Fascism
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
Sobering words, aren't they? Our current administration has this word "fascism" thrown at them frequently these days, so lets investigate, on the basis of this definition, how true that is.
First, the centralization of authority. In America that would entail changing the relationship towards our founding documents, particularly the Constitution that outlines the authority of the various branches of government. We have seen numerous examples of the violations of civil rights, and in the Patriot Act, there are flagrant contradictions to the Bill of Rights. Let's look briefly at the current phenomena of the Right Wing to press for up or down votes of judicial nominees of the president. That clearly steps away from the Constitutional clause that states the Senates job is to advise and consent. If one party controls the Senate, than debate is done away with and there can effectively be one party rule. That is anti-American and anti-Constitutional. This ends up putting all the power in the executive brach, as the Senate is neither appointing or debating, but simply rubber stamping. The judicial branch then are simply appointed minions. That leaves the house of Representatives as the only non-centralized balance of power. Unless of course the afore mentioned one party controls things there as well. Then legislative matters are either stalemated or follow the dictates of the executive branch. But wait, you say! The President in America can only serve two terms, thus eliminating the possibility of a fascist take over. Then you might be interested to know that the Republican, a term used loosely, controlled House has introduced, on February 17, 2005, House Joint Resolution 24, which seeks to eliminate the tenure of the Presidency. That could effectively pave the way for a dictator, which on July 27, 2001 Bush himself said would be easier than being president. Wake up sheeple! We have a rubber stamp Senate, a judiciary that is leaning farther fascist with every undebated nomination, and a House that is looking to change the Constitution to allow for a dictator. Were it not for the fact that in the 2000 election it is well known that the court refused the count of thousands of votes that would have given Florida to Gore, and the 2004 Ohio election result that was contested by several Senators, it becomes apparent that relying on elections that are doubtful is not the security it once was. So the trend toward centralized authority is becoming clearer every day. Another area in which we see this centralization is in the intel sector. Using 9.11 as the jump off point, and rightly manifesting the need for better inter-agency communications, the administration has brought all the intel agencies under one head, that of the convicted criminal John Negroponte. Negroponte alone briefs the president every morning despite warnings from others that doing so would be limiting. If one takes the Downing Street memo language, it is obvious how they can now fix the facts to support their ideology.
"Stringent socioeconomic controls." If one studies the fascist governments of the past, it is obvious they are stridently anti-union. That is where you first start, as it gives power back to the corporations, and hence the few, but it also gives the power for controlling the economic aspect back from a contract to again, the few. It is an oft stated reality for the last 20 years at least that wages have stagnated at best, and lost ground in may cases. More later!
Back to these socioeconomic controls. I apparently started on the economic ones. For now I'll pass on where I was going with unions, but a little study will corroborate what I was saying. Let's focus on the Bush budget. The 2005 budget allowed for growth in only one sector: the military. Everything else was slashed or held to 1%, which doesn't even match inflation. What this shows us is a very strident control of economic factors designed to eliminate all domestic programs that either directly help citizens or regulate industries. Amazingly, they even cut veterans benefits. Farmers subsides were slashed. Education across the board was either cut or unchanged, which leaves the touted NCLB Act seriously underfunded, yet under mandates to improve performance or face further federal cuts. More centralization. With tax cuts going to the very rich and large corporations while military action is being conducted on two fronts, the obvious problem will be the ballooning deficit. Who will be saddled with that deficit? And under stagnated wages that burden becomes bigger and bigger every day. Hence, our compassionate president can tell a single working mother that only in America can someone work three jobs! Just to make ends meet! Which is right where they want working Americans: barely able to make ends meet. The one area where this was countered was in the union movement. Although it has it's own corruptions, the union provided a decent wage and benefit package that allowed one to achieve the American dream. Because there has been serious effort to disable the unions, we have the situations we do in regards to labor and safety laws being overturned, as well as the above mentioned wage stagnation. Mixed in with this is allowing huge amounts of illegal immigrants to work, which allows employers to pay a low wage with no benefits, and get no complaints. This move swells to fill the ranks of workers with those who will wotk for less, and undermine for a long time to come the ability of an American worker to make a decent living. It isn't that there is a shortage of money. Corporate profits and CEO compensation packages remain at all time lucrative highs, while the gap between their wages and those who actually make the wealth possible grows even greater. These are some of the economic controls that this administration uses. Which almost seems contradictory, in that the authorization doesn't seem to be in the law as opposed to corporations. However, let's look at example for the recent change in tort reform laws. This makes it harder for the average person to sue a company if there's negligence on the part of the company. This law defers all suits to the federal courts, which rarely hears these types of cases any way. And with judges like William Pryor and Janice Brown who consistently rule on behalf of the corporations, who in turn support theses justices, it matters little if your case is heard or not. Another form of law that is used to protect big business at the expense of the citizen are the changes in bankruptcy law. Centralization occurs here because the wealth of the authorities, which are few in number, is protected by law at the expense of the citizens. According to our Declaration of Independence, we are supposed to be governed of the people, by the people, for the people.
