One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?“

Several years ago, an interviewer asked Vonnegut to recount the story where he told his wife he was going out to buy an envelope:

[S]he says … why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around.

Vonnegut told a story about a fellow famous author, Joseph Heller (1923-1999), who wrote Catch-22:

We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch-22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?”

Joe said to me, “I have something he can never have.”

I said, “What’s that, Joe?”

And he said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.“

Vonnegut followed another famous author, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Asimov wrote hundreds of books covering nine of the ten Dewey Decimal categories. Though he preferred writing non-fiction, Asimov is best known for writing science fiction, such as the epic Foundation Trilogy. One time an interviewer asked him about his autobiography:

Southwest Airlines Magazine: I understand that at one time you said that you would let your work serve as your biography, and yet In Memory, Yet Green, your autobiography, has just come out. Why did you change your mind?

Asimov: Well, my 200th book was coming up and Doubleday wanted something they could plug, so they said they wanted an autobiography. I tried to resist, but they overcame me.

SWA: How long did it take to complete?

Asimov: Ten months. I started on March 9, 1977, and I finished on December 31, 1977 because I promised I would have it finished by the end of the year. It was rough going, too. The book is over 640,000 words long, which is more than three times as long as The Foundation Trilogy.

SWA: Have you really done that much?

Asimov: In my life? I’ve done nothing in my life. You would be surprised how shrewdly I had to write it to obscure that fact.

Vonnegut and a fellow famous author, Studs Terkel (1912-2008), each supported the scrappy, pro-democracy newsmagazine, In These Times. Terkel wrote books, such as Working and Hard Times, consisting of his interviews with common Americans, and constantly fought for them, and against ignorance of their history. He told a little story that occurred one day in his Chicago neighborhood:

You know I walk to the bus. Bus number 146. They know me in the neighborhood. They know I’m a writer. They know me as the old guy who’s garrulous. I talk to myself. [Laughs.]

So one day there’s this one couple, they ignore me completely. So my ego is hurt. And I say, “The bus is late.” And I say, to make conversation, “Labor Day’s coming up.” And the man just turns and looks at me — Brooks Brothers, under his arm, the latest Wall Street Journal. And she’s a beauty. Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s. She’s got Vanity Fair in her hand. And he turns, looks at me, and says, “We despise unions.” And then he turns away.

And I said, “You what?” And the bus hasn’t come yet. “Do you know that in 1886, ‘87, four guys got hanged? How many hours a day do you work?”

He says, “Eight,” reflexively. I said, “How come you don’t work 18 hours a day? Four guys got hanged for you. Did you know that?”

They think I’m crazy. They’re scared. [Laughs.]

Now I’ve got him pinned against the mailbox. He can’t get away. “So how many weeks do you work?” No bus yet.

So finally they get onto the bus, and she looks out the window, and he says, “Is that guy nuts?” And that was the last I saw of them. This is Uptown — the haves and have-nots. I’ll bet they live in a condominium. Maybe the 15th floor.

Last year, an interviewer asked the 94-year-old Terkel:

In These Times: What do you want your tombstone to say Studs?

Terkel: On my tombstone? Because of my curiosity, my tombstone is very simple: “Curiosity could not kill this cat.“ That’s it. And I think we’ve come to the end of the course. For me, I think so.

ITT: No more books?

Terkel: No. You sound like my publisher. That’s it!

Sources

²⁰ RICE UNIVERSITY GRADUATION ADDRESS, May 9, 1998

²¹ Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, transcript – NOW, PBS, 2005-10-05

²² ‘A Man without a Country’ by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005, p. 80

²³ ‘An Interview with Isaac Asimov’ – by Phil Konstantin, Southwest Airlines Magazine, 1979

²⁴ In These Times – Kurt Vonnegut | In These Times – Studs Terkel

²⁵ ‘Curiosity and a Cat Named Studs’ by Laura S. Washington, In These Times, May 15, 2007

²⁶ Encyclopedia of Chicago — Haymarket and May Day

On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. …

At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”

The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.

Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.

…

Police arrested hundreds of people, but never determined the identity of the bomb thrower. Amidst public clamor for revenge, however, eight anarchists, including prominent speakers and writers, were tried for murder. The partisan Judge Joseph E. Gary conducted the trial, and all 12 jurors acknowledged prejudice against the defendants. Lacking credible evidence that the defendants threw the bomb or organized the bomb throwing, prosecutors focused on their writings and speeches. The jury, instructed to adopt a conspiracy theory without legal precedent, convicted all eight. Seven were sentenced to death. The trial is now considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American history.

Many Americans were outraged at the verdicts, but legal appeals failed. Two death sentences were commuted, but on November 11, 1887, four defendants were hanged in the Cook County jail; one committed suicide. Hundreds of thousands turned out for the funeral procession of the five dead men. In 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld granted the three imprisoned defendants absolute pardon, citing the lack of evidence against them and the unfairness of the trial.

²⁷ FAQ for alt.books.isaac-asimov

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Further Reading

‘Fossil Fuel Global Warming More Certain than Ever’ The Paragraph, 2005-10-16

Links

RC Wiki: “An index for debunking of various popular media occurrences of climate-related nonsense.”

RealClimate: “Climate science from climate scientists.”

Sources

²⁰ ‘IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers – Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis’ – pdf file

Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture.
~~~
The understanding of anthropogenic warming and cooling infl uences on climate has improved since the TAR, leading to very high confidence7 that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming, with a radiative forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] Watts per square meter.
~~~
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.
~~~
At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.
~~~
There is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation and some aspects of extremes and of ice.

²¹ ‘Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank’ Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million [from 2000 to 2003] into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe.

