THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
September 2004
Week Four
- September 22: Dick Cheney attacks John Kerry for his alleged inconsistencies regarding Iraq:
2004 presidential elections
"Senator Kerry...said that under his leadership, more of America's friends would speak with one voice on Iraq. That seems a little odd coming from a guy who doesn't speak with one voice himself. By his repeated efforts to recast and redefine the war on terror and lacks the resolve, the determination and the conviction to prevail in the conflict we face." Cheney refuses to discuss his own "flip-flop" on Iraq. In April 1992 Cheney, then the Secretary of Defense, said that the decision not to occupy Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm was the correct one. "[T]he question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?" he said at that time. "And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq." (Seattle Post Intelligencer) - September 22: An international criminal court in Tokyo presided over by Professor Osamu Niikura of Japan, and including Dr. Asaho Mizushima of Japan, Dr. R.I .Akroyd of Great Britain, Professor Peter Erlinder of the US, and Professor Niloufer Bhagwat of India, finds George W. Bush guilty of an array of war crimes in Afghanistan.
War in Afghanistan
Bhagwat writes the final verdict. The convictions range from using military forces to commit crimes, waging an unjustified war against the Afghani people, mistreating prisoners of war, crimes against humanity, and using depleted-uranium weapons (classified as weapons of mass destruction) that have direly impacted troops and citizens of Afghanistan, the US, Great Britain, and other neighboring countries. The Bush administration refused to participate in the hearings, has refused to acknowledge the ruling, and no mainstream American media outlet has picked up on the story. Though the tribunal was apparently properly convened under international law, the tribunal has no real powers and no ability to enforce its ruling. It was proposed by international criminal law professor Akeda Maeda, and advised by, among others, former US attorney general and peace activist Ramsey Clark. Bush is defended by an amicus curiae attorney, Kenichi Okubo. - In the final findings, the court writes, "The Defendant [George Walker Bush] is a convicted war criminal consequently unfit to hold public office; citizens ,soldiers and all civil personnel of the United States would be constitutionally and otherwise, justified in withdrawing all co-operation from the Defendant and his government; and in declining to obey illegal orders of the Defendant and his administration; including military orders threatening other nations or the people of the United States on the basis of the Nuremberg Principle, that illegal orders of Superior must not be obeyed." The court also introduces a new word: "omnicide." It defines the word in relation to the US's use of depleted uranium which will retain its radioactive threat for thousands of years, causing suffering and harm to present and future generations. (International Criminal Tribune/Mindfully [full transcript of final verdict], ZMag, Wikipedia/Answers, Pravda)
- September 22: Paul Crouch, the founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world's largest religious broadcasting company, is embattled in allegations that he had a sexual liason with one of his male employees.
Religious conservatives
While TBN has issued statements calling the allegations "salacious" (though not quite denying them outright), the normally combative Crouch has stayed out of the limelight, delegating his eldest son, Paul Crouch Jr., to appear in his place as host of Behind the Scenes, a show that focuses on activities within the TBN. (Crouch is normally quite comfortable with challenging his opponents, famously telling one critic in 1991, "To hell with you! Get out of the way! I say get out of God's way! Quit blocking God's bridges or God's going to shoot you if I don't!") Crouch's accuser is Enoch Lonnie Ford, a former patient at a TBN-affiliated drug rehabilitation center whom Crouch met in 1991 and was later hired as Crouch's chauffeur. While working for the TBN, Ford compiled a lengthy rap sheet for crimes including cocaine possession and having sex with a 17-year-old boy, an act that constitutes statutory rape in California. After Ford served a succession of prison terms, the TBN rehired him, provided him with a free apartment, and even lobbied a judge for leniency when he violated the terms of his parole. Ford claims that he and Crouch had sex in 1996, while Ford was a guest at a TBN-owned cabin at Lake Arrowhead, a woodsy southern California resort area. In 1998, when the TBN fired Ford and he threatened to sue, the network offered Ford $425,000 in hush money. Ford accepted, but he later penned a manuscript about his affair with Crouch and, in 2003, threatened to make it public unless the TBN paid him $10 million. Crouch's lawyers are scrambling once again to keep Ford quiet, this time by requesting a restraining order barring him from seeking a publisher. - The reason why this story is politically relevant is two-fold. One, Crouch, like so many of his conservative evangelical brethren, routinely denounces homosexuality, adultery, and other sexual matters in the most thunderous terms, making Crouch another in the long line of conservative evangelical hypocrites. More importantly, Crouch's status as a long-term political ally of Bush administration officials such as Attorney General John Ashcroft could threaten both his standing and the credibility of those in the administration with whom Crouch has had a long-standing buniness and political relationship. TBN is doing its best to prevent Ford from publishing his memoirs, and is painting Ford as a liar and a profit-mongerer, doing its best to highlight Ford's history of crime and drug abuse. But internal dissent is shaking TBN. Crouch's youngest son, Matt, is so shaken by allegations that his father had an affair with Ford that he recently told a law partner, "I am devastated; I am confronted with having to face the fact that my father is a homosexual." TBN's star preacher, Benny Hinn, is quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying in 1998, "Paul's defense was that he was drunk."
