The Real Threat is FASCISM

The United FASCIST State of America,,,,

Dr. Lawrence Britt's 14 defining characteristics of Facism-:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems,

the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, [or during a corporate created disaster in the Gulf] is very common. [Some say that Obama has the WORST record of any President when it comes to protecting whistleblowers.]

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite. [Latest example is BP--the criminals get to cover up--"clean-up."]

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Who would have thought that President Obama would be leading us deeper into fascism?

War Crimes du Jour

A UN convoy attacked, the Red Cross blocked and harassed, international journalists blocked in the apparent vain attempt to hide all the murders, dead men, women and children in the roads, all at the hands of the IDF. The list goes on and on. I hope this is all being carefully recorded to present to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. Fascism, the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich once said, is the impulse to murder given free rein.

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Parts 7 & 8 of 10

Here are Parts 7 and 8 of War on Democracy by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker, a documentary that has been making its way through the Internet.

Part 7 gets into the nuts and bolts of the School of the Americas (School of the Assassins) and the Death Squads of El Salvador in particular:



Part 8 deals with the "sophisticated" economic model known as Neo-Liberalism that Milton Friedman and the "Chicago Boys" foisted on Latin America, enriching the few and impoverishing the many, somewhat like serfdom, while keeping Latin America economies in lockstep with US Corporate profits in the same way that a vampire attaches his fangs to a victim's neck. Crush labor, keep wages low, open everything up to American investments until foreign capital owns most of the country:



Stay tuned for the last two parts of this hard-hitting documentary.


For the earlier posts:

click here for Part 1

click here for Part 2

click here for Part 3

click here for Part 4

click here for Parts 5 & 6

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Part 5 & 6 of 10

Here are Part 5 and 6 of War on Democracy by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker, a documentary that has been making its way through the Internet.

Part 5 begins with an expose of how the CIA overthrew the Arbenz government in Guatemala back in the 50s, ushering in decades of Fascist rule, civil war and genocide against the Mayan Indians. Also covered in 5 and 6 is the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile and his replacement by the Fascist dictator, General Pinochet.

For the earlier posts:

click here for Part 1

click here for Part 2

click here for Part 3

click here for Part 4

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Part 4 of 10

Here is Part 4 of War on Democracy by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker, a documentary that has been making its way through the Internet.

Part 4 ties up the failed ending of the coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the official American denials of any involvement in the coup.

For the earlier posts:

click here for Part 1

click here for Part 2

click here for Part 3

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Part 3 of 10

Here is Part 3 of War on Democracy by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker, a documentary that has been making its way through the Internet.

For the earlier posts:

click here for Part 1

click here for Part 2

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Part 2 of 10

Here is Part 2 of War on Democracy by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian journalist and filmmaker, a documentary that has been making its way through the Internet. Part 1 is just below in the previous post.

John Pilger - The War On Democracy - Part 1 of 10

This documentary by John Pilger, the award-winning Australian born journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, has been making its way through the Internet. It is perhaps the most penetrating history of official and clandestine U.S. government policies, strategies and operations to bend Latin America to its will ever produced. You cannot understand our relationship with Latin America, nor what is going on in Latin America, without knowing this history. So here is Part 1 of 10, with more to follow.

LIGHT IN THE DARK at THE STUDIO

Friday, April 4 at 7:15pm
THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY Veteran filmmaker and independent journalist John Pilger reveals in his brilliant new documentary that in spite of a history of repeated US-backed suppression in Latin America, grassroots democratic movements are gaining ground in Latin America. Pilger provides an historical background of U.S. clandestine intervention in Central and South America over the last century and interviews key government officials who ran the CIA's war in Latin America. Pilger also conducts an exclusive interview 'on the road' with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela,


Date: Friday, April 4 at 7:15pm
Location: Studio for the Healing Arts, 1611 Colley Ave (2nd floor) one block north of Naro
Admission: $5
Host: Tench Phillips, Naro Cinema
Facilitators: Chris Jaramillo, Joe Filipowski, D.C. Amarasinghe

Everything by the Book? The Torture Police in Action

Woman is stripped naked and abused by Start County Sheriff Dept. http://www.sheriff.co.stark.oh.us/ Email the sheriff at strkshrf@raex.com (copy/paste this in your own email-the Blog link won't work) to let them know how you feel.

I pulled this video from an article by Mark A. Goldman entitled "Guantanamo Comes to Main Street U.S.A." Click here to read it.

