Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Mainstream Malice
My significant other was listening to Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interview a former undercover FBI agent on our community radio two days ago, who made the assertion that field agents (like he was before resigning over disagreements with mid-level management) are generally conscientious folks, but that bureaucratic turf battles and political interference from higher ups often prevent the lawful and orderly application of justice. Not a particularly shocking piece of information these days, unless one considers that his expertise and experience was the infiltration of violent white supremacist groups.
What caught my partner's ear, though, was when he mentioned working in among other places our old neck of the woods in northwest Washington state, where my colleagues and I in the mid-1990s were the target of eight individuals later--with the testimony of then Agent German--convicted of manufacturing explosives to use against human rights activists and judges opposed to their racist agenda. Again, old news to me, but nice to finally hear it on the radio.
Without getting into the details of my memoir, which you can read excerpts of by clicking my post Reign of Terror in the sidebar, what I found especially ironic about the news story associated with Mr. German's revelations, was that if the Department of Justice today was to pick just one organization to investigate for racially-based criminal misconduct, it would have to be hands down the U.S. Congress.
Which led me to think about the Washington State Militia gatherings I secretly observed and their emotional obsession with such rituals as the pledge of allegiance--a tool also frequently used by their local GOP sympathizers to, in their minds, delineate the divide between themselves and godless liberals. And what came to my mind was the phrase "one nation," and the racialist implications of that phrase that--unlike in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--flippantly ignores the supreme law of the land in the United States, otherwise known as the Constitution, treaties, and conventions agreed to between the aboriginal inhabitants of our country and the Euro-American settlers.
All this is in no way an attempt to elevate the crimes against humanity by the US in relation to the former Soviet Union. Rather, it is merely to point out that those in power in the Kremlin were at least capable of recognizing that they were a country of many nations, as are we, but for some reason is still wilfully denied here even as we celebrate the Voyage of Discovery that--similar to what happened in Palestine in 1948--opened up indigenous lands to European immigrants. As our federal government now prepares to undermine the protection of endangered species we promised the Indian nations to protect in perpetuity in exchange for occupation of their lands, perhaps it is time we begin to openly discuss this whole "one nation" nonsense.
ps FBI Special Agent Mike German has a new job.
[Read what some are doing about it today. ]
What caught my partner's ear, though, was when he mentioned working in among other places our old neck of the woods in northwest Washington state, where my colleagues and I in the mid-1990s were the target of eight individuals later--with the testimony of then Agent German--convicted of manufacturing explosives to use against human rights activists and judges opposed to their racist agenda. Again, old news to me, but nice to finally hear it on the radio.
Without getting into the details of my memoir, which you can read excerpts of by clicking my post Reign of Terror in the sidebar, what I found especially ironic about the news story associated with Mr. German's revelations, was that if the Department of Justice today was to pick just one organization to investigate for racially-based criminal misconduct, it would have to be hands down the U.S. Congress.
Which led me to think about the Washington State Militia gatherings I secretly observed and their emotional obsession with such rituals as the pledge of allegiance--a tool also frequently used by their local GOP sympathizers to, in their minds, delineate the divide between themselves and godless liberals. And what came to my mind was the phrase "one nation," and the racialist implications of that phrase that--unlike in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--flippantly ignores the supreme law of the land in the United States, otherwise known as the Constitution, treaties, and conventions agreed to between the aboriginal inhabitants of our country and the Euro-American settlers.
All this is in no way an attempt to elevate the crimes against humanity by the US in relation to the former Soviet Union. Rather, it is merely to point out that those in power in the Kremlin were at least capable of recognizing that they were a country of many nations, as are we, but for some reason is still wilfully denied here even as we celebrate the Voyage of Discovery that--similar to what happened in Palestine in 1948--opened up indigenous lands to European immigrants. As our federal government now prepares to undermine the protection of endangered species we promised the Indian nations to protect in perpetuity in exchange for occupation of their lands, perhaps it is time we begin to openly discuss this whole "one nation" nonsense.
ps FBI Special Agent Mike German has a new job.
[Read what some are doing about it today. ]
