Podcasters Way

Common Sense with Dan Carlin The Secrecy Feedback Loop

The Activists Desk

Ratical.org Challenging Autocratic Governance That Serves the Interests of Global Corporations

News Briefs
Sojourner Let Us Be Clear: The Debt Ceiling Crisis is Purely Artificial Common Dreams.org U.S and Mexican Governments Continue to Brush Aside Perspectives of Drug War Victims

The Dig
Truth Dig The Obama Deception Why Cornel West Went Ballistic

Dateline: The Unseen World

Venezuelanalysis Venezuelan UN Speech Criticizes Market Totalitarianism, Argues Venezuelan Alternative

Mediacracy
Medialit.org A Long Way to Go: Minorities and the Media

The Exchange
Alter Net Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S is Controlled Philosophyotb.com What is Conservatism? A Definition of Right-Wing Conservative Politics

Theological Intelligence
Christian Century Instant Churches convert public schools to worship spaces

Curious Proposals
Media Monitors Jihad: Its True Meaning and Purpose Counter Currents Us vs. Them: On the Meaning of Fascism

URLs Dan Carlins Common Sense - http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/commonsense?format=xml

NOTE TO READER This Weeks Padcasters Way Section only includes one podcast due to a late start at organizing this issue! However the weight and consequence of this single podcast is far reaching, take some time to listen to it in its entirety, see if you can guess why! Ephraim J Davis

Challenging Autocratic Governance That Serves The Interests Of Global Corporations

APRIL 14, 2000 http://ratical.org/co-globalize/RalphNader/ifg041400RN.html
Ralph Nader Speaking at the IFG IMF/World Bank Teach-In Washington D.C. It is really an honor for me to have the chance to introduce him again as our last speaker tonight. It is a cliche to say he's been my hero. But he has been my hero since before a lot of you were born. Since the 1960's anyway. Let me ask you, can anybody think of any person over the last 30 years who has meant more to as many movements -- the environmental movement, the anti-nuclear movement, the campaign finance reform movement, the democracy movement, the consumer movement? -- Has anyone been more important than Ralph Nader all of these 30 years? I don't think so. The media democracy movement and the antiglobalization movement. As soon as we said globalization, of course, Lori Wallach was already on our board and working with us. He had hired Lori Wallach, and so he was already on the page with this subject while very few other people were. He is always there. It is little wonder that he has been repeatedly rated in national polls as the most respected person in America. I believe that is true. Of course, he is also the author of 14 books, notably the great best-seller Unsafe At Any Speed, which was one of the first direct attacks on corporations, on the auto industry in particular, for knowingly permitting unsafe autos on the highway. They were killing people left and right. He did that book at great risk personally as well. Because in those days, corporations may have been even more outlaw-ish than they are today. He was fundamentally responsible for the Freedom of Information Act.[1] He's the founder of Public Citizen, surely one of the most effective consumer, environmental health and globalization groups in the country. He has been a leader in so many crucial battles, it is hard to imagine that it is even possible. He is currently President of The Center for Study of Responsive Law and he is the Green Party candidate for President. Please welcome Ralph Nader. world's history, the reason why the few dominate the many is because the few are organized and the many are not organized. It is because the few disorganize the many. All of this increasing critique of corporate globalization -- we should always use the adjective -- comes from a long overdue pattern of research to discern the systems of control. Make no mistake about it. Although the shibboleths of free trade are tossed in front of an often misinformed media, the issue with the IMF and World Trade Organization and World Bank is governance. It's the governance systems for global corporations that we're really dealing with. The fundamental issue we face is the autocratic systems of governance that undermine democracy, that subordinate human rights and the rights of people for decent standards of living and for decent standards of justice. This is what is at stake here: Challenging international systems of autocratic governance that serve, overwhelmingly, the interests of giant global corporations who dominate and seek to dominate everything in their path. They want to dominate governments. They want to dominate the workplace. They want to dominate the marketplace. They want to dominate the universities by corporatizing them. They want to dominate the very concept of childhood

Thank you very much, Jerry, and all the people who work with the International Forum on Globalization. It really does take a huge amount of work to arrange these kind of gatherings. We hope that these precedings for the past 12 hours will be put on the internet so people all over the world can see and hear them.[2] Not that we expect any of the major networks or cable companies to be here. They're into other priorities. I'd also like to thank the panel for their very precise expressions and they've all worked so hard. All of this doesn't get done by a few people but by a lot of people. The few people may get much of the credit, but to those of you who are under 30 or under 25, let me tell that the key here is stamina. It's commitment. It's diligence. It's realizing that throughout the

with their brazen commercial exploitation of small children. They want to dominate the shaping of the environment. They want to control the genes of the natural world. They want to control the human genes. They want to control the seeds. They want to control the future. We have to make sure that this relentless drive for control by the commercial instinct -- which every major religion in the world has warned us about for two thousand years -- should never be given excessive power. Because in its singular focus and drive and lack of respect for other values, it destroys these other values in a paroxysm of greed that implodes on itself. This is the church where President Clinton comes to pray almost every Sunday that he is in town. He listens to sermons on spirituality, on religion, on various elaborations of the golden rule: Do unto others what you wish others to do unto you. Then, he gets into his limousine and goes down 16th street of the White House where decisions are made by another golden rule: They who have the gold, rule. In watching President Clinton coming to this church over the years, I kept asking myself, "What is it that intercepts what he absorbs here by the time he goes down there?" Here, he meets spirituality and communes with it. There, he meets corporations who have turned the White House into a corporate prison. In between, he doesn't meet the people. That's what we're all about. Because that in-between, is the major democracy-gap that must be filled by all generations and peoples from all over the world. In Seattle, I sat on a panel with Undersecretary of Commerce David Aaron.[3] Some of you may remember. He was short-changing the dialogue in my judgment. In my frustration, I challenged him to a structured, 5-hour debate and he agreed. On the way out from that auditorium, he reiterated his agreement. So I wrote him a letter when I came back and said let's sit down so we can work out the rules, and who is going to debate, over what topics, etc. Just last week-and-a-half ago, on his last day in office, he wrote me a little note saying that he is leaving the Department of Commerce and is joining a firm -- it turns out to be a law firm specializing in global

trade. And while he would have loved to engage in the debate, he has to pass it on someone else. There it is. The shuttle at work. The merry-go-round at work between the corporate government and the political government, back to the corporate government to the political government. Now, let me put before you briefly some of the major problems affecting the world and ask yourself: to what extent does the IMF, The World Bank, The WTO, and global corporations, who, as David Korten has said, `seek to rule the world' -- to what extent they either contribute to these problems, worsen them, or even cause them or are indifferent to them? Poverty is a massive problem in the world. As you know, a couple billion people trying to eke it out on less than the equivalent of a dollar a day. Authoritarian regimes. Environmental destruction. Multiple epidemics of diseases. Horribly inadequate housing. Inadequate food, ranging from malnutrition to starvation -in terms of inadequate distribution of the available food. The massive military arms trafficking in the world. Check out these big corporations. These giant food-grain exporters. These giant food-processing companies. Their main attention to world poverty is to see how much fat and sugar they can pump in to third world people. The tobacco industry. What's their contribution to health? It is to increase the level of cancer and other tobacco-related diseases. How about the housing industry? They could care less. There's not much money in that. The pharmaceutical industry. They're great at producing life-style drugs. They love to develop drugs like Viagra and restoring bald-headed men and harmful anti-obesity drugs. But for decades now, even though they are subsidized by taxpayers, they do not do any research in drugs and vaccines for the major global infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. In fact, unfortunately, most of the malaria research for anti-malarial drugs is concentrated in this country and it is over in the Pentagon at The Walter Reed Institute of Health with the Army and

Navy scientists. They are the ones who are doing this work. Isn't it interesting regarding this giant profitable pharmaceutical industry? They are not interested in drugs and vaccines for alleviating the tremendous world mortality and morbidity rates. Malaria itself takes two million lives a year including one million African children. We see this with the arms traffic. Who is fueling the arms traffic? The giant military arms producers -- with your tax dollars. In this country $6 billion of tax subsidies a year for private exports of jets and tanks and ammunition, etc., to countries that aren't exactly governments of, by, and for their people. We see this situation in every area. Now, when are these companies ever going to lose their credibility? Every major social movement in United States history was opposed by the dominant business firms. Whether it was the abolition of slavery, the trade union movement, the farmer progressive populist movement, even the women's suffrage movement, the environmental consumer movements (the more recent vintage) -- all were opposed by the dominant business community. When are these people in the business community going to lose their credibility? Corporations are chartered by us. We give them the charter. They don't exist without the charter by state and federal governments. We can condition the charter, suspend the charter, pull the charter for corporate recidivism and other misbehaving corporations and throw them into trusteeships and reorganize them so that they behave. We must remember that.[4] We know how the IMF and World Bank work. It's no mystery. They're funded by taxpayers with very little informed consent. Billions of dollars of U.S. tax dollars for example go into the IMF. This big money-pumping machine as it was called -- the IMF and the World Bank -extends loans. They have a model of economic development that is grotesque. Not only in it's damage as you heard earlier repeatedly: damage to human beings, to environment, to the sustainable wisdom of the ages as it replaces it, etc. But it doesn't have any standards for failure.

What do you about institutions that do not have explicit standards of failure by which they must be judged? Ask the IMF. Let's take the last three years. Here's the last three years very briefly: It's contributed to and worsened financial crises in Asia and elsewhere, and served primarily to bailout the western banks who helped cause the crisis in the first place. The second is, it has wasted billions of our taxpayer dollars and other country's taxpayer dollars, pumping this money into Russia; a tormented land with a tormented people, once governed by criminal communism and now governed by criminal capitalism. Billions of these IMF dollars right down the drain. They disappeared before they were almost deposited into the oligarchies and into the networks. Where is the accounting system of the IMF? They're supposed to have auditors and accountants. They have admitted they were taken to the cleaners. But when do they admit more structural failure in their operation? Who made that decision to send all that money over there? They knew what the corruption was like. They knew what the practice was like. They knew it wasn't going to get to the people in Russia. But they went ahead and did it. Did any of their paychecks down the street here bounce? Of course not. Maybe that's the problem. The IMF has bailed out the big banks while impoverishing the poor. It has continued to push its environmentally destructive export-led development trade. There are a lot of things we all can do about this, obviously. I want to suggest, especially to the young people here -- and whoever watches this very wonderful long day event -- that, first of all, it is not enough just to be concerned and informed. It is not enough just to be concerned, informed and serious. It is not enough to be concerned, informed, serious with a sense of urgency. You have got to reach out to other people. You have got to organize your acquaintances, relatives, friends, co-workers all over the country. And stop feeling sorry for your selves. Oh! Those overwhelming odds -- the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the corporations, what can we do, oh-me oh-my, que sera sera. When you see what your forebears were up against for two hundred years and the advanced social justice which you benefit from; when you see what our brother from Bolivia has just gone through