Now lets look at the social controls. This is where the Christian camp joins the fascist camp. Very strict controls. Like the Texas legislature wanting to prohibit cheerleader dance routines. Or outlawing gay marriage. Or take for example Spokane Mayor Jim West's legislative actions while he was a Washington representative. He wanted to outlaw sodomy. On top of that, if you knew someone was sodomizing, and you didn't report it, you were just as liable. Essentially, if the Christian fascist brigade has their way, the Bible will become the standard of culture. Imagine what that will do to TV, and movies alone. let alone music. Or books. It will eliminate birth control and abortion. It will alter education. No longer will a "liberal" arts degree be available. Mind you, all these things happen right now. The Christian camp wants Roe V. Wade struck down. No secret there. They want birth control stopped. Dr. David Hagar of the FDA was seeing to that. Meanwhile he anally raped(sodomized) his own wife. That story is widely available, and reported by nation Magazine. Ah, this good Christian man is divorced! Christians regularly burn books and other media forms as expressions of self-righteousness. They don't like Tele Tubbies or SpongeBob. I can well imagine what they think of soap operas. Not to mention Will and Grace. Basically, the culture would be under the dominion of a hierarchal, patriarchal, dualistic philosophy. Is that American? Remember, the key word is control, issued from the top. That is neither freedom or liberty. This marriage of the religious conservatives and the fascists is easy to see in the news these days. Do a Google Alrt on Pat Robertson. You'll see the periodic stories of various politicians that Pat Robertson has garnered support for by using his position as an evangelist to political ends. He urges financial support of politicians in Oklahoma as well as his own home state, and possibly others. So they definitely have a close relationship, yet their own aspirations for the White House. This is where they will collide with the fascists in office.
Many people wouldn't admit to a suppresion of the opposition in this country. Censorship is another matter. We have heard recently in the news of how our government has disapperaed people. Look at the stories of released detaineees of the conflict in Iraq. Many have been taken and held without charge, half way across the world! The Patriot Act gives such powers to our current administration, and we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So suppression is happening. Terror is definitely an American government tool used against those who don't step in line, as our foreign policy in Latin America has demonstrated for the last 30 years. How am I too feel though when a government has power to snoop through business records and library records without obtaining a warrant or even notifying me? That I'm free? I would venture to say that a population under this rule would feel terror. However, I feel that the suppression in this country happens mostly through the censorship mode.