²² ‘Some Like It Hot’ By Chris Mooney, Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

²³ ‘‘How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic – Global warming is a hoax’ by Coby Beck

Here is a list of organizations that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported:

• NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• National Academy of Sciences
• State of the Canadian Cryosphere
• Environmental Protection Agency
• The Royal Society of the UK
• American Geophysical Union
• American Meteorological Society
• American Institute of Physics
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• American Meteorological Society
• Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

²⁴ ‘How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic – Greenland used to be green’ by Coby Beck

First, Greenland is part of a single region. It can not be necessarily taken to represent a global climate shift. See the post on the Medieval Warm Period for a global perspective on this time period. Briefly, the available proxy evidence indicates that global warmth during this period was not particularly pronounced, though some regions may have experienced greater warming than others.

…

Instead of hunting whales in kayaks, [the Vikings] farmed cattle, goats, and sheep — despite having to keep them in a barn 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a full 5 months out of the year. It was a constant challenge to get enough fodder for the winter. Starvation of the animals was frequent, emaciation routine. Grazing requirements and growing fodder for the winter led to over-production of pastures, erosion, and the need to go further and further afield to sustain the animals. Deforestation for pastures and firewood proceeded at unsustainable rates. After a couple of centuries, it led to such desperate measures as cutting precious sod for housing construction and even burning it for cooking and heating fuel.

When finally confronted with several severe winters in a row, they, along with the little remaining livestock, simply starved before spring arrived.

²⁵ ‘Swindled!’ by William and Gavin, RealClimate, 9 March 2007

On Thursday March 8th [2007], the UK TV Channel 4 aired a programme titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”. We were hoping for important revelations and final proof that we have all been hornswoggled by the climate Illuminati, but it just repeated the usual specious claims we hear all the time.

• “We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq.“ (2003-03-08)x⁶⁵ Bush spoke that to the nation two weeks before launching the invasion of Iraq, and after spending a half-year beating the war drum. The Bush regime planned for an Iraq invasion on its first week in office, and conjured up intelligence that was “being fixed around the policy.“x⁶⁶x⁶⁷ A month and a week before that statement, Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and told him that the start of bombing was “penciled in” for March 10th.x⁶⁸

• “We gave him (Saddam Hussein) a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power.“ (2003-07-14)x⁶⁹ Actually, Hussein was complying with the UN resolution and weapons inspectors were making good progress, when Bush warned them to get out just before he launched the “shock and awe” attack.x⁷⁰ In the years since, Bush has often repeated this false history.

• “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.“ (2003-09-30)x⁷¹ Bush was playing dumb about the leak that blew the cover of covert CIA agent Valeri Plame. Actually, Bush had authorized such leaks in a vain try at smearing Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had publicly undermined one of Bush’s false bases for invading Iraq — that the country was developing nuclear weapons.x⁷² But one could say that part of Bush’s statement was true: one of the leakers, Cheney’s top aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who was convicted of lying to FBI agents about the leak program, was “taken care of” when Bush commuted his jail time.x⁷³

• “*By the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.*” (2004-04-20)x⁷⁴ At the time Bush spoke this, he had the National Security Agency (NSA) tapping into phone and internet communications at the data switches of AT&T and Verizon — all without a court order.x⁷⁵x⁷⁶

• “Both those men are doing fantastic jobs, and I strongly support them.“ (2006-11-1)x⁷⁷ Bush said this about Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and went a step further, as the reporter wrote: “[Bush] replied in the affirmative when asked if he wanted Messrs. Rumsfeld and Cheney to stay with him until the end.” But Bush had already decided to oust Rumsfeld, and three days later did so. While this lie is not as weighty as the others, it is special in that Bush admitted he was lying. After ousting Rumsfeld, he told the same reporter: “The reason why is I did not want to make a major decision in the final days of the campaign. The only way to answer that question, and get it on to another question, was to give you that answer.“x⁷⁸

Further Reading

‘Log of lies from the Bush-Cheney administration’ – Unknown News

‘George W. Bush IS a Liar’ by Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, 2006-04-14

Sources

⁶⁰ ‘Press Conference by the President’ 2007-12-04

Q Mr. President, thank you. I’d like to follow on that. When you talked about Iraq, you and others in the administration talked about a mushroom cloud; then there were no WMD in Iraq. When it came to Iran, you said in October, on October 17th, you warned about the prospect of World War III, when months before you made that statement, this intelligence about them suspending their weapons program back in ’03 had already come to light to this administration. So can’t you be accused of hyping this threat? And don’t you worry that that undermines U.S. credibility?

THE PRESIDENT: David, I don’t want to contradict an august reporter such as yourself, but I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was Mike McConnell came in and said, we have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze. Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it’s not disinformation. You want to make sure the piece of intelligence you have is real. And secondly, they want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered: If they think it’s real, then what does it mean? And it wasn’t until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.

⁶¹ ‘National Intelligence Estimate: Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities’ November 2007

⁶² ‘Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE’ By Gareth Porter, IPS, 2007-11-08

⁶³ ‘Press Conference by the President’ 2007-10-17

⁶⁵ ‘War on Terror – President’s Radio Address’ 2003-03-08

⁶⁶ ‘Will Bushies Sell Iran War ‘Product’?’ source 75 the Paragraph 2007-09-08

⁶⁷ ‘America Puts Brakes on Drive for More War’ source 103 The Paragraph 2006-11-30

⁶⁸ ‘Bush Was Set on Path to War, British Memo Says’ By DON VAN NATTA Jr., March 27, 2006

“Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning,” David Manning, Mr. Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

“The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March,” Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. “This was when the bombing would begin.”

