, reichstadt or external enemies..."

actual or feared?: would it even take an actual terrorist attack to trigger martial law? perhaps a high level of 'internet chatter' would suffice. i guess if they were gonna cancel the constitution, we might as well do it with as little death, damage and destruction as possible - but at the same time, itd be sad to see the somnolent-many accept govt propaganda and roll over so simply...

really serious or trumped up?: i think we all know the answer to that. lets hope the badministration does too. schiavo got nearly as much coverage as 911 - welcome to the world of media equivalence. theres something like 30 attacks per day in iraq - just one of those events would shake america to its core. bloody hell - they could use a peta protest at a mcdonalds in rural alabama to institute martial law if fox news signed on. on that note, i cant for the life of me understand why there hasnt been a terrorist attack in the US for 4 years - we've got suicide bombers every second day in iraq, apparently to protest the occupation - it defies (my) logic why not one of them has considered the possibility of undertaking the same act in america. nobody actually believes that dhs is keeping anyone safe, and nobody actually believes blinky's 'we're fighting them in baghdad so we dont have to fight them in boston (and other alliteration-friendly cities)'. how to explain that phenomenon? either the 'terrorists' dont exist, or they dont like killing innocent people, or theres no such thing as 'sleeper cells' or the terrorist threat isnt really 'amorphous' but is actually all under control of an evil mastermind who for some reason doesnt want to attack america/ns. or the 'terrorists' are struggling to find ak47s. or they cant find their way to a mall in boise where they can mow down 100 americans with their aforementioned ak47. ssri-addled 17 yearold nazi fantasists can do way more damage than these stupid terrorists. its incredible.

reichstadt or external enemies?: i could discuss this issue forever - but at the end of the day - it probably doesnt matter much in the end. against all enemies - foreign or domestic. these horrible people lied their way into killing at least 101,800 people - thats a lot of people. a lot of dead people. and they are calling for the heads of judges and democrats on a platter. i dont think theyd blink if it was 101,801. or 101,802. or 201,800. ive gotta assume that theres some tapering off of the sensation of guilt at the margin (notwithstanding their most valiant attempts to save mrs schiavo and the millions of unfertilised 'people'). so whether external enemies kill people, or whether they reichstadt it (via however many degrees of proxy/separation they find necessary), it just doesnt really matter. imagine if u will the different reactions if an abortion clinic blew up tomorrow killing 10 people, vs a repug senator's office killing the same number of people, vs a liberal judge's office.

i had promised to do a state-of-play post - which i guess i have just done - but i didnt cover the things i had suggested id cover. thats the beauty of these people - they are so fucking comprehensive, its impossible to keep track of them.

anyway - ill end with referring back to miggidy's post-911 observations, when all around him were losing their heads, he repeatedly demanded that 'no! this *doesnt* change everything!'. brave words. and he was was probably right for all the wrong reasons, and wrong for all the right reasons. or something. but the sentiments were brave - and thats one reason why we love him.

(i should check and edit this rant for sanity and consistency and cogency and all that - but i wont. its straight off the keyboard and i probably get lost along the way in some places)

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btw - i had promised (here and here) to write a piece on where we are today, and where we might be going. i guess the rant above is exactly that - altho i had promised to discuss socsec and the wars on sex and racism and DeLay and Frist and stuff - which i obviously havent done. im not sure if ill get around to covering those issues individually - and together. altho theres a possibility...