with his co-workers and friends[5] -- how can you feel sorry for yourself? If you do you're a jerk! Now we need to emphasize the entry of the labor unions into this fight. This is a dramatic new development. The labor unions have been led for too many years by leaders who see their position as a sinecure and who were much more indentured to corporate power than they should be. Now labor is beginning to rediscover the demonstration, the picket, the rally, locking arms with all the rest of you. Workers bring great credibility to movements that involve human rights groups and environmental groups and consumer groups and church groups and student groups. They give great credibility because they have all the symbols. The Wall Streeters cannot damage those symbols. They've got all the symbols: they fought in the wars for corporate interests; they built the factories; they sustain the economy. They sweat day-to-day while their CEOs are making 415 times more than the entry-level wage in these companies. Keep that in mind. The second is, what is wrong with allying ourselves with more conservative interests? Conservative interests who are not corporatists -- they don't like this any better than we do. They don't like where their taxes are going. They don't like the subversion of our local, state and federal sovereignty -- the largest relinquishment in our history -- to the World Trade Organization. They don't like all this corporate welfare aid to dependent corporations -- without even a 5-year cutoff if I might add. They want their children to breathe cleaner air and drink cleaner water. They don't like to get ripped off by higher pharmaceutical prices or have to go up to Canada to get lower prices. Right Maude? [Barlow]. "Not for long," she says. And in Congress now, there is a strong core of conservatives that are very critical of the IMF. The other thing that young people need to do more of is read. Read! Yes, read. Reading informs. Reading motivates. The Multinational Monitor is our our contribution to your reading. Rob Weissman is the editor here who puts it

out with his cohorts 10 times a year. It's all over the place now. Also, don't underestimate the vote. There is nothing worse than to see young people who are very, very active -- as Carol Miller told me a few minutes ago -- and then they don't bother to vote, like `Ahh!' - it's beneath them. You have got to register.[6] Go right across the college campuses and register the vote. Develop a block of informed voters and if you vote and nothing happens, at least it gets you angry. You can be more motivated and more mobilized. Now let's look at the IMF and World Bank briefly through the eyes of the people who go to work there everyday. They are paid very well -- tax free. They know what it's like to go around in a limousines. They actually have good cafeterias, if you ever sneak in there. It's good food, all kinds of indigenous foreign cuisine. They read about the what the World Bank is supposed to be in college. The World Bank is supposed to fight poverty. It is supposed to build infrastructure that private investment eschews as not being profitable. Roads and dams and water systems, electrification systems, etc. They say, `Well that's what it is isn't it? That's what it says in the charter, and in the speeches.' And so they go to work for the IMF as well. These institutions live by these myths. They live by these myths because on paper they have abstracted these cumbersome models of economic development quite inaccurately. They have abstracted them saying, `Electrification projects, dams, water, irrigation -- who can be against this?' Part of it is that there is a deep set ignorance about how economies develop, especially poor economies. Giant projects funded on the western model do not work in third world countries. Poverty can be alleviated only by cottage-level projects. For example, look what happened in our country at its best -- and why don't we project that for models of economic development with proper indigenous inputs, of course. We had land reform -- it's called the Homestead Act of 1863. It broke up the potential for giant plantations as occurred in the south. What people in the third world need is land reform -- fundamental land reform. They need systems that

encourages land used to grow food for needy and hungry people. Not to grow cash crops to be exported to the west to earn hard currency to pay debts to foreign banks. The second is microcredit. The democratization of credit which occurred in our country with credit unions, agricultural credit banks, producer credit banks in the farm area. They don't need these giant loans to oligarchs and governments that misuse them and only entrenches the oligarchs and the dictatorial regimes. They need the democratization of credit. It goes right to people -- $200, $300, $100 like the Grameen Bank has shown[7] -- which by the way, was not an IMF idea, was it? People need technical assistance and not just western science and not corporate science. When are we going to realize the value of indigenous science and technology? It doesn't come in fancy names and publications and fancy journals. It simply is the result of thousands of years of knowledge. Look at the Neem tree in India, for example. Look at the great Egyptian architect, Hassenfatei (sp?) who developed systems for building homes made from the soil underneath the feet of the Egyptian peasants. And whose teachings are spreading around the world. That was not an IMF or World Bank or a consulting firm idea. How about Nestle? And all the infinite formula that the World Health Organization has said has destroyed the lives of millions of children in the third world. Promoted as Nestle did, knowing that it would be so expensive that it had to be mixed with contaminated water leading to horrendous tragedies for little children and infants. What was that kind of contribution? And what did it replace? It replaced mother's milk. That's real western science isn't it? How about water safety? Where is the IMF and World Bank in the last 30-40 years knowing from their own studies, the huge mortality levels from contaminated water -- especially for small children. Where are they? Why is that such a big deal? It's a big deal because they only think in terms of big projects. They don't think in terms of letting these societies breathe themselves democratically so they can solve their own problems. They don't think of getting off the back of third world

people instead of constantly shoring up the authoritarian regimes and the oligarchs who benefit from the corporatization, that is often called privatization of public institutions like water companies. What about cooperatives? We had cooperatives in our country. They were tremendous, especially in the farm and rural areas. Why aren't we saying that the third world needs help in terms of cooperatives? Only a dabble here and a dabble there for that kind of institution. How about public health and infections? Can you imagine? It was James Grant -any of you heard of James Grant of UNICEF? He passed away a few years ago. He was a Harvard-trained lawyer who in the last few years of his life, went all over the world trying to get regimes to let in public health workers, both indigenous and exogenous, for immunization. It is so easy to save the lives of these children and infants. Pennies per life! Pennies per life! Where are they with their billion dollar loans, that they don't pay attention to this? What about public education? What about public school systems in our country? One of the great institutions -- the G.I. Bill of Rights. Why aren't we saying that other countries deserve those kind of assists, as well, to fulfill human possibilities from early age on? What about giving people in the third world the right to form independent trade unions? In this country, it built the middle class. How about the rule of law and due process? And the access to free and independent courts which helped us? Why aren't we fostering and why aren't we supporting efforts in those countries, as well? What about the whole idea of self-reliance and self-sufficiency? We talk about energy independence in our country but we haven't done much on that although it was talked about in the '70s.[8] What is this emphasis on the inevitability of global trade? Most countries can be selfsufficient in most of the necessities. They may not have manganeese mines. But for heaven's sake look at our country. Why do we have to import British biscuits, French drinking water and Swedish ice cream? We have to challenge the very fundamental premise of trade. There is bad

trade: there is trade in tobacco; there is trade in munitions; there is trade in prostitution across boundaries. What is this blanket idea that all trade is good? I favor self-sufficient communities. I favor selfreliant communities to the maximum feasible extent. We should work for that. The most prosperous economies are those who build domestic markets, from the grassroots up. Not those who go into debt chattel, debt servitude to foreign banks, and IMFs, and World Banks and develop an export-oriented trade dependency on a boom-and-bust basis where the strings are pulled thousands of miles away by absentee corporate executives and their government allies on the 30th floor of some skyscraper in London, New York or Tokyo. We have to develop, in other words, a democratic model of self-sufficient, sustainable economic progress. That is what we have to talk about and hurl against the IMF, and the World Bank and the WTO. They either don't have a clue of how democratically-structured economies develop from the community, the neighborhood, the soil, the rural, the cities. Or they don't want to have a clue. What we have to do is not simply deconstruct their systems of control -- and the often brutal consequences that come from their systems of control -- for which they are not accountable. But we have to demonstrate again and again from our own history and from the history of the best practices in our country of the ways we developed economically, to build a higher standard of living and a higher standard of justice. Mark Hertsgaard is going around the country with his paperback book, Earth Odyssey, after traveling around the world for five-six years. He saw the enormous damage to the poorest people, the most defenseless people, from environmental ravages. He saw it and documented it and now is trying to get the IMF and World Bank to accept a green deal. While I sympathize with his ability to try to reform these institutions, it is quite clear that internally, they are not capable of regeneration. They are capable of new slogans, of new speeches that display `Care For The Poor Of The World', but they are not capable of internal regeneration. They have to be withdrawn in terms of the funding from the various

contributing countries and shrunken into institutions that finally transform themselves, and give up their original impact, and transform themselves into these kinds of promoters of sustainable economic development. Or just close up completely and start new from scratch. You can critique the IMF, and the World Bank, and WTO, and that is becoming more and more penetrating and more destabilizing for them. But we've got to work with people in other countries around the world as this coalition has demonstrated, and as you have demonstrated, to show that the alternative is superior in every way. It is superior for people today. It is superior for future generations. It is superior for the free play of non-commercial values that build a great culture and a great democracy. Remember, every country will do it differently. They have different cultural traditions and different priorities. But there are certain common survival programs in terms of food and housing and health care and education that we must try to foster between nations and between societies. Let us not adopt the dictionary of the oligarchs and of the international organizations. The dictionary is not privatization, it is corporatization. The distinction between economic growth and economic justice should be made very clear. Economic growth is not necessarily economic progress or justice for the mass majority of the people. I hope that you have a very "compelling weekend," shall we say. I hope you show your self-restraint as well as your eagerness to communicate throughout the country over the media what you are all here for. I hope you will send your signals to the White House as well as to the Congress. But I hope you'll go back so metabolized that you will multiply your efforts in church basements and union local halls and university auditoriums and through your e-mail, so that this time it is not just a surge. It's not just a movement. Not just a demonstration. It is a permanent transformation of the way we use our time and our knowledge and our estimate of our

own significance. Estimate of our own significance. You are in the top percent or two of people around the world in terms of health, education, and the ability to make a difference. That gives you a moral imperative to do so.[9] You have even a higher responsibility to do so. We are blessed in this country. We have to make sure we stop the reverse slide that is occurring even here. We have to go back home and develop our own systems of influence, our own compelling networks, whether through the Internet or through person-to-person contact. Remember, over two thousand years ago, it was the Roman lawyer, Marcus Cicero, who defined freedom for the ages. He defined it this way: "Freedom is participation in power." Everything else is just the symbolism of the oppressors over the oppressed when they talk about liberty and freedom, etc. Freedom is participation in power. Thank You. The event was recorded by the Independent Media Center (www.indymedia.org) and is accessible on the A-Infos Radio Project (www.radio4all.net) web site. A list containing entry points to all five panels exists on the IFG web site at http://www.ifg.org/IMFteach-in.html. See Using The Freedom Of Information Act, A Step-by-Step Guide (http://www.aclu.org/library/foia.html), an ACLU Publication, as well as Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and Amendments (5 USC Sec. 552) (http://www.epic.org/open_gov/foia/us_foi a_act.html), from the EPIC Open Government site (http://www.epic.org/open_gov/). The Public Debate on Globalization and the World Trade Organization (WTO) (http://www.progressproject.org/Speaker_ Series/wto_debate.html)) provides the archived webcast of the complete event.