Welcome to Bush Amerika. Seven years of corroded ethics and a festering culture of international sadism and mass murder by our benighted government have slowly but surely transformed our country into a budding Fascist police state. I started telling people five years ago that this new Right-wing pseudo religion of sadism masquerading as the "War on Terror" will come home to roost. We know that the police in this country have often tortured and abused minorities in manners similar to what is shown on this video, but now their perversity is being directed at white, middle class men and women. This America is becoming increasingly grotesque to its own citizens, not to mention the rest of the world.

We are a country going to Hell in a handbasket. We have lost any connection to the Divine collectively through our actions, and are descending deeper into the Pit weekly. This is the way things went in Nazi Germany, Stalin Russia, Pinochet Chile, to name a few odious examples. Stand up now, speak out and fight back, or risk seeing yourself or your loved ones in a position similar to that of the woman in the video one of these days.

Fascism Replaces Democracy in New Orleans

This right wing version of American Democracy that is being practiced in New Orleans is fascist and extremely disturbing. Corporate Media refuses to report on atrocities such as this...Corporate Media is working to keep us distracted so that these fascist actions can thwart the will of the American people.

Are there any principled journalists left in corporate media who will insist on reporting this information?

Check this out.

Will YOU Listen to a Truth Teller?

"Fascism is the merger of corporations and government"--famous quote attributed to Fascist Dictator Mussolini Another way to describe the privatization of the Bush-Cheney Regime.

I hope you will sharpen your senses and only support the Truth Tellers.....The major candidates on the Democratic side who speak truth to power are Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards.

Bush's INJustice Dept. REFUSES to Prosecute Corporate Executives

If you are rich in Bush's America you don't even have to go to court when you break the law and "fund" terrorists groups. Here's the source

BTW, in case you have forgotten, it was Italian Fascist Mussolini who believed that the merger of government and corporations equaled fascism.

If only Congress would do their duty and defend the constitution we could restore the rule of law in America. Congress needs to Impeach these criminals starting with Bush and Cheney.

Jack Bauer, Wilhelm Reich and Confronting Fascism

"The life-impulse can exist without fascism, but fascism cannot exist without the life-impulse. Fascism is the vampire leached onto the body of the living, the impulse to murder given free rein, when love calls for fulfillment in spring." (Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. xvii, Preface to the Third Edition)
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We live in a culture that worships violence and death and mass-produces violence and death, a culture epitomized by such TV shows as "24" with its 21st Century, testosterone dripping, ruthless American male prototype, Jack Bauer. The Fox Network, the semi-official propaganda organ of the White House, has created a complete caricature of the TV heroes I can remember as a kid, such stalwarts as Lorne Greene's Ben Cartwright, Richard Boone's Paladin, and James Arness's Matt Dillon, characters that were fair, honorable and just, slow to anger and measured in their responses to provocations. Hell, Paladin even quoted Shakespeare. But all that was before the era of the arrogant, hate-spewing Neocons, of the descent of the collective American psyche into a paranoid, delusional state of endless victimization and revenge. And art, imitating life, has reflected this.

Our Neocon icon, fair-haired, light-skinned Jack, uninhibited by any moral or legal restraints, thus flaunts his adrenaline-saturated virility weekly in sado-masochistic encounters with darker-complexioned denizens of Manichean evil, serving as a powerful conduit for the sadistic impulses of countless American 24-cultists. Moreover, we now have the confirmed surrealism of life imitating art when it was announced in the media on Tuesday, 2/13/2007, that a percentage of American soldiers (and, I assume, mercenaries) have been role-playing Jack Bauer in their daily routines of tormenting, humiliating and shooting Iraqis, so much so that the Pentagon has now had to ask the Fox producers to tone down Jack's excesses. In other words, televised sadism is rather contagious to the psyches of our emotionally-strained GI's, who, contrary to their idealized, sanitized image, are in reality beset with an avalanche of mental, emotional, ethical and physical problems that are inundating the VA Hospitals when they return from combat.

But with perhaps as many as 650,000 or more Iraqis already dead, two million or more driven into exile, hundreds of thousands more wounded or broken, the Pentagon's concerns come a little late. These are but the fruits of 21st Century American civilization, the flowering of high culture in our political and military leaders' minds. It is as if the Aztec Empire has been reborn in El Norte, after slumbering for so many centuries to the south. How much longer before we have Dick Cheney atop a stone altar in front of the Washington Monument, cutting out the throbbing heart of a spread-eagled, ceremonial "evil-doer" with an obsidian knife? Watch out world! America requires continuous, voluminous human sacrifice to satiate its bloodthirsty gods. Who will be next?

