otation on the radio) as a popular late night movie on the local affiliates, but it should come as no surprise that it has been pulled from the rotation. If you can't find the book in the library, start to worry. If you haven't begun to worry, pull your head out of your ass and take a look around. Having voted for Bush won't save you now, it was the worst thing you could have done, you poor fool. It's only the complete idiots who don't agree. Most people who did vote for Bush have already begun to regret it, but it likely wouldn't have mattered if they didn't. Perhaps that's why there is such a dearth of them around, people who are still happy about it. It was actually called ECOMCON (Electronic Communications Control) in the film and book. It was a euphemism for the military overthrow of the government by methods including those in Conplan and the seizing and control of all the media in the country, by far right factions in the military.

General James Matoon Scott, the raving lunatic, played by Burt Lancaster, is eventually thwarted in his naked grab for power by Col. Martin "Jiggs" Casey, played by Kirk Douglas, and that is not even half of the fine cast in this great John Frankenheimer film. I told you it was a great cast. And life imitates art yet again. Or perhaps art is the modern day version of the Oracle at Delphi. COINTELPRO was never fiction, that's always been with us, despite the fact it was supposedly discontinued. Don't believe that for a second. ECOMCON is here and it's called JCS Conplan 0300-97, among other things, because taking control of the government actually requires hundreds of secret programs, and this is real, not fiction. The author of this piece from the Canadian press doesn't think we have reached the crisis point depicted in the film and book yet. He neglects to mention that a Senator who uncovers the plans to overthrow the government by force dies in a "suspicious" plane crash. That sounds familiar, too. Conplan is just what it is, and we have been conned. Meet William Arkin, a former military analyst who has uncovered this whole mess and no longer flies anywhere. This piece in the Toronto Sun is by Eric Margolis. And if you think that this is a good thing, you are a Hitlerite or a Stalinist. There is no argument now. You have become the very thing you profess to despise.

The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro."

Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret "anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are "extra-legal missions. In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War.

This frightening news comes as Washington is gripped by reborn, Cold-War-style paranoia, ominous threats of war against Iran from the real president, Dick Cheney, and a titanic bureaucratic battle just won by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Instead of being fired for the grotesque military-political fiasco in Iraq and the shameful torture scandals, Rumsfeld has just managed to create a new, Pentagon spy/special ops organization, blandly named "Strategic Support Branch," that will replace or duplicate many of the CIA's tasks.

The CIA has been sent to the doghouse. Too many CIA veterans criticized or contradicted Bush's and Cheney's phony claims over Iraq and terrorism. So Bush has imposed a new, yes-man director on the agency, slashed its budgets, purged its senior officers, and downgraded CIA to third-class status.

Rumsfeld's new, massively funded SSB will become the Pentagon's CIA, complete with commando units, spies, mercenary forces, intelligence gathering and analysis, and a direct line to the White House. The Pentagon has just effectively taken over the spy business.

Used Terrorism Hysteria

Mind you, the Pentagon and its Defence Intelligence Agency have been deeply involved in intelligence around the globe for 50 years. U.S. Army intelligence and its covert sub-branches have long conducted "black ops," including missions in the U.S. as well as assassinations and sabotage abroad. The Pentagon consumes three-quarters of the total U.S. intelligence budget.

Rumsfeld has skillfully used terrorism hysteria to wrest control of intelligence and make the Pentagon supreme in Washington's bureaucratic power struggles.

The Pentagon's new spy arm will be largely excluded from Congressional oversight or media examination. Its special operations teams will roam the globe, all under cover of "deep black" missions of which no records will be kept, and no questions asked.

Equally worrying, the Pentagon's new special-ops units are headed up by notorious religious fanatic, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who calls the U.S. Army "the house of God" and Islamic insurgents "agents of Satan." He warned Muslims, "my God is bigger than your god, which is an idol."

Boykin's command will now dispatch post-modern Christian crusaders to cleanse the world of Satanic Muslims and other miscreants. The Pentagon's new special forces will be able to run operations of which the CIA knows nothing.

The 9/11 Commission called for improved intra-agency co-operation and data sharing -- instead, the U.S. will get far less co-operation, as the Pentagon goes its own, secret way.

Now, George W. Bush, who clearly believes he holds the mandate of heaven after being re-elected by the less mentally active half of American voters, has decided to "unleash" special forces and all sorts of irregular units, including mercenaries, uniformed bounty hunters, and mutants sporting t-shirts proclaiming "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out." These militarized thugs and video arcade Rambos are sure to run amok, dragging America's once good name ever deeper into the mud.

We have evidently learned nothing from the wars in Indochina and Central America.

Have we reached Seven Days in May?

Not yet, but the second Bush administration has been taking dangerous steps that continue to curtail personal rights, further emasculate the supine, cowardly U.S. Congress, and empower ideological or religious extremists and shadowy agencies with unrestrained powers that endanger Americans at home, and all abroad suspected of troubling the Pax Americana.

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