For of the basics regarding corporate charters and some the history of successful revocations, see TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation (http://www.ratical.org/corporations/TCoB eij.html) and Asserting Democratic Control Over Corporations: A Call To Lawyers (http://www.ratical.org/corporations/Call2 Lawyers.html#charters) This was Oscar Olivera in the fifth and final [evening] panel ("Reports from the Planet: Effects of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO on Environment, Energy, Agriculture, Biodiversity & Culture"), who arrived from Bolivia that evening just in time to participate. Although the listing of speakers at both http://www.ifg.org/IMFteach-in.html and http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id= 1889 do not mention Oscar's name, he spoke after Lori Wallach and before Vandana Shiva. Microcredit lending institutions like the Grameen Bank provide precisely the sort of assistance people in so much of the world can constructively use and benefit by. See: Grameen -- Banking for the poor (www.grameen-info.org) The Virtual Library on Microcredit (http://www.soc.titech.ac.jp/icm/icm.html) To better appreciate just how misguided it is to expect that the U.S. Department of Energy will ever fulfill a major objective it was charged with -- to support the development of new sources of energy -see The Politics Of New-Energy Technology (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/newETP.ht ml) March 2000 memorandum by Hal Fax, editor of the Journal of New Energy. See The Moral Courage to Stand Against Injustice, (http://www.monitor.net/monitor/nader/rncourage.html), Speech of Ralph Nader (St. Francis Church, Sacramento, CA), October 17, 1996

Let Us Be Clear: The Debt Ceiling Crisis is Purely Artificial

by Valerie Elverton Dixon 07-27-2011 Dr. Valerie Elverton Dixon is an independent scholar who publishes lectures and essays at JustPeaceTheory.com. She received her Ph.D. in religion and society from Temple University and taught Christian ethics at United Theological Seminary and Andover Newton Theological School. http://blog.sojo.net/2011/07/27/let-us-be-clear-the-debt-ceiling-crisis-is-purely-artificial/
We have come to an impasse in the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling because of several conceptual errors in our public discourse. These errors were most glaring in the remarks recently delivered by Speaker of the House John Boehner in his response to President Obama. The largest conceptual error is the idea that the government of a constitutional representative democracy is different from the people. Boehner said, You know Ive always believed the bigger the government, the smaller the people. What does this mean? The government is composed of the people, and if people are paying attention and voting according to their own interests, the government ought to work toward the happiness of the people. The problem is that too many Americans have bought into this conceptual error that the government is some kind of leviathan, a monster that exists to take away their liberties. This is nonsense. A correction of another conceptual error in Boehners presentation makes my point. In his response to the president, Boehner spoke about what he called a spending binge that he claimed has run up the national debt. He said: Heres what we got for that spending binge, a massive health-care bill that most Americans never asked for. A stimulus bill that was more effective in producing material for late night comedians than it was in producing jobs. And a national debt that has gotten so out of hand it has sparked a crisis without precedent in my lifetime or yours. Let us be clear: The debt ceiling crisis is purely artificial. The problem of the debt is real, but it is not the most pressing crisis at the moment. The most pressing crisis is jobs. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the Stimulus Bill) contained the following provisions among others. (Click here to see the entire list.) Some $116.2 billion went to new tax credits for individuals. Money went to the states to help with Medicaid, education and job training, health insurance for unemployed people (COBRA), transportation, to build and improve rail systems and public transportation, economic recovery in distressed areas, unemployment compensation, state and local law enforcement, repair and modernization of public housing, repair and improvement of public lands and parks. Money in the Recovery Act went to individuals for home weatherization programs. Money went to the National Science Foundation, Homeland Security, Head Start, and early childhood education; to finance rural water and waste facilities; construct and repair veterans hospitals and cemeteries; to help states collect child support; and for technical upgrades in schools. Further, Boehner is wrong about health care. It has yet to be fully implemented. Some 50 million Americans live without health insurance, and this is a life and death situation. The problem with the recovery act for progressives such as me is that it was too small. Boehner spoke of being a small business man, and that his experience taught him that businesses have to live

within their means. As a businessman, he ought to know that cash coming in does not always match cash going out, thus, even the healthiest businesses need a line of credit. Such is the case with the United States of America.

As the list of spending in the Recovery Act indicates, the government is all of us working together to help all of us. It is especially important that we keep the least of us ever in mind. This is not an us against it proposition, the big, evil

government versus the common people. The government is us.

U.S. and Mexican Governments Continue to Brush Aside Perspectives of Drug War Victims
Published on Saturday, July 23, 2011 by Focal Points Blog / Foreign Policy in Focus by Tania Arroyo http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/23-5
On July 8, the war on drugs claimed another victim, the songwriter Argentine Facundo Cabral, the victim of an ambush in Guatemala. Cabral, a tireless pacifist, was killed when three carloads of gunmen ambushed the vehicle in which he was riding. This is an irreparable loss to the Argentine and Latin American people. The victims of this drug war have mostly been anonymous, from the perspective of the global media. But the war has begun to claim some famous people, like Cabral. In Mexico the murder of the son of renowned intellectual Javier Sicilia has led to the emergence of a strong and important social movement calling for an end to the war on drugs. This movement forced President Felipe Calderon to initiate a dialogue with society: an imperfect dialogue but dialogue at least. Despite this social message, on June 22, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Guatemala that the U.S. government would spend nearly $300 million this year helping governments in Central America confront the mafias that smuggle cocaine to American consumers. At the same event, President Felipe Calderon called for more resources from the international community to fund this ill-advised strategy to combat crime. He dismissed the notion of a symbolic contribution, "because this is not about charity, and asked for an amount equal to the billions of dollars received by criminals to run their operations. Ironically, the next day, Caldern met with Javier Sicilia in Mxico for a dialogue that seemed to have deaf ears. Sicilia said to the Mexican president, "Watch carefully our faces. Search carefully our names. Hear our words. We represent innocent victims. Do we look like collateral damage or statistics?" He asked Caldern to apologize for the 40,000 deaths caused by the struggle against organized crime. The president responded that he wouldnt apologize for having pursued the offenders. "Javier, youre wrong," he said. "I regret not having sent federal forces in earlier." For more than three decades, the war on drugs has been a constant concern for the United States and has shaped relations with various governments in Latin America. Some of them, like Mexico or Colombia, have completely followed U.S. foreign policy, as with Plan Colombia launched in 1999 or the Merida Initiative for Mexico in 2008. Others failed to cooperate with the United States and established independent drug control strategies, like Venezuela, which stopped receiving U.S. financial support in 2005. Despite these efforts, the strategy has totally failed. In human costs, according to a report of the U.S. Congress, homicides in Latin America have increased from 19.9 per 100 000 people in 2003 to 32.6 per 100 000 people in 2008. In terms of strategy, from 1980 to 2008, the U.S. government has spent $13.1 billion dollars. This money has done little, as the same report notes: Temporary successes in one country or sub-region have often led traffickers to alter their cultivation patterns, production techniques, and trafficking routes and methods in order to avoid detection. Fighting violence with violence only begets more violence. Additionally, it has profoundly damaged the social fabric and has damaged institutions. Public confidence in the army, which has killed civilians as part of "collateral damage," has declined considerably. The same applies to the judiciary. Victims now prefer silence for fear of reprisals or because they consider official complaints to be a waste of time. According to the Report on the Americas, 73 percent of Latin Americans perceive corruption among public officials as a widespread problem. Governments and policymakers say that they are acting in line with democracy, human rights and public opinion. But, in reality, they are not willing to listen to the demands of society. In the context of the "war on drugs," they are unable to guarantee human rights or even the right to live. The deaths of Cabral and Juan Francisco Sicilia are not more important than the other casualties of this war. But they have inspired major social reactions. Latin American and U.S. governments must start to listen to these reactions. If they don't, they will have another war on their hands with their own enraged citizens.

Venezuelan UN Speech Criticises Market Totalitarianism, Argues Venezuelan Alternative

By Tamara Pearson Venezuelanalysis.com Merida, September 22nd, 2010 http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5657
In Venezuela, Social investment has become a national strategy to achieve... the Millennium Development Goals, said Jorge Valero, Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, in his speech yesterday at summit analysing the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals in New York. Valero also became the new president of the Movement of New or Restored Democracies. In the year 2000, 189 countries agreed on the Millennium Goals to be achieved by 2015. The current summit, which began on Monday and closes today, aims to analyse countries' individual and global progress towards those goals. Government representatives from 140 countries are present. There are eight Millennium Development Goals, which are: The elimination of extreme poverty, reduction of hunger, reduction of infant mortality, universal primary education, gender equality, maternal health, combating HIV and AIDS, environmental sustainability, and development of global associations. The following is the full transcript of Valeros speech, where he criticises the global capitalist system for not guaranteeing basic human rights, explains Venezuelas alternative, and examines how far Venezuela has come towards achieving the Millennium Goals: Ten years after the Summit where the Millennium Development Goals were approved, the results are disappointing. The fulfilment of these goals is seriously threatened. Most developed countries have not fulfilled the commitment of allocating 0.7% of their Gross National Product to Official Development Assistance. The global economic and financial crisis of capitalism of recent years has created more poverty, more inequality, and injustice. The financial economy exercises hegemony in the world and increases the accumulation of billions of dollars without creating any good. It is the casino economy. It has subjected States, and intends to destroy the public sphere, privatising everything, from the public services to the war. Market totalitarianism prevents the exercise of human rights and the right to development. In this context, there is no right to work or healthcare, only labour market adjustments, or private companies that provide health insurance. There is also no right to food, which depends on the international market that has turned food into objects of speculation through future transactions. The reduction in social spending has affected the ability of States to ensure economic, social and cultural rights of the peoples. Not even the most vulnerable sectors of developed countries can escape the perverse effects of the capitalist crisis. A crisis caused by financial speculators, with the complicity of the world's most powerful governments and the Bretton Woods institutions. The Bolivarian Revolution under the leadership of President Hugo Chvez Fras, promotes an alternative model of development, that is humanist and performs deep structural changes in favour of the excluded. Although our country has not escaped the negative effects of the crisis of capitalism, social investment has increased and, today,

more Venezuelans have better living conditions. Social investment has become a national strategy to achieve sovereign and integral development and, therefore, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. 60% of total tax revenue, between 1999 and 2009 has been earmarked for social investment. We are moving towards a universal social security system. The Social Missions in favour of the most excluded sectors of society have helped to achieve, in a massive and rapid manner, social inclusion. The poverty rate fell from 49% in 1998 to 24.2% in late 2009. And extreme poverty fell dramatically from 29.8% in 2003 to 7.2% in 2009. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has recognised that Venezuela is the country that has reduced inequality the most in the region. The unemployment rate in Venezuela fell from 15% in 1998 (before the start of the Bolivarian Government), to 6.6% in December of 2009. The promotion of gender equality and greater involvement of women in economic and social matters in Venezuela has already been achieved. State policies entrench training and equal participation of women in public life. Four (4) of the five Public Powers that exist in Venezuela are chaired by women: Legislative, Electoral, Judicial and Moral. In 2001 Venezuela reached the goal of drinking water coverage. And in 2005 the target in the service of wastewater collection was met. In our country, we are advancing in the universalisation of rights related to identity, food, health, education and employment. Venezuela was declared a territory free of illiteracy by UNESCO in 2005. Furthermore, Venezuela will achieve before 2015, the universalisation of primary education, a reduction in the mortality of children, a reduction of maternal mortality, a reduction in the spread of HIV/AIDS and will reverse the incidence of malaria and dengue.