The Rise of Sadism
But what are the dynamics that are driving this sadistic American assault upon humanity, which is being enforced, one soldier at a time, with extreme prejudice? Moreover, there is such an obvious sexual component to the extensive sadism uncovered thus far that this must be fully taken account of while exploring the psychopathology of American soldiers involved in the bizarre and voyeuristic treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. For erudition, I turn to several passages by the famous, though controversial 20th Century German psychiatrist, researcher and author, Wilhelm Reich, an arch-foe of Fascism who delved into the depths of human sexuality and its perversions, particularly in relation to mass psychology and political extremism. I quote:

"When sexuality is prevented form attaining natural gratification, owing to the process of sexual repression, what happens is that it seeks various kinds of substitute gratification. Thus, for instance, natural aggression is distorted into brutal sadism, which constitutes an essential part of the mass-psychological basis of those imperialist wars that are instigated by a few. To give another instance: from the point of view of mass psychology, the effect of militarism is based essentially on a libidinous mechanism. The sexual effect of a uniform, the erotically provocative effect of rhythmically executed goose-stepping (a German practice in particular-McKinney), the exhibitionist nature of militarist procedures, have been more practically comprehended by a salesgirl or average secretary than by our most erudite politicians." (Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Third Edition, p. 31 and 32)

It is not merely a matter of American soldiers, having run out of salt petter, suddenly turning to torture for sexual release. The problem goes much deeper than that. The underlying cause is institutionalized sexual repression in much of America from early childhood on, often first experienced in the devout, moralistic family setting by the hapless adolescent who is taught that sex is both sinful and dirty. This sex-negative ideology is then reinforced in the churches and school systems to varying degrees, and, with the advent of the Bush Administration, now directly underwritten by the State itself in the form of national abstinence programs masquerading as sex education.

If you are a recovering victim of Fundamentalist brainwashing, you likely know very well what I mean. Many of our youths' psyches have thus become bridled with guilt and fear regarding healthy sexual relationships by the time they reach high school. Some overcome this inhibition; others do not, especially since every social artifice is introduced to make it difficult for our teenagers to develop satisfactory sexual liaisons with each other. This is considered a shocking taboo by our guardians of "civilization". But what kind of civilization?, for the worst thing about sexual repression in the early formative years is this, to again quote Reich:

"The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's genital sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, 'good' and 'docile' in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical faculty also become inhibited (a profound subconscious censorship having been implanted-McKinney). In short, morality's aim is to produce quiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation, are adjusted to the authoritarian order." (ibid, p. 30)

This mind-job on susceptible male youth, in particular, is a bit like gelding horses, making them more manageable and at lower risk to impregnate the mares. Moreover, "gelded" youth are much more amenable to the Hell-fire and damnation sermons of Evangelical preachers, with their otherworldly cult of pain and suffering. Having estranged such youth from their own bodies and negated their experience of ecstatic worldly pleasure through internalized guilt and denial, and instead having saddled them with recurring, unrelieved sexual tension, it is an easy step to convince them that the world is truly a veil of tears and sorrows. And to emulate Christ's suffering through your very own anguish is deemed a high and worthy goal, a goal that, however, inevitably breeds masochism. There is no better proof of this inclination culturally than the phenomenal success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, with its orgy of sado-masochism that was fervently embraced by the Christian Right, and even showcased in church auditoriums.

The New Religion
Moreover, according to church dogma, this is a world beset by evil, which must be battled incessantly until the Second Coming. Now, thanks to this doctrine, all of a sudden we have an outlet for all that sexual tension. This is where the Church Militant, that launched endless Crusades, Inquisitions and Holy Wars, has traditionally entered the picture. "My children, you will not be allowed to enjoy natural human love, but you will be allowed to get off on self-righteous and unnatural hatred and savagery. This will allow you a temporary catharsis of sorts, on your way to death, insanity or dismemberment."

Fascism is the modern successor to the Church Militant, institutionalizing war and/or repression on a permanent ideological and organizational basis in the modern industrial state. Fascism transforms, moreover, as Reich points out, the masochism inherent in otherworldly religions of suffering, such as embodied in the image of Christ upon the Cross, into a new and worldly religion of State-sponsored sadism. This is the hallmark of all Fascist movements, and they find their own appropriate religious symbols and ceremonies, such as the Swastika and candle-light marches of the Nazis, to ritualize their new religion.