⁶⁹ ‘President Reaffirms Strong Position on Liberia – Remarks by the President and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in Photo Opportunity The Oval Office’ 2003-07-14

⁷⁰ ‘Bush’s Favorite Lie’ by Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, 2007-11-09

⁷¹ ‘President Discusses Job Creation With Business Leaders’ University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 2003-09-30

⁷² ‘George W. Bush IS a Liar’ by Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, 2007-11-09

Bush had included the bogus Niger claim in his State of the Union Address in January 2003. But Wilson’s first-hand account of his assignment in 2002 to check out the Niger suspicions – and his conclusion that the evidence was weak – represented the first major assault on Bush’s pre-war intelligence from a mainstream government figure.

The White House struck back, organizing anti-Wilson leaks to friendly reporters. Privately, Bush declassified information that tended to bolster his Niger claim – even though by then its truthfulness had been discredited by U.S. intelligence agencies.

With President Bush’s clearance, Vice President Dick Cheney dispatched his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to leak information to Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward on June 27, 2003. Libby approached New York Times correspondent Judith Miller on July 8 and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper on July 12.

⁷³ ‘Bush Commutes Libby’s Prison Sentence’ By Amy Goldstein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 3, 2007

⁷⁴ ‘President Bush: Information Sharing, Patriot Act Vital to Homeland Security – Remarks by the President in a Conversation on the USA Patriot Act’ Kleinshans Music Hall, Buffalo, New York, 2004-04-20

⁷⁵ ‘Big Brother Bad Idea Still Breathing’ source 25, The Paragraph 2007-10-28

⁷⁶ ‘A Simple Censure is Warranted’ The Paragraph 2006-04-03

⁷⁷ ‘Bush Stands By Cheney, Rumsfeld’ By TERENCE HUNT, Associated Press, November 2, 2006

⁷⁸ ‘VIDEO: Bush Admits He Lied About Rumsfeld For Political Purposes’ – Think Progress, 2006-11-08

The general trajectory of changes in our constitution … has been to more broadly define the people, to increase government responsiveness to the people, and to increase protections for individual freedom and dignity. In sharp contrast, as I will point out, the general trajectory of this administration’s efforts to change the Constitution has been to loosen governmental responsibility and to constrict individual liberty.

Murphy quoted James Madison from the Federalist Papers⁰⁶:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” This accumulation is precisely what Bush [claims is rightfully] his.”

Murphy pointed out several ways that Bush has taken legislative and judicial power:

• by signing statements declaring parts of acts of Congress unconstitutional, depriving Congress of its authority to override a veto,

• by claiming sole authority to direct foreign policy, when it is Congress alone has the power to consent to treaties and ambassadors, to fund all government branches and programs, to declare war, and to establish a military and set rules governing the military,

• by refusing to give information that Congress asks for,

• by skipping the required court order in wiretapping,

• by threatening the press with prosecution for publishing the fact of his illegal wiretapping,

• by trying to set up his own military tribunal system,

• and by declaring the administration can hold an American citizen without trial, without counsel, as long as it wishes.

Murphy compared Bush’s theory of government to that underpinning Naziism:

The blueprint for this phase of the presidency was not drafted by James Madison, but by Carl Schmitt, an academic apologist for Naziism. Again, I’m not Bush bashing – I would not equate Bush’s errors, as dangerous as they are, to the unspeakable evils of Adolph Hitler – but it is instructive to compare Carl Schmitt’s justification of the Nazis’ claim to total governmental power with that of Bush. … [Schmitt] said … it would be [the dictator] alone who would determine what was necessary and legitimate to protect [the] nation. … “The fuhrer,” he wrote, “is not an agent of the state, but the highest judge of the nation, and its law-giver.” That doctrine was alien to Madison … But it does fit the current administration’s description of the presidency: not answerable to Congress, not answerable to the court, not obliged to give the information that allows us as citizens to pass judgement.

Several months after that speech, Murphy, a retired Marine colonel decorated for heroism in the Korean War, went to the Albuquerque airport to catch a flight to Princeton, but was at first denied a boarding pass for being on the terrorist watch list. Last week a blog published Murphy’s story⁰²:

I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: “Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that.” I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. “That’ll do it,” the man said.

After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA (Transportation Security Administration) officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: “I must warn you, they’re going to ransack your luggage.” On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was “lost.” Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this “loss” could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I’m a tad skeptical.”

The U.S. government keeps secret how someone gets on the terrorist watch list, and whether a particular person is on it⁰³. For someone wrongly listed, the government provides no good procedure for remedy⁰⁴. Professor Murphy talked with others who had similar trouble, and believes his case fits the Bush administration’s pattern of punishing critics⁰⁵:

I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official … That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture’s argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who had “had other priorities” than to risk their own lives when their turn to fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticizing Bush’s false claims by “outing” his wife, Valerie Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. …

I have a personal stake here, but so do all Americans who take their political system seriously.

Walter Murphy, Constitution Day speech, Princeton University, 2006-09-19

Further Reading

Democracy Now interview with Professor Walter Murphy, 2007-04-12

Sources

⁰¹ ‘Is the Constitution Dead or Merely Sleeping?’ by Walter Murphy, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus, Princeton University, 2006-09-19; audio and video of lecture

⁰² ‘Another Enemy of the People?’ by Mark Graber, Balkinization blog, 2007-04-08

⁰³ ‘Constitutional law scholar on no-fly list’ By Michael Juel-Larsen, Daily Princetonian, 2007-04-10

⁰⁴ ‘Government Secrecy Breeds Suspicion’ by Ryan Singel, Wired Threat Level blog, 2007-04-09

⁰⁵ ‘Professor: Bashing Bush Got Me on Watch List; Suggests NSA Might Have Taken Him Off’ by Ryan Singel, Wired Threat Level blog, 2007-04-10

⁰⁶ ‘Federalist No. 47’ by James Madison, from the New York Packet, Friday, February 1, 1788.