In Venezuela, we are moving toward a democracy of quality, focused on the interests, needs and hopes of our people. It is a participatory and protagonist democracy where political freedom is exercised and the benefits of development are enjoyed. The Bolivarian government promotes Latin American and Caribbean integration, based on the principles of cooperation, solidarity and complementarity. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) and Petrocaribe contribute to the eradication of poverty and to overcoming inequalities and unemployment in our region. Venezuela contributes towards sister countries in the continent in order for them to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Venezuela has regained full control of its natural resources. All basic services are considered basic human rights. The resources of our country, managed in a sovereign manner, have allowed for the creation of a Bank of the South and the Bank of ALBA. State policies have become instruments for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and for the promotion of independent and autonomous development, without the tyranny of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Against neoliberal globalisation we propose the globalisation of justice and equity. Against the looting and the abuse of countries we propose fair trade, in a world in which we all win, through solidarity and partnership. Under the leadership of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has met most of the Millennium Development Goals. Within the framework of the full exercise of sovereignty and self-determination, we have opted for Venezuelan Socialism, in order to create a society where justice, equality and solidarity reign, with full respect for human rights and democratic freedoms. Mr. President, Our Bolivarian Revolution is geared towards the full realisation of social, economic, and cultural guarantees, fully consistent with the view expressed by the Liberator Simon Bolivar at the Congress of Angostura in 1819: The most perfect system of government is that which results

in the greatest possible measure of happiness and the maximum social security and political stability. Also during the summit, Cuban Chancillor Bruno Rodriguez criticised the lack of collaboration by developed nations to achieve the millennium goals and denounced the exploitative global financial system that favours developed countries. He criticised the fact that many countries have paid off their external debt countless times but it keeps multiplying, as well as the slow transference of technology. Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, proposed a World Bank for countries of the South, or for the poorer countries, in order to start to...end with the blackmail of the International Monetary Fund. Ali Treki, president of the UN General Assembly, came to Venezuela on 23 and 24 June, when Venezuela handed over its preliminary report on its achievcement of the Millennium Development Goals, so that the UN president could verify and revise it. Treki said Venezuela was an example to the world for its compliance with the Millennium Development Goals. Venezuela has been recognised, despite all the accusations...and the discredit campaign by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR), as a leader and at the vanguard of reaching the Millennium Goals, said ombudsman Gabriela Ramirez. Elias Eljuri, president of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), also commenting on Venezuelas achievement of the Millennium Goals, said Venezuelas extreme poverty has reduced to 7.2%, the hunger index has reduced to 3.7%, 84% of students are finishing primary school (an increase of 70% since 1990), more women are attending university than men, and infant mortality reduced to 13.9 per 1000 children in 2008, a statistic which, to meet the goals, should be at 8.6 by 2015. Eljuri said the goal Venezuela had to work hardest on was reducing maternal mortality, but for this the government had developed the Mission Baby Jesus, launched late last year. The mission aims to provide greater pre and post natal care. Also, Venezuela, through Valero, took over the presidency of the Movement of

New or Restored Democracies within the UN, from Qatar. One of the responsibilities of the position is organising the VII International Conference of the Movement of Democracies sometime later this year.

The Movement aims to foment cooperation between nations in order to resist threats to democracy, such as coup detats against democratically elected governments, and affirms the principles of

sovereignty and non interference in domestic issues.

The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic

Posted on May 16, 2011 By Chris Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_obama_deception_why_cornel_west_went_ballistic_20110516/
The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obamas ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power. Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obamas heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in King Lear. Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gatesthink of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedytake power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority. No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it. When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority, says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And thats where I find myself now. I have to take some responsibility, he admits of his support for Obama as we sit in his book-lined office. I could have been reading into it more than was there. I was thinking maybe he has at least some progressive populist instincts that could become more manifest after the cautious policies of being a senator and working with [Sen. Joe] Lieberman as his mentor, he says. But it became very clear when I looked at the neoliberal economic team. The first announcement of Summers and Geithner I went ballistic. I said, Oh, my God, I have really been misled at a very deep level. And the same is true for Dennis Ross and the other neo-imperial elites. I said, I have been thoroughly misled, all this populist language is just a facade. I was under the impression that he might bring in the voices of brother Joseph Stiglitz and brother Paul Krugman. I figured, OK, given the structure of constraints of the capitalist democratic procedure thats probably the best he could do. But at least he would have some voices concerned about working people, dealing with issues of jobs and downsizing and banks, some semblance of democratic accountability for Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats who are just running amuck. I was completely wrong. West says the betrayal occurred on two levels.There is the personal level, he says. I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, Brother West, I feel so bad. I havent called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you. And I said, I know youre busy. But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and hes calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesnt have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or Im glad youre pulling for me and praying for me, but hes calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldnt get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, Thats something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you cant get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa. Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel. What it said to me on a personal level, he goes on, was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no]

sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level. But there was also the betrayal on the political and ideological level. It became very clear to me as the announcements were being made, he says, that this was going to be a newcomer, in many ways like Bill Clinton, who wanted to reassure the Establishment by bringing in persons they felt comfortable with and that we were really going to get someone who was using intermittent progressive populist language in order to justify a centrist, neoliberalist policy that we see in the opportunism of Bill Clinton. It was very much going to be a kind of black face of the DLC [Democratic Leadership Council]. Obama and Wests last personal contact took place a year ago at a gathering of the Urban League when, he says, Obama cussed me out. Obama, after his address, which promoted his administrations championing of charter schools, approached West, who was seated in the front row. He makes a bee line to me right after the talk, in front of everybody, West says. He just lets me have it. He says, You ought to be ashamed of yourself, saying Im not a progressive. Is that the best you can do? Who do you think you are? I smiled. I shook his hand. And a sister hollered in the back, You cant talk to professor West. Thats Dr. Cornel West. Who do you think you are? You can go to jail talking to the president like that. You got to watch yourself. I wanted to slap him on the side of his head. It was so disrespectful, he went on, thats what I didnt like. Id already been called, along with all [other] leftists, a Fing retard by Rahm Emanuel because we had critiques of the president. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, has, West said, phoned him to complain about his critiques of Obama. Jarrett was especially perturbed, West says, when he said in an interview last year that he saw a lot of Malcolm X and Ella Baker in Michelle Obama. Jarrett told him his comments were not complimentary to the first lady.

I said in the world that I live in, in that which authorizes my reality, Ella Baker is a towering figure, he says, munching Fritos and sipping apple juice at his desk. If I say there is a lot of Ella Baker in Michelle Obama, thats a compliment. She can take it any way she wants. I can tell her Im sorry it offended you, but Im going to speak the truth. She is a Harvard Law graduate, a Princeton graduate, and she deals with child obesity and military families. Why doesnt she visit a prison? Why not spend some time in the hood? That is where she is, but she cant do it. I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men, West says. Its understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, hes always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And thats true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. Its a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable. He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want, he says. Hes got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because hes so smart. Hes got Establishment connections. Hes embracing me. It is this smartness, this truncated brilliance, that titillates and stimulates brother Barack and makes him feel at home. That is very sad for me. This was maybe Americas last chance to fight back against the greed of the Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats, to generate some serious discussion about public interest and common good that sustains any democratic experiment, West laments. We are squeezing out all

of the democratic juices we have. The escalation of the class war against the poor and the working class is intense. More and more working people are beaten down. They are world-weary. They are into selfmedication. They are turning on each other. They are scapegoating the most vulnerable rather than confronting the most powerful. It is a profoundly human response to panic and catastrophe. I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone. Can you imagine if Barack Obama had taken office and deliberately educated and taught the American people about the nature of the financial catastrophe and what greed was really taking place? West asks. If he had told us what kind of mechanisms of accountability needed to be in place, if he had focused on homeowners rather than investment banks for bailouts and engaged in massive job creation he could have nipped in the bud the rightwing populism of the tea party folk. The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways. We have got to attempt to tell the truth, and that truth is painful, he says. It is a truth that is against the thick lies of the mainstream. In telling that truth we become so maladjusted to the prevailing injustice that the Democratic Party, more and more, is not just milquetoast and spineless, as it was before, but thoroughly complicitous with some of the worst things in the American empire. I dont think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama. If it turns out in the end that we have a crypto-fascist movement and the only thing standing between us and fascism is Barack Obama, then we have to put our foot on the brake. But weve got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties. Our last hope is to generate a democratic awakening among our fellow citizens. This means raising our voices, very loud and strong, bearing witness, individually and collectively. Tavis [Smiley] and I have talked about ways of civil disobedience, beginning with ways for both of us to get arrested, to galvanize attention to the plight of those in prisons, in the hoods, in poor white communities. We must never give up. We must never allow hope to be eliminated or suffocated.

A Long Way to Go: Minorities and the Media

By Carlos Cort

http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/long-way-go-minorities-and-media
During the September 18, 1986, televising of The $25,000 Pyramid, a most remarkable exchange occurred. In this popular game show two pairs of contestants compete. For each pair, a series of words appears on a screen in front of one contestant, who gives clues to try to get the partner to identify the correct word. On that special day, the word gangs' came up on the cluer's screen. Without hesitation, he fired out the first thing that came to his mind: 'They have lots of these in East L.A." (a heavily MexicanAmerican area of Los Angeles). Responding at once, his guest celebrity partner answered, gangs." Under competitive pressure, two strangers had immediately and viscerally linked "East LA" with "gangs" Why? What force could have brought these two strangers into such rapid mental communion? The answer is obvious the mass media. The entertainment media have displayed a fascination with Latino gangs, while the news media nationwide have given them extensive coverage. In contrast, the entertainment media have offered a comparatively narrow range of other Latino characters, while the news media have provided relatively sparse coverage of other Hispanic topics, except for such problem" issues as immigration and language. The result has been a Latino public image better yet, a stereotype in which gangs figure prominently. Teaching Stereotypes This singular but significant example has broad, important, even ominous implications for minority and other ethnic groups. First, whether intentionally or unintentionally, both the news and the entertainment media 'teach" the public about minorities, other ethnic groups and societal groups, such as women, gays, and the elderly. Second, this mass media curriculum has a particularly powerful educational impact on people who have little or no direct contact with members of the groups being treated. Moreover, this special concern the influence of the mass media on the public image of minorities is only one of many complex features of the tortuous relationship between minorities and the media. Minorities have long recognized the media's power to influence their lives. And they have struggled to achieve greater influence over their own media destinies. That's why Asian Americans protested against Michael Cimino's recent Chinatown-bashing movie Year of the Dragon. mats why black actors have protested against the paucity and lack of diversity of black film roles. That's why Native Americans have established both tribal and pan-Indian newspapers throughout the country. That's why Latinos have so vehemently protested the recent judicial decision to approve the Spanish International Communications Corporation's sale of five major Spanishlanguage television stations to Angloowned Hallmark Corporation, despite the existence of financially equivalent offers from groups with large Hispanic Most minority media efforts, including protests, have focused on the area of media content. Minorities realize supported by research that the media influence not only how others view them, but even how they view themselves. So minorities and other ethnic groups have long attempted to convince industry decision-makers to seek better balance in news coverage of minorities and to reduce the widespread negativism in the fictional treatment of minorities by the entertainment media. Likewise, they have clamored for the media presentation of better minority role models in news, in entertainment, even in advertising both to set standards for minority people and to reduce the deleterious stereotypes too long prevalent in the media. While progress has occurred, the media have not been consistently responsive or sensitive. Decisionmakers Part of the reason is that minorities have traditionally had only marginal presence and even less influence within the mainstream media. The national television