They all, as well, incorporate their sacrificial scapegoats into the new litany, for the Nazis this meaning the Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. For our metamorphosing American Warfare State, Neocon ideologues have largely scapegoated and demonized Moslems, with other ethnicities or religions likely to be added later, all the while they hypocritically pontificate on morality and family values, just like the Nazis used to do. It is certainly no coincidence that the Bush Administration has been promulgating, as already noted, a culture of abstinence in American youth, even now trying to extend such precepts to young adults, with sexual repression and the resultant alienation from the natural universe being central mechanisms of the authoritarian state in developing human canon fodder for the War Machine.

George Orwell, by the way, was also one who understood these dynamics, incorporating these themes into his famous novel, 1984. So Reich is far from alone in his analysis of the modern Fascist state, which I might add, he also categorized totalitarian Communism under, as but another variant, Red Fascism.

This new religion of sadism defines itself by its enemies, to focus and fulfill the emotional angst and sexual tensions of its worshippers by providing them with real, live scapegoats. Thus, just as the Nazis had their Jews to demonize, so do the Neocons have their Moslem "radicals" to demonize, with the lines of demarcation between radicals and moderates always rather blurry and arbitrary. If you Google the phrase "destroy Islam", prominent among the thousands of hits registered you will find Fundamentalist Christian websites that make no distinction at all between the two, who associate Islam with Satan and Evil, period, and accordingly call for its utter destruction. Some of these apocalyptic types are officers and enlistees in the American military, who are carrying on their own little Jihads as I write.

Projection
When our Neocon officials and ideologues are describing this enemy, they generally slip into moralistic and archetypal terms devoid of any reality-based factuality. George Bush consistently employs such adjectives as "evil", "bloodthirsty", "totalitarian", "rapist" and "terrorist" when defining the "enemy", never acknowledges any cause and effect between our military operations in Iraq and elsewhere and the inevitable violent reaction by said "enemy", and goes on to inflate "their" powers as vast enough to threaten world domination, quite a tall order for ragtag Jihadists when Hitler's vast war machine couldn't even pull it off. Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust may recall all the vitriolic and fantastic rhetoric that Nazi propagandists employed against them. Nowadays, it is as if the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been rewritten as the Protocols of the Elders of Islam, a task made easier because Islam, in its long history, has also had its own "Church Militant", so to speak.

But such Manichean language and imagery of pure evil is also a telltale giveaway of another dynamic at work in the psychology of our ideologues. Psychiatrists and psychologists recognize that when one is excessively denigrating someone or something, one is really engaging in negative projection, projecting one's own negative "shadow", to use Dr. Carl Jung's term, by which he meant the subconscious, repressed and suppressed parts of oneself, in particular those aspects that one refuses to even acknowledge, so inimical are they to one's self-identity. Thus the stridency with which one accuses and assaults those same aspects in another is often an indication of the depth of intensity with which they exist in oneself, particularly when the accused bears no resemblance whatsoever to the accusation. In this latter case, such accusations would be pure projection, a veritable mirror of one's own negative shadow.

Concrete examples of one's projections mirroring one's shadow would include Reverend Ted Haggard, the recently dismissed Evangelical, firebrand preacher against homosexuality and other perceived evils, who turned out to have been regularly visiting a male prostitute who outed him for his hypocrisy. Then, going back some years, there was old Jimmy Swaggart, scourge of pornography and all manner of immorality, who was finally exposed as a female prostitute's client, and a rather pathetic one at that.

So what does this indicate about George Bush and his War on Terror? Time and again he conjures up an almost supernatural juggernaut of a diabolical enemy that threatens the very foundations of Western Civilization. Yet we know how little relation that characterization bears to reality, as symbolized by the hundreds of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who, Bush assured us while acting as both judge and jury, were the worst terrorists on the planet and yet, after some five years, only a handful have even been charged, and many have been quietly let go. The obvious inference here is that Bush is projecting his shadow, as is the entire Neocon movement that he is the figurehead of.

Basically, when the White House, Fox News and the scores of Neocon ideologues world-wide project elemental evil, terror, mass murder and totalitarianism onto the "Other", the archetypal "Enemy", they reveal much about themselves and their collective shadow. And because action always speaks louder than words, what we need to do is compare their track record with their rhetoric. Who has invaded and devastated two countries, bombed or shelled others and is a stone's throw from attacking Iran? Who has set up a world-wide torture network? Who runs Black Operations globally that utilize terrorism, murder, sabotage and false flag ops routinely. Who has precipitated another Cambodia-style human rights catastrophe in Iraq? Who is building more and more military bases globally while setting up the infrastructure for a police state in America? The answer in each case is this American-led incarnation of Fascism, the Neocon quasi-religious movement, which has even put out strategy papers stating that they seek global hegemony. The unmistakable conclusion is that this movement is, in its psychological depths, profoundly attracted to the archetype of evil that Jung has described, and increasingly influenced by its power and essence.

