I like to group related links by subject. But, while subject labels can let us see how the linked articles relate to a common meme, it may also blind us from seeing a different meme. I have been labeling links related to the war on terrorism as The War Against Some Terrorists. I have been labeling links to articles on domestic issues with different labels. I have then fallen into the trap of seeing these different sets of articles as not related. In the past, I would have labelled the following articles with at least two different labels. I now see that things happening internally and externally to the US are, in fact, are being driven by the same forces — the forces working towards the American Empire.

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The Last Emperor
One Thing Was Made Crystal Clear Yesterday: There Is No Other Authority Than America, No Law But US Law

There he stood, this unlikely emperor of the world, telling the UN's 190 nations how it is going to be. The assembled nations may not be quite the toothless Roman senate of imperial times, but at the UN the hyperpower and its commander-in-chief are in control as never before: how could it be otherwise when the US army is the UN's only enforcer? This is, President Bush said, "a difficult and defining moment" for the UN, a challenge that will show whether it has become "irrelevant". He pointed his silver-tongued gun with some delicacy and a certain noblesse oblige, but there was no doubt he was holding it to the UN's head: pass a resolution or be bypassed. [read more]

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The Anniversary of a Neo-Imperial Moment

When excerpts of the document first appeared in the New York Times in the spring of 1992, it created quite a stir. Sen. Joe Biden, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was particularly outraged, calling it a prescription for "literally a Pax Americana," an American empire.

The details contained in the draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) were indeed startling.

The document argued that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia.

It envisioned a world in which U.S. military intervention would become "a constant fixture" of the geo-political landscape. "While the U.S. cannot become the world's 'policeman' by assuming responsibility for righting every wrong, we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends," wrote the authors, Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby –- who at the time were two relatively obscure political appointees in the Pentagon's policy office. [read more]

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The Mantra That Means This Time It's Serious
by Robert Fisk

How small he looked in the high-backed chair. You had to sit in the auditorium of the UN General Assembly yesterday to realize that George Bush Jr– threatening war in what was built as a house of peace – could appear such a little man. But then again Julius Caesar was a little man and so was Napoleon Bonaparte. So were other more modern, less mentionable world leaders. Come to think of it so was General Douglas MacArthur, who had his own axis of evil, which took him all the way to the Yalu river.

But yesterday, two-thirds of the way through his virtual declaration of war, there came a little, dangerous, telltale code, which suggested that President Bush really does intend to send his tanks across the Tigris river. "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people,'' he said. In the press gallery, nobody stirred. Below us, not a diplomat shifted in his seat. The speech had already rambled on for 20 minutes but the speechwriters must have known what this meant when they cobbled it together.

Before President Reagan bombed Libya in 1985, he announced that America "had no quarrel with the Libyan people.'' Before he bombed Iraq in 1991, Bush the Father told the world that the United States "had no quarrel with the Iraqi people''. Last year Bush the Son, about the strike at the Taliban and al-Qa'ida, told us he "had no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan". And now that frightening mantra was repeated. There was no quarrel, Mr Bush said – absolutely none – with the Iraqi people. So it's flak jackets on. [read more]

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Things We Lost in the Fire
While the Ruins of the World Trade Center Smoldered, the Bush Administration Launched an Assault on the Constitution

"Liberty is the most precious gift we offer our citizens."

Could Tom Ridge have said anything scarier or more telling as he accepted the post of homeland security czar? Trying to strike the bell of liberty, he sounds its death knell, depicting government not as the agent of the people's will, but as an imperious power with the authority to give us our democratic freedoms. Which means, of course, that it can also take them away. [read more]

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I Hear America Sinking
Bush Pulls a Grieving Nation Into War

Behind the memorial candles and commercial remembrances lies one of the most astute marketing campaigns in American political history. This week, as the nation marks the first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the Bush administration will twist voters' outpouring of raw emotion and patriotic fervor into a launching pad for the inevitable invasion of Iraq. [read more]

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The last link has the above picture. It is a picture that Leni Riefenstahl could have taken. It captures the same elements that Riefenstahl used — the glorious leader up front, arm outstretched in salute, the flag of the Homeland prominently displayed, and the adoring, cheering citizens.

The manipulated outpouring of emotion on the recently designated Patriot Day is right out of Triumph of the Will. Goebbels would have been proud.