visibility of Bryant Gumbel, Connie Chung, and Geraldo Rivera are of relatively recent vintage. While these breakthroughs are certainly welcome, the very exceptionality of such featured figures symbolizes the frustration that minorities still feel about the delays and continued slowness of progress within the mainstream news media. For example, currently only about 40 percent of the nation's 1,600 daily newspapers employ any minorities in editorial staff positions. In the entertainment media, the successes of such stars as Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Edward James Olmos, and for that matter even Richard "Cheech" MarIn and Tommy Chong, are cause for satisfaction. Minorities should also applaud the popularity of the movie version of The Color Purple, notwithstanding the controversy that it generated both within and outside of the black community. Likewise, minorities can take pride in the success of Wilson Wang's brilliant shoestring-budget film, Chan is Missing. Gregory Nava's lowbudget sleeper, El Norte, a moving portrait of two Guatemalan undocumented immigrants, drew large audiences despite the fact that more than half of the dialogue was in Spanish and a Guatemalan Indian language, with English subtitles. In heralding these advances, it still must be remembered that in six decades of Academy Awards, only three blacks (Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, and Louis Gossett, Jr.), two Asians (Miyoshi Umeki and Dr. Haing S. Ngor Ben Kingsley is English of half-Indian ancestry), one Puerto Rican (Rita Moreno), and one Chicano (the half-Irish Anthony Quinn) have won Oscars for acting Quinn twice. That makes an average of just over one per decade. But the presence of a few prominent minority news people, television

personalities and movie stars is less significant than the broader nature of the minority experience within the media industry. Gaining admission has not been easy, as obstacles to entrance remain. In recent years minorities have achieved a long overdue media presence. But crucial issues of portrayal and participation remain to be resolved. And once inside the door, problems continue personal isolation, difficulty in entering upper-level management, lack of influence, career hazards. Minority journalists often face the dilemma of balancing their social commitment to provide better coverage of minority communities against their fears of being "ghettoized" to the "minority beat" and thereby having their professional careers restricted. Minority actors find themselves caught between the need to find roles in which they can hone their craft and earn a living, and the recognition that many of these roles may contribute to public negative stereotyping. Imagemaking Such are the quandaries of marginality and the absence of power. For this reason, some minority people have opted to operate outside of the mainstream and form their own media. In this way, they have sought to select their own themes, express their own views, and influence their own public images. They have established their own newspapers and magazines, set up their own radio and television stations, created their own film production companies, and formed their own advertising agencies, often specializing in helping companies reach a "minority market." As a result, periodicals now range from Ebony and Essence to Nuestro and Hispanic Business, from China Spring to

the American Indian Talking Leaf. Many television and radio stations now provide programming in languages from Spanish to Korean. Ethnic people have been making alternative movies throughout the century, from Oscar Micheaux, the brilliant black director of the silent era to the Yiddish film industry of the 1930s to current minority film efforts. But the road to media self-determination has not been easy. Most independent minority filmmaking efforts have collapsed due to the lack of financial solidity needed to create consistently high quality productions. Some minority publications have achieved economic success, but even more have had limited longevity. Radio and television stations may broadcast in many languages, but ownership and therefore control over news and editorial policy often does not rest in minority hands. Such rousing rhetoric as "minority media selfdetermination" may foster utopian dreams, but the economic realities of survival and control the necessary conditions for ongoing media power are often nightmares for minority media entrepreneurs. Minorities have long been aware of the influence of the mass media on their lives and have struggled to increase their own impact on the media. While the results have often been frustrating and depressing, there have been victories and successes to which minorities can point and emulate. With increasing media experience and sophistication, minorities are determined to expand their media influence, as they are expanding their physical presence in our increasingly multiethnic society.

Inverted Totalitarianism: A New Way of Understanding How the U.S. Is Controlled

A new book offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how the U.S. has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation. Reviewed: Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin (Princeton University Press, 2008) May 19, 2008 http://www.alternet.org/news/85728/?page=entire
It is not news that the United States is in great trouble. The pre-emptive war it launched against Iraq more than five years ago was and is a mistake of monumental proportions -- one that most Americans still fail to acknowledge. Instead they are arguing about whether we should push on to "victory" when even our own generals tell us that a military victory is today inconceivable. Our economy has been hollowed out by excessive military spending over many decades while our competitors have devoted themselves to investments in lucrative new industries that serve civilian needs. Our political system of checks and balances has been virtually destroyed by rampant cronyism and corruption in Washington, D.C., and by a two-term president who goes around crowing "I am the decider," a concept fundamentally hostile to our constitutional system. We have allowed our elections, the one nonnegotiable institution in a democracy, to be debased and hijacked -as was the 2000 presidential election in Florida -- with scarcely any protest from the public or the self-proclaimed press guardians of the "Fourth Estate." We now engage in torture of defenseless prisoners although it defames and demoralizes our armed forces and intelligence agencies. The problem is that there are too many things going wrong at the same time for anyone to have a broad understanding of the disaster that has overcome us and what, if anything, can be done to return our country to constitutional government and at least a degree of democracy. By now, there are hundreds of books on particular aspects of our situation -- the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bloated and unsupervised "defense" budgets, the imperial presidency and its contempt for our civil liberties, the widespread privatization of traditional governmental functions, and a political system in which no leader dares even to utter the words imperialism and militarism in public. There are, however, a few attempts at more complex analyses of how we arrived at this sorry state. They include Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, on how "private" economic power now is almost coequal with legitimate political power; John W. Dean, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches, on the perversion of our main defenses against dictatorship and tyranny; Arianna Huffington, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe, on the manipulation of fear in our political life and the primary role played by the media; and Naomi Wolf, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, on Ten Steps to Fascism and where we currently stand on this staircase. My own book, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, on militarism as an inescapable accompaniment of imperialism, also belongs to this genre. We now have a new, comprehensive diagnosis of our failings as a democratic polity by one of our most seasoned and respected political philosophers. For well over two generations, Sheldon Wolin taught the history of political philosophy from Plato to the present to Berkeley and Princeton graduate students (including me; I took his seminars at Berkeley in the late 1950s, thus influencing my approach to political science ever since). He is the author of the prize-winning classic Politics and Vision (1960; expanded edition, 2006) and Tocqueville Between Two Worlds (2001), among many other works. His new book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, is a devastating critique of the contemporary government of the United States -- including what has happened to it in recent years and what must be done if it is not to disappear into history along with its classic totalitarian predecessors: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia. The hour is very late and the possibility that the American people might pay attention to what is

wrong and take the difficult steps to avoid a national Gtterdmmerung are remote, but Wolin's is the best analysis of why the presidential election of 2008 probably will not do anything to mitigate our fate. This book demonstrates why political science, properly practiced, is the master social science. Wolin's work is fully accessible. Understanding his argument does not depend on possessing any specialized knowledge, but it would still be wise to read him in short bursts and think about what he is saying before moving on. His analysis of the contemporary American crisis relies on a historical perspective going back to the original constitutional agreement of 1789 and includes particular attention to the advanced levels of social democracy attained during the New Deal and the contemporary mythology that the U.S., beginning during World War II, wields unprecedented world power. Given this historical backdrop, Wolin introduces three new concepts to help analyze what we have lost as a nation. His master idea is "inverted totalitarianism," which is reinforced by two subordinate notions that accompany and promote it -"managed democracy" and "Superpower," the latter always capitalized and used without a direct article. Until the reader gets used to this particular literary tic, the term Superpower can be confusing. The author uses it as if it were an independent agent, comparable to Superman or Spiderman, and one that is inherently incompatible with constitutional government and democracy. Wolin writes, "Our thesis is this: it is possible for a form of totalitarianism, different from the classical one, to evolve from a putatively 'strong democracy' instead of a 'failed' one." His understanding of democracy is classical but also populist, anti-elitist and only slightly represented in the Constitution of the United States. "Democracy," he writes, "is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs." It depends on the existence of a demos -- "a politically engaged and empowered citizenry, one that voted, deliberated, and occupied all branches of public office." Wolin argues that to the extent the United States on occasion came close to genuine democracy, it was

because its citizens struggled against and momentarily defeated the elitism that was written into the Constitution. "No working man or ordinary farmer or shopkeeper," Wolin points out, "helped to write the Constitution." He argues, "The American political system was not born a democracy, but born with a bias against democracy. It was constructed by those who were either skeptical about democracy or hostile to it. Democratic advance proved to be slow, uphill, forever incomplete. The republic existed for threequarters of a century before formal slavery was ended; another hundred years before black Americans were assured of their voting rights. Only in the twentieth century were women guaranteed the vote and trade unions the right to bargain collectively. In none of these instances has victory been complete: women still lack full equality, racism persists, and the destruction of the remnants of trade unions remains a goal of corporate strategies. Far from being innate, democracy in America has gone against the grain, against the very forms by which the political and economic power of the country has been and continues to be ordered." Wolin can easily control his enthusiasm for James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, and he sees the New Deal as perhaps the only period of American history in which rule by a true demos prevailed. To reduce a complex argument to its bare bones, since the Depression, the twin forces of managed democracy and Superpower have opened the way for something new under the sun: "inverted totalitarianism," a form every bit as totalistic as the classical version but one based on internalized co-optation, the appearance of freedom, political disengagement rather than mass mobilization, and relying more on "private media" than on public agencies to disseminate propaganda that reinforces the official version of events. It is inverted because it does not require the use of coercion, police power and a messianic ideology as in the Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist versions (although note that the United States has the highest percentage of its citizens in prison -- 751 per 100,000 people -- of any nation on Earth). According to Wolin, inverted totalitarianism has "emerged imperceptibly, unpremeditatedly, and in seeming unbroken continuity with the nation's political traditions."

The genius of our inverted totalitarian system "lies in wielding total power without appearing to, without establishing concentration camps, or enforcing ideological uniformity, or forcibly suppressing dissident elements so long as they remain ineffectual. A demotion in the status and stature of the 'sovereign people' to patient subjects is symptomatic of systemic change, from democracy as a method of 'popularizing' power to democracy as a brand name for a product marketable at home and marketable abroad. The new system, inverted totalitarianism, is one that professes the opposite of what, in fact, it is. The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed." Among the factors that have promoted inverted totalitarianism are the practice and psychology of advertising and the rule of "market forces" in many other contexts than markets, continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the penetration of mass media communication and propaganda into every household in the country, and the total co-optation of the universities. Among the commonplace fables of our society are hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds, and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility, whose adepts are prone to fantasies because the vast majority have imagination but little scientific knowledge. Masters of this world are masters of images and their manipulation. Wolin reminds us that the image of Adolf Hitler flying to Nuremberg in 1934 that opens Leni Riefenstahl's classic film "Triumph of the Will" was repeated on May 1, 2003, with President George Bush's apparent landing of a Navy warplane on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to proclaim "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. On inverted totalitarianism's "selfpacifying" university campuses compared with the usual intellectual turmoil surrounding independent centers of learning, Wolin writes, "Through a combination of governmental contracts, corporate and foundation funds, joint projects involving university and corporate researchers, and wealthy individual donors, universities (especially so-called