Media is an issue. Hoo boy, where to start? Let's look at the Downing Street memo that is a current buzz. I think it isn't such a buzz, as in other blogs I have mentioned the PNAC who stated that Iraq was their target in a report published in 2000. So the DSM is really just a confirmation, not really a smoking gun. But yet, it has taken weeks before it became anything at all close to covered in the mainstream media(MSM). Why is that? Well, one of the issues that Dennis Kucinich thought was important during his run for President was the poor coverage of the media. So much so that he verbally bitch slapped Ted Koppel for wasting 12 minutes of their debate time on non-issues. The next day, ABC pulled their correspondent from Kucinich's campaigne. Shocked? Heavens no. What has happened to American media is ownership. You'll notice the links on my blog. There are others out there as well that demonstrate how the ownership of media has boiled down to basically 6 companies. Some of which openly endorsed Bush or openly attacked Kerry during the run for president. Whoa! What sort of info are you getting from sources that are allowed to buy up as many media outlets they want because the admin changes the FCC rules, and then in turn help out that same admin by giving to their campaigns. FOX is a great example. Check out Media Matters(www.mediamatters.org) to find out what the FOX folk spin out. These days much of it is blatant lies. I already detailed Pat Robertsons grossly misleading statements on that channel. And FOX owner R. Murdoch is a big supporter of Bush. Or take the Times story about the abuser of the Koran. As it turned out, abuse was admitted. it was also corroborated by the Red Cross. I'm sure Amnesty International would agree. And the Pentagon had returned the story to Time for printing 10 days before it was published without mentioning this particular issue. But the admin jumped all over Time, and the loud sqeuaky wheels in the House and Senate jump on the bandwagon and demand retractions. And Time tucks it's tail and complies when what they printed was the truth. The main reason for the retraction was they acknowledged using an anonymous source, and a single one at that. But they also didn't stand up for the rest of the article. If one peruses the PNAC report, you will see that they also want to control the internet. Such moves are already underway. The FCC is being encouraged allow broadband to be controlled by corporations instead of municipalities. This has what effect? Ah, control. hell, if the tree next to my house comes down, I'm off line. If the metaphorical tree comes down, then various servers suddenly shut down web sites and blogs that are critical of the administration. Think that's impossible? Pick up the book Weapons of Mass Deception. In there the authors(one is John Stauber) talk about a web site that a certain mujhaddeen group ran that was incensed over Ann Coulters usual thoutless comments. I looked it up. Sure enough, there it was. I can't find it now though. My suspicion is that the military is using it's abilites to keep these guys off line. That is however, unfounded. It could be simply that they live in an area where lectricity is more a luxury than the normal. Whatever happened to Boxfrog e-mail server? I can't find out info about them either. Theirs was a secure e-mail home. The posts were routed through several centers to avoid being traced. It was suddenly gone. These things are small little ripples. But if you are looking at your glass on the table, and you start to see small ripples, that means an earthquake is starting. It is time to act now, and guarantee that we maintain our right to free speech. This is just an inkling of what is happening to the media. Again. link to Free Press and see what they have to say. Get involved. Otherwise the large corporations will own it all, charge what they want, and restrict what you get. It's already happening, as I hope you have seen.
Last, we need to cover belligerent nationalism. Who, the US? Another popular word I read in various web siyes from over seas is the word "imperalism".
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
Sobering words, aren't they? Our current administration has this word "fascism" thrown at them frequently these days, so lets investigate, on the basis of this definition, how true that is.
First, the centralization of authority. In America that would entail changing the relationship towards our founding documents, particularly the Constitution that outlines the authority of the various branches of government. We have seen numerous examples of the violations of civil rights, and in the Patriot Act, there are flagrant contradictions to the Bill of Rights. Let's look briefly at the current phenomena of the Right Wing to press for up or down votes of judicial nominees of the president. That clearly steps away from the Constitutional clause that states the Senates job is to advise and consent. If one party controls the Senate, than debate is done away with and there can effectively be one party rule. That is anti-American and anti-Constitutional. This ends up putting all the power in the executive brach, as the Senate is neither appointing or debating, but simply rubber stamping. The judicial branch then are simply appointed minions. That leaves the house of Representatives as the only non-centralized balance of power. Unless of course the afore mentioned one party controls things there as well. Then legislative matters are either stalemated or follow the dictates of the executive branch. But wait, you say! The President in America can only serve two terms, thus eliminating the possibility of a fascist take over. Then you might be interested to know that the Republican, a term used loosely, controlled House has introduced, on February 17, 2005, House Joint Resolution 24, which seeks to eliminate the tenure of the Presidency. That could effectively pave the way for a dictator, which on July 27, 2001 Bush himself said would be easier than being president. Wake up sheeple! We have a rubber stamp Senate, a judiciary that is leaning farther fascist with every undebated nomination, and a House that is looking to change the Constitution to allow for a dictator. Were it not for the fact that in the 2000 election it is well known that the court refused the count of thousands of votes that would have given Florida to Gore, and the 2004 Ohio election result that was contested by several Senators, it becomes apparent that relying on elections that are doubtful is not the security it once was. So the trend toward centralized authority is becoming clearer every day. Another area in which we see this centralization is in the intel sector. Using 9.11 as the jump off point, and rightly manifesting the need for better inter-agency communications, the administration has brought all the intel agencies under one head, that of the convicted criminal John Negroponte. Negroponte alone briefs the president every morning despite warnings from others that doing so would be limiting. If one takes the Downing Street memo language, it is obvious how they can now fix the facts to support their ideology.