“I wanted a union not so much for the money,” said line worker Peter Schmitz, “I wanted a union … to have a little say so about the speed of that line. Like I say you couldn’t do quality work, it just wasn’t possible that you could do quality work the way you had to work².” In the 1930’s Schmitz worked at a General Motors (GM) automobile factory in Flint, Michigan. During the Great Depression, GM, the largest industrial corporation in the world, made the most money in the world¹. In 1936, it netted $225 million – 24% of capitalization. Its top executives made 200 times the money of its average worker, who made far below the federal decency standard for a family of four. But it was the speed-up that pushed many to the breaking point. “The men worked like fiends,” said one witness, “their jaws set and eyes on fire. Nothing in the world exists for them except the line chassis bearing down on them relentlessly.”

Strike On

“What do we do about the dies?”, asked the union leader Robert Travis¹. During lunch hour, night shift, December 30, 1936, a red light had summoned the workers of the GM Fisher Body plant 1 in Flint to the union hall across the street. A worker answered, “Well them’s our jobs. We want them left right here in Flint.” Travis reviewed the situation: two days earlier the Cleveland Fisher Body workers had started a sit-down strike, and that night the Flint workers saw dies being loaded onto railroad cars, clearly to move production to a plant with a weaker union. Travis asked again, “What do we do?” “Shut her down! Shut the goddamn plant!”, cried the workers. “[The men] made a race for the plant gates, running in every direction towards the quarter-mile-long buildings,” reported the union editor, Henry Kraus, who was at the meeting. Some ran to the railroad dock where the cars loaded with dies were being coupled. “Strike on,” they yelled to the engineer. He nodded and said “Okay,” signalled the brakeman to stop work and trotted off.

Buick Body Barricades

The workers hauled unfinished Buick bodies to each entrance to form barricades¹. They welded steel frames around each door, and covered each window with a bullet-proof metal sheet that had a hole cut for a fire hose nozzle. The workers elected committees for running the strike: food, police, information, sanitation and health, safety, “kangaroo court,” entertainment, education and athletics. The union hall served as the hub of the outside support operation, which formed committees for food preparation, publicity, welfare and relief, pickets and defense, and a chiseling committee to collect food and supplies, going door to door. Two hundred people, mostly women, prepared food for feeding several thousand workers, both inside and outside the plants (Fisher 2 was also struck). Hundreds of workers gave use of their cars to the union. A nursery at the union hall took care of children while their mothers were working for the strike. Pickets worked the front of the plant around the clock.

Sitting Down The Detroit News

Solid for the Union

“This whole block of stores is solid for the union,” said a local drugstore owner¹. “Hell, I never got anything out of GM dividends: a union victory is better for my business.” On Cadillac Square in downtown Detroit 150,000 rallied in support of the strikers⁴. Food and money flowed in from all across the country. Workers at Hudson and Chrysler started a one-hour-a-day club, giving one hour’s wages each day to the strike fund.

Rally on Cadillac Square The Detroit News

James Stoolpigeon

“We had a Black Legion in this town made up of stool pigeons and little bigotty kind of people,” recalled Bob Stinson, who served as a messenger and scavenger during the sit-downs⁵, “on the same order as the Klan, night riders. Once in a while, a guy’d come in with a black eye. You’d say, ‘What happened?’ He’d say, ‘I was walking along the street and a guy come from behind and knocked me down.’ The Black Legion later developed into the Flint Alliance. It was supposed to be made up of the good solid citizens who were terrorized by these outside agitators, who had come in here to take over the plant. They would get schoolkids to sign these cards, housewives. Every shoe salesman downtown would sign these cards. Businessmen would have everyone in the family sign these cards. They contended they had the overwhelming majority of the people of Flint.” Also, foremen at non-struck GM plants pressured workers to sign Flint Alliance membership cards, but most of the cards came back with names like “John Fink” and “James Stoolpigeon¹“.

The Battle of Bulls Run

“The minute the cops opened that door [the workers] rushed right out at em, everyone of them fightin’ or at least they were swingin’ their hands,” recalled sit-downer Roscoe Rich about the police’s attempt to run the strikers out of Fisher 2². “Well these [cops] had gas masks on and … the [workers would] grab the gas mask and tear it off, they’d hit him in the jaw …” “The police was trying to get in as we got the fire hoses out and turned the hoses on ‘em, where they couldn’t get into the shop,” recalled sit-downer Robert Mamero. “I was up on the second floor and they were shooting tear gas through the windows and I went over on top of the paint shop. … we had hinges and bolts and everything else [for] throwing at the police. … I got shot here in the leg and I got shot in the hip.” One female picketer, Genora Johnson, went to the sound truck and called to the police through the loudspeakers, “Cowards! Cowards! Shooting into the bellies of unarmed men and firing at the mothers of children⁶.” A hush came over the watching crowd to hear a woman’s voice coming out of all the turmoil³. “Women of Flint! This is your fight! Break through those police lines and come down here and stand beside your husbands and your brothers and your uncles and your sweethearts.” Genora Johnson recalled what happened next⁶:

“In the dusk, I could barely see one woman struggling to come forward. A cop had grabbed her by the back of her coat. She just pulled out of that coat and started walking down to the battle zone. As soon as that happened there were other women and men who followed. The police wouldn’t shoot people in the back as they were coming down, so that was the end of the battle. When those spectators came into the center of the battle and the police retreated, there was a big roar of victory. That battle became known as the Battle of Bulls Run because we made the cops run.”

The next day, Governor Frank Murphy sent in the National Guard.