research universities), intellectuals, scholars, and researchers have been seamlessly integrated into the system. No books burned, no refugee Einsteins. For the first time in the history of American higher education top professors are made wealthy by the system, commanding salaries and perks that a budding CEO might envy." The main social sectors promoting and reinforcing this modern Shangri-La are corporate power, which is in charge of managed democracy, and the militaryindustrial complex, which is in charge of Superpower. The main objectives of managed democracy are to increase the profits of large corporations, dismantle the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services, public housing and so forth), and roll back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. Its primary tool is privatization. Managed democracy aims at the "selective abdication of governmental responsibility for the well-being of the citizenry" under cover of improving "efficiency" and cost-cutting. Wolin argues, "The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral, even dominant partner with the state. It marks the transformation of American politics and its political culture from a system in which democratic practices and values were, if not defining, at least major contributing elements, to one where the remaining democratic elements of the state and its populist programs are being systematically dismantled." This campaign has largely succeeded. "Democracy represented a challenge to the status quo, today it has become adjusted to the status quo." One other subordinate task of managed democracy is to keep the citizenry preoccupied with peripheral and/or private conditions of human life so that they fail to focus on the widespread corruption and betrayal of the public trust. In Wolin's words, "The point about disputes on such topics as the value of sexual abstinence, the role of religious charities in statefunded activities, the question of gay marriage, and the like, is that they are not framed to be resolved. Their political function is to divide the citizenry while obscuring class differences and diverting the voters' attention from the social and

economic concerns of the general populace." Prominent examples of the elite use of such incidents to divide and inflame the public are the Terri Schiavo case of 2005, in which a brain-dead woman was kept artificially alive, and the 2008 case of women and children living in a polygamous commune in Texas who were allegedly sexually mistreated. Another elite tactic of managed democracy is to bore the electorate to such an extent that it gradually fails to pay any attention to politics. Wolin perceives, "One method of assuring control is to make electioneering continuous, year-round, saturated with party propaganda, punctuated with the wisdom of kept pundits, bringing a result boring rather than energizing, the kind of civic lassitude on which managed democracy thrives." The classic example is certainly the nominating contests of the two main American political parties during 2007 and 2008, but the dynastic "competition" between the Bush and Clinton families from 1988 to 2008 is equally relevant. It should be noted that between a half and two-thirds of qualified voters have recently failed to vote, thus making the management of the active electorate far easier. Wolin comments, "Every apathetic citizen is a silent enlistee in the cause of inverted totalitarianism." It remains to be seen whether an Obama candidacy can reawaken these apathetic voters, but I suspect that Wolin would predict a barrage of corporate media character assassination that would end this possibility. Managed democracy is a powerful solvent for any vestiges of democracy left in the American political system, but its powers are weak in comparison with those of Superpower. Superpower is the sponsor, defender and manager of American imperialism and militarism, aspects of American government that have always been dominated by elites, enveloped in executive-branch secrecy, and allegedly beyond the ken of ordinary citizens to understand or oversee. Superpower is preoccupied with weapons of mass destruction, clandestine manipulation of foreign policy (sometimes domestic policy, too), military operations, and the fantastic sums of money demanded from the public by the military-industrial complex. (The U.S. military spends more than all other militaries on Earth combined. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion;

the next closest national military budget is China's at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.) Foreign military operations literally force democracy to change its nature: "In order to cope with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation," according to Wolin, "democracy will alter its character, not only by assuming new behaviors abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population) but also by operating on revised, powerexpansive assumptions at home. It will, more often than not, try to manipulate the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand greater powers and broader discretion in their use ('state secrets'), a tighter control over society's resources, more summary methods of justice, and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamor for socioeconomic reforms." Imperialism and democracy are, in Wolin's terms, literally incompatible, and the ever greater resources devoted to imperialism mean that democracy will inevitably wither and die. He writes, "Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire." From the time of the United States' founding, its citizens have had a long history of being complicit in the country's imperial ventures, including its transcontinental expansion at the expense of native Americans, Mexicans and Spanish imperialists. Theodore Roosevelt often commented that Americans were deeply opposed to imperialism because of their successful escape from the British empire but that "expansionism" was in their blood. Over the years, American political analysis has carefully tried to separate the military from imperialism, even though militarism is imperialism's inescapable accompaniment. The military creates the empire in the first place and is indispensable to its defense, policing and expansion. Wolin observes, "That the patriotic citizen unswervingly supports the

military and its huge budgets means that conservatives have succeeded in persuading the public that the military is distinct from the government. Thus the most substantial element of state power is removed from public debate." It has taken a long time, but under George W. Bush's administration the United States has finally achieved an official ideology of imperial expansion comparable to those of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianisms. In accordance with the National Security Strategy of the United States (allegedly drafted by Condoleezza Rice and proclaimed on Sept. 9, 2002), the United States is now committed to what it calls "preemptive war." Wolin explains: "Preemptive war entails the projection of power abroad, usually against a far weaker country, comparable say, to the Nazi invasion of Belgium and Holland in 1940. It declares that the United States is justified in striking at another country because of a perceived threat that U.S. power will be weakened, severely damaged, unless it reacts to eliminate the danger before it materializes. Preemptive war is Lebensraum [Hitler's claim that his

imperialism was justified by Germany's need for "living room"] for the age of terrorism." This was, of course, the official excuse for the American aggression against Iraq that began in 2003. Many analysts, myself included, would conclude that Wolin has made a close to airtight case that the American republic's days are numbered, but Wolin himself does not agree. Toward the end of his study he produces a wish list of things that should be done to ward off the disaster of inverted totalitarianism: "rolling back the empire, rolling back the practices of managed democracy; returning to the idea and practices of international cooperation rather than the dogmas of globalization and preemptive strikes; restoring and strengthening environmental protections; reinvigorating populist politics; undoing the damage to our system of individual rights; restoring the institutions of an independent judiciary, separation of powers, and checks and balances; reinstating the integrity of the independent regulatory agencies and of scientific advisory processes; reviving representative systems responsive to popular needs for

health care, education, guaranteed pensions, and an honorable minimum wage; restoring governmental regulatory authority over the economy; and rolling back the distortions of a tax code that toadies to the wealthy and corporate power." Unfortunately, this is more a guide to what has gone wrong than a statement of how to fix it, particularly since Wolin believes that our political system is "shot through with corruption and awash in contributions primarily from wealthy and corporate donors." It is extremely unlikely that our party apparatus will work to bring the military-industrial complex and the 16 secret intelligence agencies under democratic control. Nonetheless, once the United States has followed the classical totalitarianisms into the dustbin of history, Wolin's analysis will stand as one of the best discourses on where we went wrong.

What is Conservatism? A Definition of Right-Wing Conservative Politics

Posted on September 7, 2010 by profgiles http://philosophyotb.com/w/?p=152
This paper is a serious attempt to describe the basic ideology of Conservatism. I wish to take the discussion of Conservatism out of the realm of talking head polemic political discussion and avoid caricature and demagoguery. Conservatism is in no way a monolithic entity, and attempting to define and understand it is by no means easy. Conservatism manifests itself in multiple subject areasfor example, fiscal conservatism, religious conservatism, and social conservatism. However, across the different subjects in which conservative ideologies manifest, we can identify common paradigms. The first step in understanding Conservatism is to identify the groups involved. I identify two types of Conservatism differentiated primarily by social statusI will refer to them as the Vested Conservatives and the Resentful Conservatives and discuss them in turn. Because they share similar goals, they both fall under the label Conservative; however, they have dramatically different beliefs that stem from significantly different self-identities. Vested Conservatives The Vested Conservatives are people who have a high enough economic and social status that they feel they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. For them, the word Conservative has its literal meaningthese people attempt to conserve the current socioeconomic situation because it benefits them. Their social and political identity is heavily vested in a vision of the United States as a nation that defends the property rights of the wealthy. Their agenda is straightforward and easy to understand: a return to an America that once was, the laissez-faire America that existed before the Great Society and perhaps even before the New Deal. They are the pro-business Conservatives, often calling themselves fiscal conservatives. They demand little or no regulation on business, low taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and a government that works for the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The VCs are operating in their self-interest and use their money and influence to influence government. That is their Constitutional right. There is nothing wrong in voting ones self-interest; that is the heart of democracy. Nor can we blame any VCs for otherwise being politically active to defend and expand their interests. Yes, the rich have the right to express their self-interest politically and have their voices heard, but the rest of us should understand their actions and political positions for what they are. Resentful Conservatives The Resentful Conservatives are people, almost exclusively white and predominantly lower class and religious, who engage in oppositional politics. By this I mean a politics that is defined by conflict with a perceived enemy. Their social and political identity lies in a vision of the United States as a nation superior to all others that must be defended against all comers. Their resentment comes from their political and social agenda of maintaining a certain purity in American society. Their agenda is a return to an America that never really was, a country where everything was great because white Christian Americans ruled unchallenged and unhindered. The RCs believe that something has been lost in the United States, and the fault lies with liberals, especially minorities and foreigners. It is a way we never were, the pre-60s United States of Father Knows Best, John Wayne, and Dragneta world where good and evil were clearly delineated, and minorities and women knew their placeand if they didnt were sharply reminded. The RC are operating in what they believe is their self-interest but in reality is driven by their oppositional politics. They believe that they and only people like them are the true Americans. They vote against those whom they see as siding with their enemies and support the enemies of their enemies. Like the VCs, the RCs have the right to express their self-interest politically and have their voices heard, but as with the VCs, the rest of us should understand their actions and political positions for what they are. The Conservative Alliance Conservatism as a whole is a union of the VCs and RCs. The VCs have the money and the RCs have the numbers, and together they can exert political influence. Given the state of campaign finance laws in the United States, money is the tail that wags the electoral dog. Central to the success of the VC agenda is to convince a large enough segment of the population to vote for candidates who will enact it. The enormous amounts of money that go to political campaigns and lobbying and the Corporate control of the media are part of a deliberate effort to advance the interests and well-being of the wealthy and powerful, the VCs. It is obvious why the wealthy want to retain a status quo that benefits them, but it takes a certain subterfuge for the VCs to convince the RCs to defend a status quo that is inherently against the interests of the RCs. Why this subterfuge can work and how it is practiced needs to be explored in turn. Why it works is because the VCs can exploit the fundamental psychology of the RCs. The RC Dualism Conservatism has long been decried as mean-spirited. The recent tea party phenomenon is only the latest manifestation of a tradition of resentful anger in Conservatism that is the natural expression of their Us-versus-Them dualism. The Red Scare of the 1920s, Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, Nixons Southern Strategy, the Militia movement, the Christian Coalition, Timothy McVeigh, and the tea party movement are all manifestations of a constant in American politics. The anger and resentment by the RC fringe toward anyone who isnt like them is the fuel for all of these movements. Although the

concrete manifestations are slightly different, the core remains the same: a fear of and abiding dislike for anyone who does not fit the Proper American paradigm of a white Conservative Christian. An RC is a sociopolitical dualist. The RC sees the world in simplistic terms everything is either correct or incorrect. The RC believes they are reflecting a deep moral and metaphysical reality in their judgmentsthey believe that they are speaking truth and that all disagreement is false belief reflective of deep moral and metaphysical wrongness. Acknowledging any nuances or ambiguities is a sign of weakness to the RC. The more fervent the Conservative, the narrower becomes the acceptable sphere of correctness. Conservatism becomes the only possible way of viewing the world (any other paradigm is wrong) and, thus, must be defended. Facts or ideas contrary to Conservative ones must necessarily be morally and metaphysically wrong. This coalesces with their foundational dualism making it easy to uncritically dismiss all contrary facts and ideas. What others would call blindness or closedmindedness, Conservatives see as both wise and virtuous. This attitude easily becomes a reductionist Us-versus-Them view of the world and everyone in it. Without a Them, there is nothing against which to define the rightness of the Us. To the Conservative, members of Group Them are wrong, immoral, ignorant, and proof that Group Us is right. Whats more, it means that Group Uss struggles against all the Group Thems is necessary as The struggle of good versus evil. Making and keeping enemies is not only noble but essential. Such a militantly dualistic paradigm eventually becomes paranoia the conviction that Them hates Us as much as Us hates Them and Them is coming to get Us. This is Conservatism, and this is their world. Resentful Conservatism is the dread fear that somewhere, somehow, someone else (Them) is getting a fair shot and the anger and envy that arises from that fear. Frenzied visions of imagined threats from immigrants, welfare queens, gay marriage, affirmative action, labor unions, the fictitious liberal media, liberal politicians, and government agents stoke RC fears. Xenophobia, racism, sexism, and