"Stringent socioeconomic controls." If one studies the fascist governments of the past, it is obvious they are stridently anti-union. That is where you first start, as it gives power back to the corporations, and hence the few, but it also gives the power for controlling the economic aspect back from a contract to again, the few. It is an oft stated reality for the last 20 years at least that wages have stagnated at best, and lost ground in may cases. More later!
Back to these socioeconomic controls. I apparently started on the economic ones. For now I'll pass on where I was going with unions, but a little study will corroborate what I was saying. Let's focus on the Bush budget. The 2005 budget allowed for growth in only one sector: the military. Everything else was slashed or held to 1%, which doesn't even match inflation. What this shows us is a very strident control of economic factors designed to eliminate all domestic programs that either directly help citizens or regulate industries. Amazingly, they even cut veterans benefits. Farmers subsides were slashed. Education across the board was either cut or unchanged, which leaves the touted NCLB Act seriously underfunded, yet under mandates to improve performance or face further federal cuts. More centralization. With tax cuts going to the very rich and large corporations while military action is being conducted on two fronts, the obvious problem will be the ballooning deficit. Who will be saddled with that deficit? And under stagnated wages that burden becomes bigger and bigger every day. Hence, our compassionate president can tell a single working mother that only in America can someone work three jobs! Just to make ends meet! Which is right where they want working Americans: barely able to make ends meet. The one area where this was countered was in the union movement. Although it has it's own corruptions, the union provided a decent wage and benefit package that allowed one to achieve the American dream. Because there has been serious effort to disable the unions, we have the situations we do in regards to labor and safety laws being overturned, as well as the above mentioned wage stagnation. Mixed in with this is allowing huge amounts of illegal immigrants to work, which allows employers to pay a low wage with no benefits, and get no complaints. This move swells to fill the ranks of workers with those who will wotk for less, and undermine for a long time to come the ability of an American worker to make a decent living. It isn't that there is a shortage of money. Corporate profits and CEO compensation packages remain at all time lucrative highs, while the gap between their wages and those who actually make the wealth possible grows even greater. These are some of the economic controls that this administration uses. Which almost seems contradictory, in that the authorization doesn't seem to be in the law as opposed to corporations. However, let's look at example for the recent change in tort reform laws. This makes it harder for the average person to sue a company if there's negligence on the part of the company. This law defers all suits to the federal courts, which rarely hears these types of cases any way. And with judges like William Pryor and Janice Brown who consistently rule on behalf of the corporations, who in turn support theses justices, it matters little if your case is heard or not. Another form of law that is used to protect big business at the expense of the citizen are the changes in bankruptcy law. Centralization occurs here because the wealth of the authorities, which are few in number, is protected by law at the expense of the citizens. According to our Declaration of Independence, we are supposed to be governed of the people, by the people, for the people.
Now lets look at the social controls. This is where the Christian camp joins the fascist camp. Very strict controls. Like the Texas legislature wanting to prohibit cheerleader dance routines. Or outlawing gay marriage. Or take for example Spokane Mayor Jim West's legislative actions while he was a Washington representative. He wanted to outlaw sodomy. On top of that, if you knew someone was sodomizing, and you didn't report it, you were just as liable. Essentially, if the Christian fascist brigade has their way, the Bible will become the standard of culture. Imagine what that will do to TV, and movies alone. let alone music. Or books. It will eliminate birth control and abortion. It will alter education. No longer will a "liberal" arts degree be available. Mind you, all these things happen right now. The Christian camp wants Roe V. Wade struck down. No secret there. They want birth control stopped. Dr. David Hagar of the FDA was seeing to that. Meanwhile he anally raped(sodomized) his own wife. That story is widely available, and reported by nation Magazine. Ah, this good Christian man is divorced! Christians regularly burn books and other media forms as expressions of self-righteousness. They don't like Tele Tubbies or SpongeBob. I can well imagine what they think of soap operas. Not to mention Will and Grace. Basically, the culture would be under the dominion of a hierarchal, patriarchal, dualistic philosophy. Is that American? Remember, the key word is control, issued from the top. That is neither freedom or liberty. This marriage of the religious conservatives and the fascists is easy to see in the news these days. Do a Google Alrt on Pat Robertson. You'll see the periodic stories of various politicians that Pat Robertson has garnered support for by using his position as an evangelist to political ends. He urges financial support of politicians in Oklahoma as well as his own home state, and possibly others. So they definitely have a close relationship, yet their own aspirations for the White House. This is where they will collide with the fascists in office.