Just as Hitler romanticized marauding German troops and the brutal Nazi movement as bearers of light and high civilization against the darkness of international Jewry and Bolshevism, which must be defeated with uncompromising ruthlessness, so too does George Bush romanticize American troops as noble protectors of freedom and democracy against the darkness of radical Islam, while the military knocks down entire cities, as with Fallujah, and subjects thousands to daily outrages and horrors, to raids, imprisonment, humiliation, brutality and death. It is not Islam that threatens civilization, but Neocon Fascism. Islam has been a part of civilization for well over a thousand years, while Fascism has been the scourge of civilization since its inception in the 1920s.

The reality is that the Bush Administration has been trying to colonize Iraq, with only partial success. From the perspective of ideological Fascism, their only recourse now is to magnify the slaughter, to multiply the killing fields, to extend their control over the planet and the country. They can only do that through even greater fear and repression and an endless supply of cannon fodder, which returns us to icons like Jack Bauer and the cultivation of sadism through the perversion of human love. Yet the fictional Bauer, serving as both glamour boy and recruiting poster for self-righteous barbarism and the demonization of a large segment of humanity, can only exist in a culture that gives credence to the negative values of fear, hatred, violence and alienation, alienation from humanity, nature, the cosmos and oneself.

Confronting Fascism
Wilhelm Reich realized that only a society that is still connected to nature and capable of natural love can withstand the Fascist onslaught. Fascism can only devour human love. It cannot generate love, upon which civilization ultimately depends. Or as Reich put it at the end of World War II:

"In our society, love and knowledge still do not have the power at their disposal to regulate human existence. In fact, these great forces of the positive principle of life are not conscious of their enormity, their indispensability, their overwhelming importance for social existence. It is for this reason that human society today, one year after the military victory over party fascism, still finds itself on the brink of the abyss. The fall of our civilization is inevitable if those who work, the natural scientists of all living (not dead) branches of knowledge and the givers and receivers of natural love, should not become conscious of their enormous responsibility quickly enough." (ibid, p. xvi, Preface to the Third Edition)

It is time to take on this enormous responsibility on all fronts, by debunking the lies and upholding the truth in every avenue of political and social life, by disrupting the media monopolies that suck at our brains, by exposing this culture of sadism for what it truly is, by rolling back the inroads of Right-wing Fundamentalism in controlling our institutions, and by as many other ways as we can countenance that are effective. In reality, a revolution in values and paradigms is what is required to uproot this entire anti-life system. Needless to say, life-enhancing religions that integrate the human psyche and soma and embrace nature and the long repressed Divine Feminine are essential to this goal. Let us brainstorm on how to go about this in our articles, comments and discussions.

*****
Addendum
Here are two very recent pieces detailing the cultural and political influence, as well as ethical consequences, of Fox's "24":

1) This is the headliner article and summary on the Media Matters for
America website from February 2nd:

"Conservatives continue to use Fox's 24 to support hawkish policies."

"Summary: Cal Thomas is the latest conservative figure to use the TV show 24 to forecast a nuclear attack on the United States. Conservatives have also looked to the TV series for justification of aggressive interrogation procedures....."

This article details how truly pervasive the personna and sadism that Jack Bauer represents have become in the Right-wing media, intelligentsia (a misnomer), and power structure. Bauer has basically become a metaphor for rationalized torture. For the full article, please see: http://mediamatters.org/items/200702020015

2) This is the headline of an Amy Goodman interview on Democracy Now on Thursday, February 22:

"Is Torture on Hit Fox TV Show “24” Encouraging US Soldiers to Abuse Detainees?"