homophobia permeate right-wing American thinking. Their propensity for such knee-jerk reactionism is easily exploited by the VCs. So much of the anger from the RCs comes when they are asked to contribute their fair share to society or when they see others doing it. Concepts of collectivism or the common good are anathema to the RCs. The myth of American Rugged Individualism results in the functional belief that there is no social network and every person is on his or her own. Overheard at more than a few tea party rallies is the refrain I dont want to pay for someone elses health care. The boogeyman of socialism is, in essence, no more than the fear that they might be asked to contribute to and benefit from the common good. When the RCs are asked to change at all, to even reflect upon their obligations to others, they freak out and lash out. In response to Earth Hour, when people in 84 countries voluntarily turn out their lights for an hour a year, one RC posted online a common RC reaction: I will have ALL my lights ON and running my cars and boat in the driveway!! You green weinees (sic) are a bunch of losers! Yes, to the RC, caring about people or the environment is a sign of weakness. Acceptance of diversity is similarly seen as weakness. Affirmative action is wrong, acceptance of gays and lesbians is wrong, liberal arts curriculum is wrong, as is academic freedom. This extends even to outside the United States. RC foreign policy is simpledistrust, if not hatred, for everyone who is different. Any softening of stances against foreign regimes is interpreted as weakness. In short, for the RC dualists, being a jerk is being a Proper American; anything less is socialism and anti-American. The flip side of RC anger is when they see the Thems allowed a share in Americas prosperity. RCs have a litany of irrational hatreds toward Thems who dont keep their place. The most vivid and sick set of examples of this are the multitude of reactionary racist incidents against African-Americans who dare to claim their civil rights. Hostility toward women asserting themselves and the panicstricken opposition to gay marriage are other examples. Right now, RCs cant sleep at night over the idea that more people might get health care. The VCs adroitly exploit these RC hatreds stoking the fears that if minorities, women,

immigrants, etc. are allowed to have their rights it will erode the rights of the RCs. That chestnut is easily swallowed by the RCs. Ideology (i.e., Lies) The VCs exploit the RC dualistic thinking through fear and hate mongering. By flooding the minds of RCs with fears, the VCs can more easily convince them to be against laws and regulations that would favor the people over corporations. The dynamic of political propaganda used to convince citizens to vote against their selfinterest has been widely discussed, perhaps most famously by Thomas Frank in his book Whats the Matter with Kansas? The VCs cloak their plans in highsounding ideology and talk of the common good, but their plans are nothing but base self-interest. The myth of American Rugged Individualism is the centerpiece of the ideological propaganda. It feeds the RC resentment while serving VC interests. Myths are sold under the individualist rubric packaged in Republican Party talking points that are eagerly parroted by the Corporate Media. The self-interested VCs oppose all regulation of business and wealth for purely self-interested reasons, but they publicly claim it is for the common good. Work and product safety laws, environmental laws, etc., hurt their bottom line and, thus, would hurt common people. The VCs want the people to believe that requiring big banks and corporations to be honest somehow hurts them in small town America. They push the delusion that raising taxes on rich people to help poor people is a threat to a mythical American way of life. They claim to be motivated by the common good, but if they were truly interested in the common good, they would willingly participate in programs that protect people. One of the primary causes of the VCs are tax reductions (for them, not you). The ideological subterfuge on taxes is most evident in the VC concoction known as the flat tax. Again, they clothe this in common-good languageto protect us all from the burden of complicated tax forms. In truth, the flat tax is nothing but a tax cut for the VCslowering their tax rate from, for example, 35% to 15%. Ask them if they would accept a flat tax at existing tax

rates and suddenly they arent interested in their feigned concern for burdensome forms. The examples are seemingly endless, from taxes to regulation to foreign wars. In all of them, the VCs engage in ideological propaganda that exploits RC fears. This propaganda is a constant drumbeat in American society and influences many, while also creating a demagogic buttress for existing resentments and fears. The effective VC propaganda disseminated by the Corporate Media has created more than a few RC monsters. Demagoguery Hatred and Conservatism are cousins, if not incestuously inextricable. The RCs are prone to feeling it, and the VCs are there to make sure they do. What results is an entrenched demagoguery of Conservatism whose dualism becomes impervious to reason and reality. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions have explored how the ideology of Conservatives can become so entrenched that even when they are confronted with irrefutable truth they will not believe it. Nyhan and Reifler found this to be the case when

Conservatives still believed that Iraq had WMDs for years after none were found. Recent polls have found that many Conservatives still think President Obama is a Muslim born in another country despite all evidence to the contrary. RCs will still use the now pass epithet communist or socialist, though when asked they cannot define the words, only give you more epithets. The VCs fan the flames by defining socialism as anything less than a pure laissez-faire oligarchy. Any and all attempts at sensible regulation of industry are turned into an antiAmerican attack. Once the hyperbole gets going, it is easy to reach obscene excess. It used to be an old Conservative saying that we had to work until Tax Day, April 15, to earn enough to pay our taxes. That complaint isnt extreme enough anymore. One RC wrote online that It will take you till September 11 in any given year to pay your taxes before you get to keep any money. This is a claim that it takes 254 work days of the 365 days a year to pay taxes. This assumes a tax rate of 70%, well beyond even the most hyperbolic estimates of taxation. The demagoguery extends everywhere the RC mind is no longer engaged in reason, only in counter attack to anything

perceived as liberal. Conservatives widely deny climate change as just another liberal gimmick or lies designed to scare people into accepting socialism. Any open discussion about the merits of military spending or operations is antiAmerican. The list goes on and on. Through it all, the VCs reside in a certain above-it-all smugness. Conclusion This paper doesnt pretend to deal with all aspects of Conservatism but instead should be seen as a start on trying to understand the movement, its causes, motivations, and behaviors. What emerges through this analysis is that Conservatism is an ideological dualism divided across two groups: Vested Conservatives and Resentful Conservatives. These two groups combine to create and sustain an atmosphere of political hostility in which enemies are created and demagogues poison the political atmosphere, resulting in a fierce headwind against any change to the status quo in the United States. It pays to know your enemy; and even if you dont consider Conservatives your enemy, they surely consider you their enemy.

'Instant churches' convert public schools to worship spaces

Jul 26, 2011 By Cathy Lynn Grossman and Natalie DiBlasio http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-07/instant-churches-convert-public-schools-worship-spaces
(RNS) Praise the Lord and pass the crates with the prefab pulpit and the portable baptistery inside. The Forest Hills Community Church is moving into P.S. 144 -- sort of. Every Sunday morning, the elementary school in Queens, like dozens more schools in New York City and thousands more nationwide, is transformed into a house of worship for a few hours. There's no tally of how many churches, synagogues and mosques convert public school spaces into prayer places. But what's clear is that there has been a steady rise in numbers as congregations find schools to be available, affordable and accessible to families they want to reach. Critics, including some courts, are concerned that these arrangements are an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. They say these bargain permits effectively subsidize religious congregations that would have to pay steeply higher prices on the open market. They also note that the practice appears to favor Christian groups, which worship on Sundays -- when school spaces are most often available. Caught in the middle: congregations such as Forest Hills, which spent $3,000 for a permit to use P.S. 144 from February through June, and just renewed for July and August. For September and beyond, however, nothing is certain. The city's Department of Education, which has been trying for a decade to oust the congregations from its schools and end the weekend worship practice, won the latest legal round in June. As the case winds its way through more appeals, an injunction allows about 60 congregations to remain in place and the permit process to continue. So Forest Hills' evangelical founder and pastor, Jeremy Sweeten, still rises early each Sunday, hitches up a 20-foot trailer and tows it to the school. The trailer, packed by PortableChurch.com, has every bit of paraphernalia needed to create a sanctuary and children's Bible classes. By 10 a.m., the Assemblies of God congregation of about 60 adults is raising their voices in song and prayer. Then about 1 p.m., as swiftly as they came, they're gone, with every offering basket stashed and every Bible boxed away. It's a familiar scene in many communities across the nation: -- A USA Today look at the five largest and five fastest-growing school districts in the continental U.S. found that all 10 had granted permits for religious congregations to hold weekend worship. New York City, the largest, is typical: Christian churches are the primary clients because Muslims and Jews worship on Fridays and Saturdays, when school spaces usually are used for student activities. -- The Acts 29 Network, a Seattle-based evangelical coalition that has started 350 churches across the nation in the past five years, estimates about 16 percent of these meet in school spaces. "We don't have a hidden agenda. Our heart is to serve the community just like schools serve the community. ... They're designed for large groups, and they've got parking," says Scott Thomas, Acts 29 president. -- A 2007 national survey of newly established Protestant churches found that 12 percent met in schools, according to LifeWay, a Nashville, Tenn.-based Christian research agency. LifeWay Director Ed Stetzer said the major draw is that startup congregations and expanding multisite churches can offer worship close to families' homes for a fraction of the cost of creating their own building. However, Stetzer, who also leads churchplanting efforts, said he sees the constitutional dangers. Stetzer said he cautions school districts that they will have no control over the religious preaching and teaching. "So if a Wiccan coven (wanted a use permit), you would have to be as neutral as you would with an evangelical church. Even Westboro (the Topeka, Kan., congregation that pickets funerals with signs denouncing gays) could move in and

you would have no way to stop them," Stetzer said. In the New York City case, the city school board's legal briefs argue the practice "improperly advances religion" by, in effect, subsidizing the churches with facilities below market rate. It also shows "favoritism" to Christian churches as religions that don't worship on Sundays are generally shut out.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. In his June ruling, Judge Pierre Leval wrote that the Bronx Household of Faith, ensconced since 2002 in P.S. 15, "has made the school the place for the performance of its rites, and might well appear to have established itself there. The place has, at least for a time, become the church." The Bronx church is seeking a rehearing. Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents

the church, expects the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the ruling. "Religious groups, including churches, shouldn't be discriminated against simply because they want to rent a public building just like other groups can," Lorence said.