Genora Johnson Walter Reuther Library

The Women’s Emergency Brigade

“It can’t be somebody who’s weak of heart,” said Genora Johnson to the Women’s Auxiliary, after asking who would join the Emergency Brigade⁶. “You can’t go hysterical if your sister beside you drops down in a pool of blood.” She recalled what happened next:

“One old woman in her early seventies stood up. I said, ‘This is going to be too difficult for you.’ She said, ‘You can’t keep me out. My sons work in that factory. My husband worked in that factory before he died and I have grandsons in there.’ She went on and gave a speech. She got applause, then she walked over and signed her name. Then a young girl, I think she was sixteen or seventeen, stood up and said, ‘My father works in that factory. My brothers work in that factory. I’ve got a right to join, too.’ She walked over and signed, and all the women applauded. We recruited about 400 women for the Brigade out of about 1,000 women in the Women’s Auxiliary.”

The Women’s Emergency Brigade

Truce and Double-Cross

Governor Murphy brokered a truce: the sit-downers would leave the plants, and GM would bargain solely with the United Auto Workers (UAW), keeping the plants closed till an agreement was reached¹. The workers, though disappointed at not getting outright union recognition, cleaned-up, packed-up and stood ready to leave. Meanwhile, a United Press reporter handed Henry Kraus a press release that he had picked up from the desk of the head of the Flint Alliance, and asked for comment. The release, to be published the next day, said that GM would meet with the Flint Alliance to discuss recognition – a violation of the truce. Travis sent runners to the plants to halt the workers’ exit so they could discuss the matter. The workers chose to stay, and when word got to the thousands outside they cheered and applauded wildly. Days passed, and GM sought a court order to oust the sit-downers.

A Greasy Piece of Paper, a Candle-Lit Room

The Chevy 4 plant made all the Chevrolet engines – one million a year¹. It was the biggest of the nine Chevy plants spread around the Flint River. One night Genora Johnson’s husband, Kermit, came home from his job at Chevy 4 with a greasy piece of paper. “You know, I’ve figured out how we can take Plant 4,” he said, then pointed at the paper⁶. “Plant 8 is located here. Plant 6 is there. If we pull a strike, we’ll have workers from all these other plants march into Plant 4. The problem is that General Motors has recruited professional Pinkertons, plant protection and organized vigilantes. It will be one big slaughter unless we distract them from that area and give ourselves time to barricade the plant.”

On January 31st, after a Sunday night meeting of Chevrolet workers, Travis kept 150 stewards and organizers over. One by one they entered a room lit only by a single candle to meet with Travis, Kraus and another leader, Roy Reuther. Most left with a slip of paper holding an instruction: “Follow the man who takes the lead.” But the leaders picked 30 and gave them a more specific plan: the next afternoon at 3:20 the union would begin a sit-down at Chevy 9. After that Travis took the two most trusted leaders from Chevy 9 and told them that Chevy 6 was the real target, so they only needed to hold out until 6 was taken. Only three plant leaders from Chevy 6 and Chevy 4, including Kermit Johnson, got the whole, real plan: the leader from 6 would rally the men to go to 4 to help the other two in taking that huge plant. Among the group of 30 were a few stool pigeons, who duly reported to Chevy 4’s superintendent, Arnold Lenz, that Chevy 9 would be struck.

Chevy Plants The Detroit News

The Capture of Chevy 4

The next afternoon, in the personnel building next to the Chevy 9 plant, the entire armed force of the Chevrolet division waited¹. When the night shift marched in yelling “Strike!”, the guards rushed them, with Lenz leading the charge shouting “Reds! Communists!”. The outnumbered workers fought with anything they could grab against the guards’ clubs and gas guns. The women of the Emergency Brigade heard a window break⁶. “We saw the head of Tom Klasey look out,” recalled Genora Johnson. “Blood was streaming down his face and he was yelling, ‘They’re gassing us in here! For God’s sake, they’re gassing us!’ That’s all we had to hear. We used our clubs to smash the windows out so the men inside could get some air.” Meanwhile, the plant manager at Chevy 4 tapped the pro-company men to help at Chevy 9, leaving 4 with virtually no pro-company muscle¹. After a half hour of fighting, the two leaders at Chevy 9, figured they had held long enough and surrendered, ordering their men to march out. Meanwhile, union men at Chevy 4 stopped the conveyors, rallied the workers to join the strike, and placed barricades. The guards returning from the Chevy 9 battle tried to enter the northeast gate, but the workers, wielding pistons, connecting rods, rocker arm rods and fire hoses, drove them off. Hundreds of women of the Emergency Brigade came and locked arms in front of the gates to form a human shield against attack.

Smashing Windows to Let Out Tear Gas Walter Reuther Library

Crowd at Chevy 9(?) UPI / The Bettmann Archive

Forces Gather

The next day, February 2nd, the National Guard cleared the area around Chevy 4 and sealed off the plant¹. A judge had ordered the Fisher sit-downers out, and as the zero hour approached, forces gathered on both sides. The police deputized hundreds, many from the Flint Alliance¹⁰. Thousands of workers streamed into Flint from area factories, joining thousands of Flint citizens around the Fisher plants. The Emergency Brigade rallied thousands of women, who marched from downtown Flint to Fisher 1, where they joined the throng in a huge picket line, six abreast, circling the plant in both directions. The workers inside wired Murphy: “… Governor, we have decided to stay in the plant. We have no illusions about the sacrifices which this decision will entail. We fully expect that if a violent effort is made to oust us many of us will be killed and we take this means of making it known to our wives, to our children, to the people of the state of Michigan and the country, that if this result follows from the attempt to eject us, you are the one who must be held responsible for our deaths!” Inside Fisher 1 most of the sit-downers signed up for the fight-to-the-death committee, which would fight attackers floor-by-floor right up to the roof. Days passed, more deputies signed-up, GM re-entered negotiations, and the governor did not order the Guard to move against the strikers.