Many people wouldn't admit to a suppresion of the opposition in this country. Censorship is another matter. We have heard recently in the news of how our government has disapperaed people. Look at the stories of released detaineees of the conflict in Iraq. Many have been taken and held without charge, half way across the world! The Patriot Act gives such powers to our current administration, and we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. So suppression is happening. Terror is definitely an American government tool used against those who don't step in line, as our foreign policy in Latin America has demonstrated for the last 30 years. How am I too feel though when a government has power to snoop through business records and library records without obtaining a warrant or even notifying me? That I'm free? I would venture to say that a population under this rule would feel terror. However, I feel that the suppression in this country happens mostly through the censorship mode.
Media is an issue. Hoo boy, where to start? Let's look at the Downing Street memo that is a current buzz. I think it isn't such a buzz, as in other blogs I have mentioned the PNAC who stated that Iraq was their target in a report published in 2000. So the DSM is really just a confirmation, not really a smoking gun. But yet, it has taken weeks before it became anything at all close to covered in the mainstream media(MSM). Why is that? Well, one of the issues that Dennis Kucinich thought was important during his run for President was the poor coverage of the media. So much so that he verbally bitch slapped Ted Koppel for wasting 12 minutes of their debate time on non-issues. The next day, ABC pulled their correspondent from Kucinich's campaigne. Shocked? Heavens no. What has happened to American media is ownership. You'll notice the links on my blog. There are others out there as well that demonstrate how the ownership of media has boiled down to basically 6 companies. Some of which openly endorsed Bush or openly attacked Kerry during the run for president. Whoa! What sort of info are you getting from sources that are allowed to buy up as many media outlets they want because the admin changes the FCC rules, and then in turn help out that same admin by giving to their campaigns. FOX is a great example. Check out Media Matters(www.mediamatters.org) to find out what the FOX folk spin out. These days much of it is blatant lies. I already detailed Pat Robertsons grossly misleading statements on that channel. And FOX owner R. Murdoch is a big supporter of Bush. Or take the Times story about the abuser of the Koran. As it turned out, abuse was admitted. it was also corroborated by the Red Cross. I'm sure Amnesty International would agree. And the Pentagon had returned the story to Time for printing 10 days before it was published without mentioning this particular issue. But the admin jumped all over Time, and the loud sqeuaky wheels in the House and Senate jump on the bandwagon and demand retractions. And Time tucks it's tail and complies when what they printed was the truth. The main reason for the retraction was they acknowledged using an anonymous source, and a single one at that. But they also didn't stand up for the rest of the article. If one peruses the PNAC report, you will see that they also want to control the internet. Such moves are already underway. The FCC is being encouraged allow broadband to be controlled by corporations instead of municipalities. This has what effect? Ah, control. hell, if the tree next to my house comes down, I'm off line. If the metaphorical tree comes down, then various servers suddenly shut down web sites and blogs that are critical of the administration. Think that's impossible? Pick up the book Weapons of Mass Deception. In there the authors(one is John Stauber) talk about a web site that a certain mujhaddeen group ran that was incensed over Ann Coulters usual thoutless comments. I looked it up. Sure enough, there it was. I can't find it now though. My suspicion is that the military is using it's abilites to keep these guys off line. That is however, unfounded. It could be simply that they live in an area where lectricity is more a luxury than the normal. Whatever happened to Boxfrog e-mail server? I can't find out info about them either. Theirs was a secure e-mail home. The posts were routed through several centers to avoid being traced. It was suddenly gone. These things are small little ripples. But if you are looking at your glass on the table, and you start to see small ripples, that means an earthquake is starting. It is time to act now, and guarantee that we maintain our right to free speech. This is just an inkling of what is happening to the media. Again. link to Free Press and see what they have to say. Get involved. Otherwise the large corporations will own it all, charge what they want, and restrict what you get. It's already happening, as I hope you have seen.
Last, we need to cover belligerent nationalism. Who, the US? Another popular word I read in various web siyes from over seas is the word "imperalism".
posted by Gonzo at 06:28
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