- Unlike his former business partner Jim Bakker, who was convicted of stealing at least $158 million from his own ministry and had a lurid affair with his secretary, Jessica Hahn, Crouch is not accused of any illegality. However, the charges against Crouch carry additional weight because of his prominence in the galaxy of the religious right, which, through its collaboration with George Bush's administration and the GOP leadership, has cultivated gay marriage as a divisive election-year issue. Over the years, Crouch's TBN has played host to an array of vehemently homophobic figures, including Hinn. In 1989, Hinn predicted, "The Lord also tells me to tell you in the mid-90s, about '94 or '95, no later than that, God will destroy the homosexual community of America. He will destroy it with fire." Crouch has been a member of the Coalition on Revival, an umbrella group for evangelical Christianity's most militantly anti-gay, Dominionist ministers. A 2003 press release Coalition on Revival member James Kennedy's ministry issued on the dangers of "the homosexual agenda" stated, "Thomas Jefferson authorized legislation to penalize sodomy by castration." Another Coalition on Revival member, theologist Gary North, has written that homosexuals should be stoned to death.
- Crouch's broadcast empire would not have been possible without his wife and co-host, Jan, who is perhaps religious television's most recognizable personality. Commentator Max Blumenthal writes, "When she steps onto the TBN's set with the demeanor of an oversolicitous Sunday-school teacher -- clutching a lace-embossed Bible, sporting an enormous, purple-tinted hairdo and powder-cake makeup, along with frilly clothes -- it's almost impossible for viewers to turn away. Nor is it easy to ignore the Crouches' gaudy set, which fuses the kitschy style of a 1950s suburban living room with that of a royalty-themed Las Vegas motel. To watch the Crouches is an exercise in visual overstimulation. For their devoted viewers, their appearance carries a deeper significance. Every aspect of the Crouches' look is carefully calculated as an aesthetic accompaniment to their Dominionist theology, which urges Christians to acquire as much wealth, power, and influence as possible in order to put the world's secular institutions under the control of biblical law. To earn the blind loyalty of their viewers, who are often poor or working class and whom Jan Crouch routinely calls 'you little people,' the Crouches have cast themselves as spiritual aristocrats entrusted with handling God's riches. Seated on purple thrones like the king and queen of an alternate universe, the Crouches plead with viewers for their 'seed money,' reassuring them that their donations will be planted in heaven and blossom into anything they seek, from material wealth to eternal salvation. Though it's hard to know how much of this money has actually made it to heaven (especially because the TBN keeps its financial records secret), a good chunk of it has made the Crouches wealthy; in 2001, they bought a $5 million home in Orange County, California, described by real-estate agents as 'a palatial estate with ocean and city views.'"
- The Crouches have also cultivated ties with some of the most repressive governments around the globe in their 30-year campaign to spread TBN worldwide. According to Alfred Ross, director of the Institute for Democracy Studies, a New York-based think tank that tracks anti-democratic movements worldwide, in 1988, Crouch met with the president of South Africa's apartheid government, P.W. Botha, to finalize a deal for a TBN affiliate in South Africa. That same year, the TBN completed work on its station in El Salvador, where Crouch had traveled frequently and associated with officials from the "Treasury Police," which oversaw the country's death-squad operations. And in the early 1980s, in order to get TBN's signal into the Middle East, Crouch forged a close relationship with Israel's Likud Party government, donating millions of dollars to it for unspecified purposes. Crouch also held a joint press conference in 1982 with Lebanon's Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Israel-backed, right-wing Phalangist militia, which massacred thousands of Palestinian refugees during Lebanon's civil war.
- Crouch and TBN have been long-standing allies of conservative politicians in America as well. Ashcroft, who attended a Pentecostal church with Crouch as a child in Missouri, was given critical help by TBN in Ashcroft's contentious bid to be confirmed as attorney general when the network hosted Bush administration evangelical advisor Doug Wead. Wead touted Ashcroft's Christian credentials and explained to the audience that the former Missouri senator had been demonized throughout his career "by the whole left" with "very bigoted attacks because of his religion." In the TBN's newsletter, Crouch later told supporters to "pray for John [Ashcroft] and pray for our President every day!"