Union Victory

On February 11th, the 44th day of the sit-down, GM signed a contract with the UAW recognizing it as the sole bargaining agent for the struck plants and for the UAW members in the other plants¹. “One found himself wondering what home life would be like again,” wrote one sit-downer. “Nothing that happened before the strike began seemed to register in the mind any more. It is as if time itself started with this strike. What will it be like to go home and to come back tomorrow with motors running and the long-silenced machines roaring again? But that is for the future …” One by one the struck plants emptied to great cheering and a swelling parade. Kraus described the exit of the Chevy 4 sit-downers: “Lungs that were already spent with cheering found new strength as the brave men whose brilliant coup had turned the strike to definite victory began to descend the stairs.” He said that the cheering as Fisher 2 emptied “exceeded all bounds of hearing.” Thousands sang ‘Solidarity Forever’ as the mass of people flowed downtown.

The Golden Age

After a century of bloody strikes⁷, the tide had turned for American workers. Right after the Flint union victory, a wave of sit-down strikes swept the country¹. Wages rose and UAW membership reached 300,000 within a few months. A month after the victory, the largest steel corporation, U.S. Steel, signed a contract with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) – without a strike. The CIO organized five million workers in about four years. Shortly after the victory, the Supreme Court affirmed workers’ rights to join unions that could bargain for them. The next year Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established the standard 40 hour work week with time-and-a-half for overtime. By 1947, more than one third of U.S. workers belonged to a union⁸, and the golden age had dawned for American manufacturing and the American middle class⁹.

Sources

¹ ‘How Industrial Unionism Was Won: THE GREAT FLINT SIT-DOWN STRIKE AGAINST GM 1936-37’ by Walter Linder

² ‘The Flint Sit-Down Strike Audio Gallery, Transcript Browser’ – HistoricalVoices.org

³ ibid See Larry Jones.

⁴ ‘The historic 1936-37 Flint auto plant strikes’ By Vivian M. Baulch and Patricia Zacharias, The Detroit News

⁵ ‘Hard Times’ by Studs Terkel, pp. 156-7

⁶ Striking Flint: Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike … as told to Susan Rosenthal

⁷ ‘Timeline of Labor Issues and Events’ – Wikipedia

⁸ ‘McKinley or Roosevelt? This Election is as Much About the Past as the Future’ by Thom Hartmann

⁹ ‘Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, excerpt’ by Thom Hartmann

Roosevelt’s programs worked. His economic stimulus programs put money in the pockets of the people, and their purchases created consumer demand, which led entrepreneurs to start businesses to meet that demand, which meant they had to hire workers, who were well paid because 35 percent of America was unionized. Those well-paid workers bought more goods, creating more demand, and America became the world’s strongest economy through most of the twentieth century. The New Deal ushered in what has been called the Golden Age of the middle class, from 1940 to 1980.

¹⁰ ‘Flint Faces Civil War’ By Charles R. Walker, Feb. 8, 1937, The Nation

The first picture is the Internet with net neutrality, where no one’s data gets priority over another’s¹. This is the kind of Internet we have always had. In this picture CNN is the Cable News Network, a large news company, and GNN is the Guerrilla News Network, a small news company. For these examples, AT&T is the internet service provider for CNN and GNN. The two news companies pay AT&T to hook their host computers to the Internet². CNN pays more than GNN, because CNN has more traffic. At the other end of the picture are two Internet users, one watching a CNN news video and the other a GNN news video. AT&T is the only DSL provider in these users’ neighborhoods³, and each user pays AT&T for the service. Almost all parties are happy. CNN is happy because it has high traffic. GNN is happy because its traffic is growing. The DSL users are happy because they can watch the news reports they want without waiting very long. AT&T should be happy, because it is making money on both ends, but greed is gnawing at AT&T⁴. AT&T figures it could make more money without net neutrality, and is lobbying Congress to ban it⁵. But many citizens groups, Internet content providers and users⁶, and Congressmen are fighting to keep net neutrality and this picture of the free-flowing, democratic Internet⁷.

The second picture is the Internet without net neutrality. This is the future where AT&T and the other telecoms have lobbied Congress to do away with net neutrality. Here, AT&T has put in a filter to give priority to data packets from companies that have paid an extra ransom⁸. CNN pays the ransom to AT&T to keep up with the other large companies. GNN, as a small company, does not pay the ransom. The Internet user watching the CNN video finds that it runs fine, but the user watching the GNN video finds that it loads more slowly and stalls during play⁹. The GNN user is no longer happy because he has to wait. GNN is no longer happy, because its traffic is no longer growing, as users get tired of waiting and try another web site. AT&T is now happy because its Internet revenues are up 50%. This is the picture of the crippled Internet that squeezes the little Internet companies, and limits users’ choices.

The third picture also shows a future without net neutrality, but after GNN has posted negative reports about AT&T. In response, AT&T has programmed its filter to block GNN’s data packets and drop them in the “bit bucket¹⁰“. Here GNN and the GNN user are very unhappy – and angry. This is the picture of the death of the Internet where the big telecom companies control what can be seen.

Further Reading

‘Net Neutrality Reading Room’ – Center for Democracy & Technology More detailed diagrams.