"Summary: This past fall, the Dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, along with experienced military and FBI interrogators and representatives of Human Rights First, met with the creative team behind the hit Fox Television show “24” and tell them to stop using torture because American soldiers were copying the show’s tactics. We speak with two of the delegation’s members -- former Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, who served one year in Iraq and David Danzig, director of the Prime Time Torture Project for Human Rights First. [includes rush transcript]"

For the full interview, please see: http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkpg=http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/22/1448252&linkid=31212

Hitler, Propaganda and Recycling Iraq as Iran

How many of you know that the very propaganda techniques employed with devastating effect by the White House and worldwide Neocon apparatus were first articulated by Adolf Hitler back in 1925 in his autobiography, Mein Kampf? His spiritual heirs are employing them today to manipulate us into war against Iran. Read on:

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"The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts and actions far less than emotion and feeling."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Ralph Manheim translation, p.183)

*****
Adolf Hitler expounded upon propaganda considerably in his massive autobiographic polemic against the Jews, Bolshevism and most things civilized, Mein Kampf (My Life), first written in 1925. Actually, Hitler was the director of propaganda for the Nazi Party for a time.

In the above quotation, he is cynically observing that for mass propaganda to work on the masses, one has to throw logic out the window and hit them with images and rhetoric that provoke fear, anger, patriotism, disgust, etc., and on a more primal level, by triggering their archetypal longings through symbols like the Swastika. However, I would hesitate to say that the Nazis themselves understood all the attractions of the Swastika, especially its sexual connotations, other than on a subconscious level.

To circumvent logic for emotions was a critically important point for a movement that was itself illogical at its core. Nazi ideology depended on a mystical belief system to promote its notion of Aryan superiority, which, like eugenics in general, it could only disguise as science.

Hitler also underscored several other key propaganda tenets, such as repetitiveness and simplicity:

"But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success." (ibid, p.184)

Then there is what may be described as the Nazis' grand propaganda principle:

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (James Murphy translation, p. 134)

The world has seen how effective the above principles were in the Nazis' ultimate goal, the "victory of the idea". They succeeded not only in Nazifying Germany, but spread their toxic ideology across Europe and even overseas, America itself seeing the rise of such Fascist organizations as the American Bund Movement in the 1930s:

"Propaganda tries to force its doctrine on the whole people.....Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea, while the organization achieves victory by the persistent, organic, and militant union of those supporters who seem willing and able to carry on the fight for victory."
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Ralph Manheim translation, p. 582)

Thus, all the above principles must be implemented by a strong propaganda apparatus, a dedicated and single minded organization that brooks no internal dissent, and ultimately no external dissent. Reality has been pigeonholed and the pigeons must not be allowed to debate the shape of their hovels.

Enter the Bush Administration
Whether or not Karl Rove and the apparatiks in the White House have actually read Mein Kampf I do not know. Have they incorporated those same propaganda principles espoused by Hitler? The answer is a resounding YES!

Let us look at the run-up to the war in Iraq after 9/11 as a case in point, although I will not get into the raging debate as to whether 9/11 was the American Reichstag fire. However, let me ask, soon after the lightning collapse of the Towers, was a dominant idea promoted that had to be indoctrinated into the American people as widely as possible? Yes, the idea that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat who must be dealt with immediately before he could strike with "weapons of mass destruction", a good, chilling phrase meant to terrify mothers and children and alarm the men.

Was going to war justified primarily by reason or appeals to emotions? Emotions largely. Balanced, reasoned debate based on real facts was largely absent. Debate was skewed to begin with by false reports about alliances between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, non-existent chemical/biological mobile stations, "yellow cake and aluminum tubes", and so forth. I won't even dwell on the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein's military capacity was largely impotent in 2003, especially against the United States. Emotionally speaking, there were strident appeals to patriotism, always against the looming background of the vaporized Twin Towers of 9/11, not to mention the great fear, anger and disgust this evoked in the average American. The mindset became, for millions of Americans: 9/11=al Qaeda=Iraq, so protect ourselves and get revenge!

Was this mantra that Saddam's regime was an evil, al Qaeda-loving threat to international security repeated constantly? Yes is not a strong enough term. Repetition was 24/7 from multiple sources: government, radio, TV, websites, newspapers, magazines, Right-wing pulpits, and on and on.

Was the Big Lie utilized? Yes again, as already inferred above. Everything was a lie except for Hussein's track record as a tyrant, and even this was embellished. How much bigger a whopper, to mention just one, can you contrive than the B-movie scenario that Iraq planned to use unmanned drones launched from merchant ships to spray American cities with deadly chemicals. We are half-way to Orson Welles' famous 1938 radio show, War of the Worlds, which scared the Hell out of countless Americans, with concoctions like this. All told, this was a rather fantastic fairy tale, all explained away after the fact as the product of faulty intelligence. Of course, some, such as diehard Congresswoman Thelma Drake, are still striving to depict several hundred degraded, 20-year old chemical artillery shells recovered from the Iraqi desert as the missing WMDs. Good luck.