- Blumenthal concludes, "Crouch hopes he can weather the storm over his personal life by attempting to discredit the character of his accuser, to whom he has paid hush money, according to the Los Angeles Times. For the religious right -- and, ultimately, for the Bush White House -- a considerable asset is at stake in the outcome." (American Prospect)
- September 23:
Iraq war and occupation
Bush admits his ignorance of the lifestyles of the Iraqi citizenry: "I'm not the expert on how the Iraqi people think, because I live in America, where it's nice and safe and secure." (AllHatNoCattle)/LI> - September 23: Discredited televangelist Jimmy Swaggert apologizes, in a fashion, for his recent remark where he stated that he would kill any gay man who looked at him in a romantic fashion.
Religious conservatives
On September 12, he told his television audience, "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died." While the studio audience laughed and applauded, the outcry from gay rights organizations and human rights advocates is quick and powerful, prompting Swaggert to explain that he used the phrase "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people, and claimed it is a figure of speech that isn't meant to harm anyone. "It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God -- it's ridiculous," he says. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology." (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6074380/)
- September 24: With guest George W. Bush,
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
talk show maven Bill O'Reilly asserts, with absolutely no grasp of history whatsoever, that "[t]he South Vietnamese didn't fight for their freedom, which is why they don't have it today." Bush's equally ignorant response? "Yes." (Fox News/Wikiquote)
"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." -- George W. Bush, September 25
- September 25: A lawsuit brought by two former slave laborers at Auschwitz, the concentration camp run by Nazi Germany before and during World War II, has resulted in the release of information from the US National Archives proving that the connections between the president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and companies who directly did business with the Nazis were far deeper than has been previously known.
Bush family
The story causes a sensation in the European press, but is barely reported in the US media. - Prescott Bush's business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led to the civil suit more than 60 years later; one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor says he now believes Bush should have been prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The new documentation proves that Bush's dealings continued far past the entrance of the US into the war with industries that directly financed Adolf Hitler's rise to power, and indeed, without the financing and support of Bush and other American industrialists, Hitler may have never been able to take over the German government. Bush's firm, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war; UBC was also revealed to have helped the Thyssen and other Nazis hide finances from oversight. Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. Interestingly, Bush is closely linked to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral-rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labor from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942. It is indisputable that Bush knew BBH was heavily involved in finances and business dealings with firms that bolstered Hitler's rise to power; it is likely, though not completely proven, that Bush knew the firms he was working with were employing slave labor from Auschwitz and other concentration camps.
- The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40 billion in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war. Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty." Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, says, "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family." Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
- Author John Loftus, a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 1970s, is writing a book on the subject. Loftus is the vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. He emphasizes that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time. "You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did -- bought Nazi stocks -- but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he says. "This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defense industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted. ...The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen. At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realized that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horsesh*t. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were." Loftus adds, "There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it. As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany." Loftus says that Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
- Recently the Bush family approved the publication of a flattering biography of Prescott Bush, Duty, Honor, Country; the book spends less than two pages on the allegations, and paints Bush as an upstanding American businessman who "acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill." (Guardian)
- September 28: Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who also serves as the state's head of the Bush campaign effort, makes two rulings that will hinder efforts to get out the vote, particularly among Democrats.
Election fraud
One requires Ohio voter registration cards be printed on thick, 80-pound stock paper. The other orders boards of elections to strictly interpret the rules regarding provisional ballots, the ones cast by voters who move before the election but are still registered in Ohio. The rule about 80-pound paper being used to register voters is designed to interfere with registrations by Democrats who routinely use regular copy paper to Xerox registration forms, and sign up voters on those copied forms. Some counties are mailing the forms back to the registrant for resubmission, but considering the huge backlogs of voter registrations yet to be processed, it is doubtful that those late resubmissions will be processed before November 2. (Republican voting efforts seem to have little problem securing original forms from Blackwell's office.) Cuyahoga County officials say flatly they will ignore the ruling. "We don't have a micrometer at each desk to check the weight of the paper," says Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board. Cuyahoga County has already received a special dispensation to accept registrations on newsprint, since those were designed to be mailed in and must fit into Postal Service sorters. To add to the confusion, the law requires that forms printed from government Internet sites must be accepted regardless of the kind of paper they are printed on. (The rule about 80-pound paper is a hangover from the days where the forms were stored in files for years; today, the forms are destroyed immediately after their information is transferred into computer storage.) The other directive forbids poll workers from giving a provisional ballot unless the person can prove they live in that precinct. Peg Rosenfield, spokeswoman for the League of Women Voters, says she interprets federal to be less restrictive. Rosenfield says people who show up at the wrong precinct should be given a ballot and allowed to vote on the non-local races. (Dayton Daily News/Truthout) - September 28: The New York Times reveals some details from reporter Walter Pincus's testimony before Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the Valerie Plame Wilson outing.