SaveTheInternet.com

‘Telco Abuse Is a Problem with a Solution: Net Neutrality’ – SaveTheInternet.com Blog, 2 June 2006

Sources

¹ ‘FAQ: What is network neutrality?’ – SaveTheInternet.com Network Neutrality — or “Net Neutrality” for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Net Neutrality ensures that all users can access the content or run the applications and devices of their choice. With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not choose which data to privilege with higher quality service. Net Neutrality is the reason why the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, and free speech online. It’s why the Internet has become an unrivaled environment for open communications, civic involvement and free speech.

² ‘Net Neutrality Reading Room’ – Center for Democracy & Technology More detailed diagrams.

³ ‘FAQ: Won’t more regulations harm the free Internet? Shouldn’t we just let the market decide?’ – SaveTheInternet.com And when the network owners start abusing their control of the pipes, there’s nowhere else for consumers to turn. The cable and telephone companies already dominate 98 percent of the broadband market. Only 53 percent of Americans have a choice between cable and DSL at home. Everyone else has only one choice or no broadband options at all. That’s not what a truly free market looks like.

⁴ ‘FAQ: Who wants to get rid of Net Neutrality?’ – SaveTheInternet.com The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies — including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won’t load at all. They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors.

⁵ ‘FAQ: What’s happening in Congress?’ – SaveTheInternet.com The telephone and cable companies are filling up congressional campaign coffers and hiring high-priced lobbyists. They’ve set up “Astroturf” groups like “Hands Off the Internet” to confuse the issue and give the appearance of grassroots support.

⁶ ‘Momentum Tracker’ – SaveTheInternet.com

• Petition Signers: 760,436
• Coalition Groups: 437
• Blog Links: 5,315
• MySpace Friends: 9,144

⁷ ‘Guest post from Rep. Zoe Lofgren’ – SaveTheInternet.com Blog, 26 May 2006 Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 5417, the “Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006,” which I introduced with Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, Ranking Member John Conyers and Rep. Rick Boucher last week. This is the first bill with real protections for Net Neutrality that has passed any committee in Congress, and I am proud to be a part of it.

⁸ ‘Blocking Innovation’ – SaveTheInternet.com “William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.” – The Washington Post

⁹ ‘How does this threat to Internet freedom affect you?’ – SaveTheInternet.com A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.

¹⁰ ‘Blocking Innovation’ – SaveTheInternet.com In April, Time Warner’s AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com — an advocacy campaign opposing the company’s pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

The double helix nebula. (The image uses false colors because the eye is not sensitive to infrared light.) The spots are infrared-luminous stars, mostly red giants and red supergiants. Many other stars are present in this region, but are too dim to appear even in this sensitive infrared image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Sources

¹ ‘Astronomers Report Unprecedented Double Helix Nebula Near Center of the Milky Way’ – UCLA News, March 15, 2006

² Great Observatories program’ – Wikipedia

Spitzer is quite difficult or impossible to replicate with ground telescopes, and had few orbiting predecessors. Spitzer was not an order of magnitude larger than its latest predecessor, ISO (the Infrared Space Observatory). However, Spitzer’s instruments took advantage of the rapid advances in infrared detector technology at the time. Combined with its slightly larger aperture, favorable fields of view, and longer life, science return will be unprecedented. Infrared observations are useful for cool objects which do not emit much visible light, or objects obscured by dust at visible light wavelengths.

³ Great Observatories program, Synergies’ – Wikipedia

The ability of Spitzer to see though dust and thick gases is good for galactic nuclei observations. Massive objects at the hearts of galaxies shine in X-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves, but infrared studies into these clouded regions can reveal the number and positions of objects.

⁴ ‘The Double Helix Nebula: a magnetic torsional wave propagating out of the Galactic centre’ – Mark Morris, Keven Uchida, and Tuan Do

Comments: Accepted for publication in Nature. 13 pages, 3 figures. Includes supplementary material

Radioastronomical studies have indicated that the magnetic field in the central few hundred parsecs of our Milky Way Galaxy has a dipolar geometry and a strength substantially larger than elsewhere in the Galaxy, with estimates ranging up to a milligauss. A strong, large-scale magnetic field can affect the Galactic orbits of molecular clouds by exerting a drag on them, it can inhibit star formation, and it can guide a wind of cosmic rays away from the central region, so a characterization of the magnetic field at the Galactic center is important for understanding much of the activity there. Here, we report Spitzer Space Telescope observations of an unprecedented infrared nebula having the morphology of an intertwined double helix. This feature is located about 100 pc from the Galaxy’s dynamical centre toward positive Galactic latitude, and its axis is oriented perpendicular to the Galactic plane. The observed segment is about 25 pc in length, and contains about 1.25 full turns of each of the two continuous, helically wound strands. We interpret this feature as a torsional Alfven wave propagating vertically away from the Galactic disk, driven by rotation of the magnetized circumnuclear gas disk. As such, it offers a new morphological probe of the Galactic center magnetic field. The direct connection between the circumnuclear disk and the double helix is ambiguous, but the MSX images show a possible meandering channel that warrants further investigation.

Post Script

The US Congress is taking some action to reign-in Bush on the NSA warrantless spying case. Senator Arlen Spector (R-PA), chairman of the judiciary committee, plans to hold hearings this month¹⁴. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has asked for expert advice on whether the NSA domestic spying order constitutes an impeachable offence¹⁵.

Further Reading

‘Bush’s ‘Apex’ of Unlimited Power’ By Nat Parry, ConsortiumNews.com, June 15, 2004

‘Confessions of a Repentant Republican’ By William Frey, M.D., November 17, 2005

‘All about Jose Padilla’ By Seamus McGraw, CourtTV Crime Library

Sources

¹ ‘dictator’ – The Free Dictionary

² Fifth Amendment “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury …nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”

³ ;Transcript of the Attorney General John Ashcroft Regarding the transfer of Abdullah Al Muhajir (Born Jose Padilla) To the Department of Defense as an Enemy Combatant June 10, 2002’ – Washington File ‘I am pleased to announce today a significant step forward in the war on terrorism. We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or “dirty bomb,” in the United States.’

