Steven Jonas

The ABC 9/11 Fiction and Control of the Political Agenda

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Sept. 11, 2006

In an editorial on September 9, 2006, BuzzFlash noted that: "Lost in the uproar over ABC subcontracting 9/11 over to right wing extremists is the smoking gun conclusion of a Republican/Democratic Senate report that says Saddam had no connection to al-Qaeda -- and that, indeed, he went to great lengths to keep them out of Iraq. That means Bush and Cheney are responsible for opening up Iraq to al-Qaeda -- and that they lied and lied again." On the same day, BuzzFlash also observed: "Who Does the Writer/Producer of the Infamous ABC ‘Path to 9/11' Fiction Mini-Series Give His Major Interview to? Radical Wing nut David Horowitz's Publication, That's Who. In it, the Writer/Director Heaps Praise on Bush, Scorns Clinton, Praises the Patriot Act, scurrilously attacks the film ‘Syriana,' and so on."

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In a series of columns on ThePoliticalJunkies.net last fall (see for example "The Future of the Democratic Party, III: First Thoughts on Dealing with the DLC," October 20, 2005), I speculated that there would be a forthcoming organizational split in the Democratic Party. The reasons? Seemingly irreconcilable differences over such matters as the future of Constitutional Democracy in the United States, the War on Iraq, unilateral vs. multi-lateral foreign policy, the future of "globalization" which in effect means the continued unfettered export of US capital, separation of church and state and freedom of belief in matters of religion, equality before the law for all identity groups within our society. It seemed to me then, and it surely does now, that the Democratic Party is headed towards the kind of break-up that overtook the Whig Party in the 1850s over the issue of the expansion of slavery in the Territories.

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Democratic Ideas, IX: "Let's Hear It For Strict Construction, Part 1"
by Steven Jonas

The Georgite mission of Constitutional destruction is now out in the open through a variety of revelations. Serious concern with it is no longer the sole province of the Left. Mickey Edwards is a former member of the House Republican leadership, national chair of the American Conservative Union, and a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation. In the July 31/Augst 7, 2006 issue of The Nation (!, p. 5), he said: "[Bush has shown] deliberate disregard of a law prohibiting electronic surveillance of US citizens without a court-ordered warrant. . . . [The] issue at stake is . . . the continued viability of the separation of powers, the central tenet in America's system of constrained government. . . . The concentration of power in the hands of a single chief executive, whether President or King, is an outcome neither the left nor the right should welcome. But with a President who assumes that all important decisions are his to make, . . . that may well be where we are headed." Unless, that is, the Georgites are headed off, and fairly quickly too.

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by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

Numerous websites are reporting that Israel has the "permission" of the U.S. to do what it is presently doing to and in Lebanon and Gaza. (In terms of the Middle East I have for some time wondered who is the dog and which is the tail, or if both parties are tails of different colors being wagged by a big dog in a big cave somewhere, but that is the subject for another Comment.) Whether or not that is so, certainly the US, as of this writing on Friday, July 28, has refused to sign on to the call for a cease-fire that has been issued by just about every other major power, and most of the minor ones too. Condi Rice has put the U.S. position thus: that any cease fire should be in the context of an over-all long-term solution to the "Middle East problem." Many observers view such a long-range solution as, at the least, beginning with a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the resultant end of the Israeli occupation of much Palestinian territory, on the basis of a fair, rational, and viable two-state solution.

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by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

We liberals and progressives may someday get back into power, in both the Congress and the White House. Don't hold your breath, but even with the monstrously weak Democratic Party and the monstrously strong Republican cheating machine, it might conceivably happen. If it does, there will be a host of most important issues to deal with, ranging from restoring the Constitutional system of checks and balances, to re-establishing the Federal government in the role envisioned for it by the Preamble to the Constitution, to dealing with Iraq and the whole Middle East with a policy designed to achieve the best results for the people of the region, not the US oil companies. We will also need a new Federal stem cell research policy.

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