Your Daily Dose of Fear from Bush
(don’t worry, children, he’ll protect us)

Social scientists and concerned citiizens have begun paying attention
to the disempowering rhetoric Bush and his people routinely use to frighten the
public and foster dependency upon the President and support for his perpetual
“war on terrorism.” A short article on this no longer subtle tactic is Renata Brooks’
“Bush Dominates a Nation of Victims.” Now an anonymous anthropologist at
the University of Louisiana, Lafayette has edited the text of Bush's Speech on
Iraq, September 7, 2003, identifying the references to terror, violence and death.

>terror
>deadly attacks
>Terrorism
>destroying
>terror
>killed
>terrorist
>terrorist
>terror
>mass destruction
>terrorists
>attacked
>terrorists
>dead
>war
>terrorist threat
>torture chambers
>mass graves
>violence and terror
>international terrorism
>terrorists
>ideologies of terror
>terror
>assassins
>torturers
>killers
>attackers
>attackers
>foreign terrorists
>war
>killers
>attacks
>attacks
>terrorist groups
>attacks
>terrorists
>ambushed
>killed
>bombed
>murdered
>bombing
>violence
>attacks
>terrorists
>terrorists
>inflict harm
>war on terror
>a lengthy war
>a different kind of war
>war on terror
>destroying the terrorists
>against the terrorists
>future attacks
>precise strikes against enemy targets
>combat
>raids
>enemy weapons
>ammunition
>killed hundreds
>terrorists
>dead
>hunting for them
>terrible weapons
>terrorist attacks
>attacks
>war on terror
>died
>war
>terror

Edward Teller's "contributions"


Edward Teller, 95, physicist and tireless Cold War advocate for nuclear
armaments, died this past week.

He was renown as “the father of the H-bomb.” When I was a grad
student in Berkeley during the middle 1960s, I lived briefly in an apartment
just across the street from Teller and would occasionally see him ambling
down the path to his car. I had to suppress an urge to yell out “Hi, Dad!”

Beyond his work on the atomic and hydrogen bomb projects, Teller is
best known for (1) destroying the career of his friend Robert Oppenheimer
during 1954 government hearings on Oppenheimer’s security clearance
and (2) boosting the idea of the “Star War” missile defense shield to
Ronald Reagan and anybody foolish enough to take the plan seriously.

If any of the devices Teller built and promoted are ever put into use, we
can kiss the planet goodbye. The man may have accomplished some good
during his lifetime, but I am unaware of it.

The Bush administration's attack on the environment

Bill Moyer's recent interview for Grist, reprinted in The Utne Reader
offers good insight into the Bush administration's full scale onslaught on
every aspect of environmental protection. Moyer's assessment of the source
of this attack is clear and persuasive:

"Their god is the market -- every human problem, every human need,
will be solved by the market. Their dogma is the literal reading of the
creation story in Genesis where humans are to have "dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing ..." The administration
has married that conservative dogma of the religious right to the
corporate ethos of profits at any price. And the result is the politics of
exploitation with a religious impulse."

Comparing the fate of the earth to the centuries old devastation of
Iraq, Moyers comments:

"By the time we all wake up, by the time the media starts doing
their job and by the time the public sees what is happening, it
may be too late to reverse it. That's what science is telling us.
That's what the Earth is telling us. That's what burns in my consciousness.

Consider the example of Iraq. Once upon a time it was such a lush,
fertile, and verdant land that the authors of Genesis located
the Garden of Eden there. Now look at it: stretches upon stretches
of desert, of arid lands inhospitable to human beings, empty of
trees and clean water and rolling green grasses. That's a message
from the Earth about what happens when people don't take care of it.
No matter what we do to Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains a wasteland
compared to what it was. American policy makers see only the black
oil in the ground and not the message that all the years of
despoliation have left."

* * * * * * *

The article notes that the Bushies in Washington simply refuse
any interviews with Moyers' "NOW" television program. It's more
testimony of the increasingly totalitarian stance taken by this gang. I'm
increasingly puzzled as to why well-meaning old school Republicans
put up with such heavy handed, destructive tactics, why there aren't
more James Jeffords jumping ship. Perhaps American politics finally
has become the equivalent of the medieval "Ship of Fools."