⁴ ‘Unlawful combatant’ – Wikipedia ‘prisoners detained under November 13, 2001 Presidential Military Order on the “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism” were subsequently named by the US administration “illegal enemy combatants”. However, international criticisms have pointed out that the term was a juridical invention, which didn’t appear in any treaty concerning laws of war, and that it deprived the detainee of any rights whatsoever.’

⁵ ‘Terror suspect’s day in court delayed – Former ‘enemy combatant’ will be arraigned January 12’, CNN, Saturday, January 7, 2006 ‘On Wednesday, the Supreme Court granted a request from the government authorizing Padilla’s transfer back to Justice Department custody. A federal appeals court had temporarily blocked the move. Next Friday, the justices will consider in a closed-door conference whether to rehear the Padilla case. “The issue that is primarily before the court that we’ve asked them to take is: Does the president of the United States have the authority to sign a piece of paper and send someone to jail without criminal process and have him held by the military? We say the Constitution doesn’t permit that,” Patel said. The government had argued that issue is moot because Padilla now faces criminal charges and has been released from military custody.’

⁶ ‘Terror suspect’s day in court delayed – Former ‘enemy combatant’ will be arraigned January 12’, CNN, Saturday, January 7, 2006 ‘The indictment alleges the men belonged to a North American terrorist support cell and intended to carry out jihad, or holy war, in foreign countries. In a sharply worded opinion two weeks ago, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, noted differences between the criminal charges filed against Padilla in November and earlier accusations leveled against him as an enemy combatant.’

⁷ ‘In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects – Those Designated ‘Combatants’ Lose Legal Protections’ by Charles Lane, Washington Post, December 1, 2002 “under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen’s home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.”

⁸ ‘Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts’ by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, December 16, 2005 ‘Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.’

⁹ ‘Bush: Secret wiretaps have disrupted potential attacks – President says speed of eavesdropping essential’ – CNN, December 20, 2005 ‘Bush said. “To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks.”’

¹⁰ ‘US Code Collection’ – Cornell Law School (click on ‘1805’) ‘TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > 1805 (f) Emergency orders: Notwithstanding any other provision of this subchapter, when the Attorney General reasonably determines that (1) an emergency situation exists with respect to the employment of electronic surveillance to obtain foreign intelligence information before an order authorizing such surveillance can with due diligence be obtained; and (2) the factual basis for issuance of an order under this subchapter to approve such surveillance exists; he may authorize the emergency employment of electronic surveillance if a judge having jurisdiction under section 1803 of this title is informed by the Attorney General or his designee at the time of such authorization that the decision has been made to employ emergency electronic surveillance and if an application in accordance with this subchapter is made to that judge as soon as practicable, but not more than 72 hours after the Attorney General authorizes such surveillance.’

¹¹ ‘NSA INTERCEPTS FOR BOLTON MASKED AS ‘‘TRAINING EXERCISE’‘’ by Wayne Madsen, May 15, 2005 ‘According to National Security Agency insiders, outgoing NSA Director General Michael Hayden approved special communications intercepts of phone conversations made by past and present U.S. government officials. The intercepts are at the height of the current controversy surrounding the nomination of Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. It was revealed by Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd during Bolton’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing that Bolton requested transcripts of 10 NSA intercepts of conversations between named U.S. government officials and foreign persons. Later, it was revealed that U.S. companies [also treated as “U.S. persons” by NSA] were also identified in an additional nine intercepts requested by Bolton. However, NSA insiders report that Hayden approved special intercept operations on behalf of Bolton and had them masked as “training missions” in order to get around internal NSA regulations that normally prohibit such eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.’

¹² The Madsen Report, May 10, 2005

‘The inquisition side of NSA is the one that Hayden and his advisers do not want the public to see. In fact, NSA maintains a database that tracks unofficial and negative articles written about the agency. Code named “FIRST FRUITS,” the database is operated by the Denial and Deception (D&D) unit within SID. High priority is given to articles written as a result of possible leaks from cleared personnel.
…
In order that the database did not violate United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18, which specifies that the names of “U.S. persons” are to be deleted through a process known as minimization, the names of subject journalists were blanked out. However, in a violation of USSID 18, certain high level users could unlock the database field through a super-user status and view the “phantom names” of the journalists in question. Some of the “source” information in FIRST FRUITS was classified – an indication that some of the articles in database were not obtained through open source means. In fact, NSA insiders report that the communications monitoring tasking system known as ECHELON is being used more frequently for purely political eavesdropping having nothing to do with national security or counter terrorism.’

¹³ ‘Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban – Waiver right is reserved’ by Charlie Savage, The Boston Globe, January 4, 2006 ‘After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a “signing statement” — an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law — declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.’

¹⁴ ‘NSA in turmoil over U.S. spying’ By Douglas Birch, The Baltimore Sun, January 8, 2006 ‘Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The New York Times that he planned to hold hearings on the surveillance program after confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Those hearings may stretch into early next month.’

¹⁵ Boxer Asks Presidential Scholars About Former White House Counsel’s Statement that Bush Admitted to an ‘Impeachable Offense’, December 19, 2005

On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon’s counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.” Today, Mr. Dean confirmed his statement.

This startling assertion by Mr. Dean is especially poignant because he experienced first hand the executive abuse of power and a presidential scandal arising from the surveillance of American citizens.

Given your constitutional expertise, particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean’s statement.

Unchecked surveillance of American citizens is troubling to both me and many of my constituents. I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter as soon as possible.