buzzflash brings us this from the hartford advocate

i happened NOT to have read this weeks advocate R.I.P. AmericaThe body still breathes but the spirit´s waning by Alan Bisbort - January 19, 2006

All it took was 18 guys with box cutters and America was no more. Not
"defeated," of course, because we are still the most powerful nation on the
planet -- if one measures "power" on such things as size of nuclear arsenal,
numbers of conventional killing machines, consumption of goods, corporate
wealth, stock holdings, private educational opportunities, etc. But the horror
of Sept. 11, 2001 -- events that, we've since learned, might have been prevented
if the President had fulfilled the responsibilities of his office or might have
been used to bring people together to fight terrorism rather than turn us into
the most reviled nation on earth -- sent America into a tailspin, one that we've
yet to pull out of. Rather than becoming a stronger, more confident and ennobled
nation, we've become exactly what our forefathers warned us against: a tyranny.
With almost comical irony, the new tyrant, like the old one, is called George.
Let's start with something on which we, so-called righties, lefties and
moderates, should be able to agree: In the name of fighting terror we have
ourselves become terrorized by our government. The recent reports of the
President's warrant-less spying on American citizens seem lifted from Josef
Stalin's daily to-do list. Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency
operative forced out of his job for whistleblowing last year, recently told
reporters that the spying was not, as Bush insists (and when do people simply
stop believing anything said by this pathological liar?), limited in scope.
Indeed, Tice says the number of Americans illegally probed "could be in the
millions."
Further, the FBI has been given carte blanche by attorney
generals Ashcroft and Gonzalez to monitor "groups with suspected ties to foreign
terrorists." And who might some of these terrorist groups be? They include
environmentalists, animal rights activists and poverty relief proponents. In
other words, there's a good chance that if you've ever said anything against the
president, expressed antiwar sentiments on the phone, joined an environmental
group, gone to a rally for the poor or protested the treatment of research lab
animals, you have been tapped, probed and otherwise breached -- and you will
never know what they have in their little files. While it would be, in a
bragging-rights sort of way, an honor to be on Bush's enemies list, it can and
will ruin your life somewhere down the line. As Philip K. Dick put it, "Once
they notice you, they never completely close the file."
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