Was there a singularly focused propaganda apparatus driving the entire campaign? Only one of the most massive in history. The White House, State Department, Pentagon, co-opted portions of the CIA and NSA, all the Right-wing think tanks, all the Neocon-biased media owned by the likes of Rubert Murdoch, Sun Myung Moon and others worked relentlessly in lockstep to vilify Saddam Hussein as the great threat to America.

Enter the American Foreign Policy Council
Where am I leading with all of this? Well, on January 23, 2007, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), the esteemed (largely in Neocon and Right-wing circles) "think-tank" announced that it was launching a week-long TV advertising campaign aimed at "educating" the American public about the growing threat posed by a nuclear Iran. This has subsequently run on CNN, MSNBC, Headline News and the Fox News Channel in Washington DC, Maryland and northern Virginia. The campaign consists of two rather nasty 30 second TV commercials. This just happened to coincide with 1) the State of the Union address in which Bush demonized Iran; 2) the heightening build-up of American Naval forces in the Persian Gulf, a second carrier group (the Stennis) having just sailed from the West coast, 3) orders to allow American soldiers in Iraq to shoot to kill Iranian "combatants" (how they will be able to tell who these shadowy Iranians are before shooting them is not explained, or will they arrest them, interrogate them and then execute them?); and 4) the recent acrimonious arrests of Iranian diplomats in Iraq by American forces, actions that have antagonized both the Kurdish and Iraqi authorities, to only partially list all the current initiatives against Iran.

In other words, Hitler's propaganda principles have now been turned against a new victim, Iran, and incorporated into the larger, multi-faceted escalation of hostilities, with the AFPC serving as an appendage of the American government, either directly or vicariously.

This is rather unprecedented, a private think tank trumpeting and financing hysterical propaganda against a foreign nation on TV. And just who is the AFPC? To quote from their own website: "AFPC is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing information to those who make or influence the foreign policy of the United States and to assisting world leaders, particularly in the former USSR, with building democracies and market economies. AFPC is widely recognized as a source of timely, insightful analysis on issues of foreign policy, and works closely with members of Congress, the Executive Branch and the policymaking community. It is staffed by noted specialists in foreign and defense policy, and serves as a valuable resource to officials in the highest levels of government." (See: www.afpc.org/ ) Within the AFPC, a program called the IFI or Iran Freedom Initiative, apparently spearheaded by AFPC Vice President for Policy, Ilan Berman, has commissioned the advertisements.

Hmmm. Everyone toots their own horn, but AFPC is so important to leaders in Russia that when you run their name in the Russian Pravda and Itar-Tass search engines, they register zero hits, although their website, to be fair, does list some glowing comments by several members of the Russian Duma. And indeed, one gets the impression from their website of wise, tweed-suited senior professorial types pontificating expertly on crucial matters of State. But after you review the scripts of their two anti-Iranian commercials, you suddenly begin to imagine half-naked lunatics dancing around a bonfire, chanting, "Disembowel Iran, disembowel Iran, font of all evil!"

The first commercial's script conjures up Iran as a nuclear threat and accuses it of being the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, killing hundreds of Americans, nurturing 25,000 suicide-bombers against the United States and Europe, as well as developing a dangerous nuclear capability. Then, with true Orwellian panache, the ad asks the audience to "Stand up for peace. Call up the White House and tell them to enforce sanctions against Iran today." We have seen how well coercive sanctions against Iraq "stood up for peace" in that luckless country.

The first script also dutifully lists "references" for its allegations, the first dig, that "Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism" being backed up by a BBC article reporting that Condoleezza Rice has charged that Iran is the central banker for world terrorism. And that's it. NO EVIDENCE, NO EXPOSE, just her disingenuous statement! What terrific research, enough to make a 6th grader blush with embarrassment.

The next allegation is that the Iranians have supported attacks that have killed Americans, basing it on a lawsuit against Iran by American families who lost loved ones when the Marine Barracks was blown up in Lebanon in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war. Iran ignored the lawsuit, considering it specious, and U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth awarded the judgment to the plaintiffs by default, coupled with the prosecutor's investigation.

However, a case where there are no defense arguments and cross-examination alleges much but proves nothing. What AFPC is really referring to is an attack on the Marine barracks in direct retaliation for President Reagan ordering the battleship USS New Jersey, with its massive guns, to lead deadly naval sea and air bombardments of pro-Syrian Druse villages and positions on the Lebanese coast-line. Reagan, thus, was directly taking sides in the raging civil war. At that point, America ceased to be a neutral peacekeeper.