Plame outing
Two weeks ago, Pincus told the gathering of lawyers and staffers, "As someone who covers national security and intelligence, I depend on confidential sources more than most reporters. My sources take a chance when they trust me with information that could cost them their jobs or have other serious consequences. In turn, I will protect them." Pincus did identify one source for his information about the identity of the outed CIA agent, a source whom Pincus says gave him permission to reveal his identity. Times reporter Adam Liptak writes that the Plame case is different from the usual controversy over sensitive information revealed in the press under First Amendment protections: "The Plame case is different. This is largely because, unlike most leaks, the disclosure of an undercover intelligence agent's identity is a felony. The disclosure of Ms. Plame's identity, moreover, may have been motivated by politics. And the investigation inside the government, in which the president, the vice president and many other officials have been questioned, seems to have been both exhaustive and inconclusive." - Opinions about the investigation, and the grilling of reporters, vary. "Every time I hear about one of these reporters going in to speak about their sources, my stomach drops to my shoes," said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. "We're in a crisis on this. I'm absolutely terrified about how this is going to turn out for media credibility." But Brian Sun, a former federal prosecutor who now represents the atomic scientist Wen Ho Lee, says the press should be more concerned about publishing classified information than about protecting sources. "It's aiding and abetting a crime," Sun says of the journalists who published Plame's name. He adds that journalists should face the same sanctions as other citizens. "People are compelled to talk all the time," he says, "or they get thrown in the can for contempt. Very few prosecutors have been willing to take on the press, historically. Pat Fitzgerald is a tough guy. Other prosecutors may now be willing to take on the press." Fitzgerald has already asked White House officials to sign forms waiving the confidentiality of any discussions with reporters. Times reporter Judith Miller is still fighting a subpoena from Fitzgerald, while conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first publicly printed Plame's name, is refusing to say whether or not he was subpoenaed, or whether he has cooperated with the investigation -- though he has cooperated with Fitzgerald almost from the outset of the investigation. (New York Times, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
First presidential debate; Bush wearing a wire?
- September 30: Bush and Kerry engage in the first of three presidential debates, this one at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
2004 presidential elections
Observers note an unusual bulge in the back of Bush's jacket, leading many to speculate that Bush is possibly "wearing a wire," a transceiving device that allows him to receive whispered instructions on what to say from someone at the other end. The Bush campaign denies this, usually by making jokes about "conspiracy theories" and alien mind control devices, and though speculation is rampant and the possibility strong, nothing is conclusively proven. The Secret Service later tells reporters that Bush is wearing a bulletproof vest. - During the debate, Bush again tries to imply that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, saying that he sent US troops into Iraq because "[t]he enemy attacked us." Kerry counters by reminding Bush, and the debate audience, that "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us." Bush responds, "First of all, I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that!" Political satirist Al Franken later writes, "It would take a month of rock-solid 9/11-Iraq conflating to restore Bush's lead [in the polls].
- More significantly, during this and the subsequent debates, Bush will use coded phrases to evoke reactions among targeted voters, phrasings developed by Karl Rove. One example cited by authors James Moore and Wayne Slater is in the targeting of Catholic opponents of abortion, when Bush says, "Surely, we can work together to create a culture of life." The phrase "culture of life" is used repeatedly by Pope John Paul II in his own denunciations of abortion, and resounds with pro-life Catholics who attend weekly mass. Another example is seen in Bush's repeated TV ads touting the teaching of phonics in elementary schools. For most viewers, Bush is merely talking about education. But for social conservatives, the discussion of phonics echoes their own feelings about their cultural identity. Phonics is a hot topic on Christian radio, and a key agenda in the so-called religious conservative "culture wars." Promoting phonics is discussed as a method of rejecting moral relativism, of secularism and the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey. It rejects the progressive methodologies of "whole language." Moore and Slater write, "It was, fundamentally, about reasserting the Absolute." Few voters outside the religious community see the advocacy of phonics as anything controversial, but for religious conservatives, it resounds. (Commission on Presidential Debates, The Hill/Al Franken, James Moore and Wayne Slater)
A montage of photographs of Bush during the first debate, focusing on the unusual bulge at the back of his jacket. (Image obtained from Visual Futurist.)