Several Shiite militias claimed responsibility for the assault, including the Free Islamic Revolutionary Movement, which even named the two suicide bombers. Hezbollah was not even an official organization at this point (being founded in 1985 as an amalgam of Shiite militias), yet Judge Lamberth finds in his ruling that, amazingly, YET TO BE CREATED Hezbollah carried out the bombing on orders from Iran, rather sloppy scholarship indeed. However, this is good enough for the AFPC.

I can go on and on against each of the AFPC's allegations, especially the main broadsides that 1) President Ahmadinejad of Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map and 2) that they are on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb that, to hear the Israelis shiver and prattle about it, the Iranians will apparently immediately hide in a goat cart, sneak into Tel Aviv and detonate. Ahhh yes, paranoia, it makes deranged fools of us all. Meanwhile, Israel possesses some two hundred to six hundred nuclear weapons, according to various intelligence agencies. Nothing like the teapot calling the kettle black.

Regarding the "wipe out Israel" quote, it has now been proven by, not one, but many investigators and scholars that Ahmadinejad was only quoting an old Ayatollah Khomeini prophecy in Persian to the effect that the regime occupying Jerusalem shall vanish from history, a far cry from the skewed translation, ironically by an Iranian news agency that later retracted it, that the state of Israel itself should be wiped off the map - regime collapse versus the annihilation of an entire people, quite a big difference.

As for the terrifying specter of a nuclear-armed Iran, no one (except of course the always self-serving and imaginative Israeli intelligence services and Dick Cheney's X-ray vision) can find any direct proof that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program, let alone a viable one, not the AEIA, not the CIA, not anyone halfway credible. As for the industrial nuclear program that Iran is so proud of and stubborn about, this just came out in The Observer in England this past Sunday, January 28:

"Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology. Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

"Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production." ( )

The article only gets more embarrassing for Iran as it continues, not to mention for the AFPC and its "timely, insightful analysis" of realities in Iran. Yes, it is tough being a propagandist in the era of the blogosphere.

Combating the Propaganda
However, the AFPC probably really doesn't care because it is working within the Hitlerian framework of peddling the Big Lie, and if past history be the judge, the new wave of fear propaganda, in essence recycling and retooling the same lies used against Iraq for use against Iran, will succeed in staining America with yet more innocent blood, both American and Iranian, while the Neocon ideologues and merchants of death cackle in the shadows, rejoicing in their sadistic handiwork, unless.....

Unless we turn Hitler's principles against them. For example, in opposition to the Big Lie, we should loudly trumpet the full truth about Iran, warts and all, exposing all the Neocon lies ferociously, providing trustworthy sources and promoting honest scholars, while welcoming Iranians into our hearts as well, for the Biggest Truth is, of course, that God, or the infinite creative consciousness, is in all beings (even Neocons), and that we are all, in the deepest respect, brothers and sisters. When you assume that perspective, you gradually abandon the demonization of others and begin to think in terms of real diplomacy and reconciliation.

We must also incessantly reaffirm and reinforce the truth, because it is not enough to expose a lie once and rest on our laurels, for the totalitarian hardcore out there will regroup like Hydras. And we must enlarge our platform for speaking the truth. That means we must continue to obstruct the strident and ongoing Fascistic attempts to monopolize and control all aspects of the media, to pigeonhole Americans' minds, and continue to build or restore our own venues for presenting the truth to the world.

Finally, to put the lie to Hitler's observation that the "feminine", unthinking masses are persuaded primarily by pushing emotional hot-buttons, we must extol our fellow citizens to really wake up. This will require some detoxification and consciousness raising, but it will be worth it if we can truly awaken the sleeping American giant to its higher, spiritual destiny.

*****

George Must Apologize to All of US!!

Olbermann says what should be said......

I say to George...The Program Should NOT Go Forward!! So Stop the Temper Tantrum George....it's NOT Presidential!!

New Republican "Buzz Buzz" Word

According to Waldo, da Republicans have a new bussword--Fascism.

Mosquito says, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones." Did Rove forgot to look this word up before authorization?

NOUN:1. often Fascism a. 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. b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.http://www.bartleby.com/61/57/F0045700.html

noun [U]
a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control and extreme pride in country and race, and in which political opposition is not allowed
fascism

Main Entry: fas·cism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

And then there's the famous defiinition of fascism that's attributed to the fascist--Mussolini. Fasicism is the merger of corporation and the state.

BIG BUZZ...BUZZ...BUZZ