Jihad: Its True Meaning and Purpose

by Shazia Mirza http://www.mediamonitors.net/shaziamirza2.html
Nowadays so much is happening in our country. After 11th September many people are taking the term of Jihad in a very wrong way. Jihad in Islamic tradition is that of an internal spiritual struggle, focused on individual purification and the promotion of social justice and human rights. In some extreme sectors, this concept has been twisted to justify politically motivated acts of violence. Jihad is one of the most misunderstood and abused aspects of Islam. Some extremist Muslims exploit the concept of Jihad for their own political objectives. Many non-Muslims misinterpret it to discredit Islam and Muslims. Every religion goes through tough time b/c of its extremist followers. Islam is not a violent religion some of its followers are doing violent acts. What is Jihad? The word Jihad does not mean "Holy War". Jihad means effort or endeavors against mans own self. Jihad is to work hard to do right things. Islam ask his followers to recognize their duty towards themselves, and that duty is Jihad, striving for good against evil, beginning with the conquest of a mans own lusts. His training for Jihad is not only military training; it is the whole structure of Islamic discipline. Without the wider human aim there can be no Jihad. In the religious sense, it probably applies to the whole effort of the Muslim to assert and establish the sovereignty of God in mens mind, by performing his religious duty as laid down in the Quran, an effort, which should last through all his life. It should govern every action of his life, or he is no true Muslim. This duty may be summarized as the fight for good against evil in every connection and in every field, beginning with a mans own heart and mind. Our Holy prophet (peace be upon him) said: "The greatest Jihad is that against a mans own lust;" Which means that the best way of recommending the belief in Allahs universal sovereignty and extending the new realm of peace and brotherhood is by the example of righteous conduct. The term Al-Jihad-ul-Akbar. "The greatest Jihad," is also applied by the Holy prophet (peace be upon him) to the effort of the student to become learned and the effort of the learned to spread knowledge. "The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr." Jihad means serious and sincere struggle on the personal as well as on the social level. It is a struggle to do well and to remove injustice, oppression and evil from the society. This struggle should be spiritual as well as social, economic and political. In the Quran this word is used in its different forms 33 times. It often comes with other Quranic concepts such as faith, repentance, righteous deeds and migration. It is therefore incorrect to limit the meaning of the term to warfare of the fanatical religious kind Jihad is Not Terrorism: It is to be emphasized that terrorism against the innocent civilians, whether through aggression or suicidal means, is under no circumstances permissible in Islam. Terrorism is not Jihad, it is Fasad (mischief). It is against the teaching of Islam. Allah said: "When it is said to them: Make not mischief on the earth, they say why, we only want to correct things, Indeed they are the mischief doers, but they realize (it) not." (Al Baqarah 2:11-12) In olden days when the Muslim universities were at the height of their power and influence, the learned in the sacred Law judged independently, distinguished clearly between Jihad warfare and wars of mere ambition or selfinterest. It is unanimously and invariably condemned the latter as totally unsanctioned by the shariah. Wars which fall under the heading of Jihad can be fought only in self-defense, for the protection of the weak who are oppressed, and the redress of the wrong. Non combatants must not be harmed, priest and religious institutions have to be respected, crops must not be curt down. "Destroy not their means of subsistence." That was the prophets law against his enemies. The prophet in his warfare several times forgave his enemies, with wonderful results. Islam is a Religion of Peace and Tolerance: Tolerance is a quality, which one associates with a high degree of human culture. One of the frequent charges brought against Islam, historically and as a religion by western world is that it is intolerant. For the Muslims, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three forms of one religion, which in its original purity was the religion of Abraham. The laws of Allah are universal and the intolerance of Muslims for others beliefs are evidence that they themselves have, at the moment, forgotten the vision of the Majesty and mercy of Allah which the Quran presents to them. But people will object that Muslims today are very intolerant people, and they will call every body who do not agree with them a Kafir, an infidel and many. Muslims seek to justify such abuse by quoting the words of Quran. The Kafir in the first place, is not the follower of any

religion. They are the opponent of Allahs benevolent will and purpose for mankind therefore the disbelieves in the truth of all religions, the disbelieves in all scriptures as of divine revelation, the disbelieves to the point of active opposition in all the prophets whom the Muslims are bidden to regard, without distinction, as messengers of Allah. The Quran repeatedly claims to bet the confirmation of the truth of all religions. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was never aggressive against any one or class of men; he never penalized any one, or made war on any people on the ground of belief, but only on the ground of conduct. Many centuries the Muslims ruled all over the world. Islamic societies

were known for their tolerance, generosity and humanity. So if Mr., Pat Robertson is quoting verses from the Quran, he took it in a very different context. Allah says very clearly: Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not do aggression, for Allah loves not the aggressors. (Al Baqarah 2:190) All Muslims are Condemning the Terrorism: There is no command to murder and massacre. There is not one word in the Holy Quran to justify murder or massacre under any circumstances whatsoever. Therefore all of the Muslim community here in United States and all the over the

world are and should condemned the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. In our modern society where we are living in global village, where non-Muslims and Muslims are living together, it is our duty to better understanding among ourselves, work for peace and justice for all people. We should cooperate with each other in matters of goodness and virtue in order to stop all terrorism, aggression and violation against the innocent people. This is our Jihad today.

Us vs. Them: On The Meaning Of Fascism

By Roger Tucker 13 January, 2010 Countercurrents.org http://www.countercurrents.org/tucker130110.htm
"We have met the enemy and they are us." Pogo Pretty much everyone nowadays rejects fascism, but nobody seems to know quite what it is. The words "fascist" and "fascism" are frequently flung about, but they seem to be applied to all sorts of different and unrelated people and things. The dictionaries and Wikipedia are no help because they all assume that the word refers to a political phenomenon that arose in Europe in the 20th Century. That is indeed when the word "fascism" was coined (in the form of "fascismo," an Italian word for the ideology of Benito Mussolini's political party). Here's an excellent contemporary example: "The definition of fascism has some academic variance, but is essentially collusion among corporatocracy, authoritarian government, and controlled media and education. This leadership is only possible with a nationalistic public accepting policies of war, empire, and limited civil and political rights." (1) However, it is rather easy to demonstrate that fascism, in terms of usage (what people mean when they employ the term) dates back to the dawn of history. In order to do that we have to look at what goes into the process of properly defining a word. There are two things that need to be taken into consideration; the historical, linguistic roots (the etymology of the word) and contemporary usage. The Oxford English Dictionary is usually helpful with the former but not in this case, as it too (following the OED rule that looks at the first instance in print) refers only to the recent manifestations in Italy and Germany. In order to determine usage we need to pay close attention to how and when people nowadays commonly employ the terms "fascist" and "fascism." The Etymology The word "fascism" has as its root the Latin term "fascis." Here Wikipedia is helpful: "[Fasces:] from the Latin word fascis, meaning "bundle," symbolize summary power and jurisdiction...The traditional Roman fasces consisted of a bundle of white birch rods, tied together with a red leather ribbon into a cylinder, and often including a bronze axe (or sometimes two) amongst the rods, with the blade(s) on the side, projecting from the bundle. It was used as a symbol of the Roman Republic in many circumstances, including being carried in processions, much the way a flag might be carried today...Believed to date from Etruscan times, the symbolism of the fasces at one level suggested strength through unity. The bundle of rods bound together symbolizes the strength which a single rod lacks. The axe symbolized the state's power and authority." Another word with the same root is "fascia," which Wikipedia defines as follows: "(from latin: a band) is the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system that permeates the human body...It is responsible for maintaining structural integrity..." Again there is a sense of the binding factor, suggestive of the social glue or cultural bond that defines and holds a community together and gives it strength and endurance. The Etruscan origin is probably correct and some have theorized that the original symbol depicted a bound sheaf of wheat. Whether factual or not, this hypothesis is very suggestive and goes to the heart of the matter. The bound sheaf of wheat, or bundle of sticks tied together, are clearly symbolic of the basic family, clan or tribal group that lives and works the land together cooperatively. That is what most of the names of indigenous tribes or peoples all over the world mean in their own language, "us," "the people," bound together by blood, language and place. In its primary and positive sense the fasces symbolizes how we are bound to the earth and how, by working harmoniously with it, we sustain ourselves. It evokes primal feelings of oneness with nature and with one another and is suggestive of nurturing and fertility. It invokes the feminine, or mother principle, and it is no wonder that the early agricultural communities worshipped an earth goddess. Its not so benign meaning emerges with the addition of the axe blades, symbolizing the masculine principles of power, authority and the monopoly of force wielded by those who sit atop the heirarchy that naturally develops in human groups. In that sense, the original holders of the fasces were the mother and father of the primitve family and through the evolution of culture has become invested at the highest level in the leaders of nation-states and those who represent them. In the simplest and most basic sense we are talking about group ego. The term "ego" is generally understood as the sense of self, all of the disparate physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual elements that we think of as an "I," an ongoing, solid and independent actor. All wisdom traditions point out the danger of solidifying this concept. They teach us that we are inextricably connected, existing only in relation to one another and to everything else. Whether perceived as pacific and cooperative or aggressive and warlike, all group identities court the same danger, the reification of the concept of "Us." Fascism is neither masculine nor feminine, neither rightist or leftist, but a combination of both. Nor does it have anything to do with a particular political or economic setup. Let's take a look at what the Italian fascisti, the ones who coined the term, had in mind. The following is in Wikipedia's translation of the Fascist Manifesto: The Manifesto (published in "Il Popolo d'Italia" on June 6, 1919) is divided into four sections, describing Fascist objectives in political, social, military and financial fields. Politically, the Manifesto calls for: Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women; Proportional representation on a regional basis; Voting for women (which was opposed by most other European nations); Representation at government level of newly created National Councils by economic sector; The abolition of the Italian Senate (at the time, the Senate, as the upper house of

parliament, was by process elected by the wealthier citizens, but were in reality direct appointments by the King. It has been described as a sort of extended council of the Crown); The formation of a National Council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made of professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a General Commission with ministerial powers (this concept was rooted in corporatist ideology and derived in part from Catholic social doctrine). In labour and social policy, the Manifesto calls for: The quick enactment of a law of the State that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers; A minimum wage; The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions; To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants; Reorganisation of the railways and the transport sector; Revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance; Reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55. In military affairs, the Manifesto advocates: Creation of a short-service national militia with specifically defensive responsibilities; Armaments factories are to be nationalised; A peaceful but competitive foreign policy. In finance, the Manifesto advocates: A strong progressive tax on capital (envisaging a partial expropriation of concentrated wealth); The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an

enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor; Revision of all contracts for military provisions; The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein. The Manifesto thus combined elements of contemporary democratic and progressive thought (franchise reform, labour reform, limited nationalisation, taxes on wealth and war profits) with corporatist emphasis on class collaboration (the idea of social classes existing side by side and collaborating for the sake of national interests; the opposite of the Marxist notion of class struggle). This sounds remarkably like a program that most liberals and progressives could salute, doesn't it? Of course, fascismo changed markedly after Mussolini assumed control and turned it into a rightwing dictatorship, but what we're concerned with here is the evolution of the term fascism from its linguistic origins in pre-Roman Italy to the present. However, we must guard against the notion that there is anything particularly Italian (or German for that matter) about fascism. The symbolism of the fasces is widely used and displayed in government sponsored designs in the U.S., France and a number of other Western democracies. Similar symbols are native to most cultures; it is well night universal. In order for fascism to come to dominate an identity group, it must have a compelling narrative. Whether group identity is based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, class, caste, gender or whatever, there is sure to be a story that glorifies the "tribe" and sets it above all others. Typically, it reaches far back into history and has elements both of exaltation and humiliation, triumph over its adversaries and victimhood. And it will come replete with slogans and symbols, and nowadays, more than likely, bumper stickers. To sum up, the linguistic root of the term fascism and its visual representation clearly refer to identification with a particular group of people, originally based on family, clan and tribe, including place and language, evolving eventually into what we would nowadays call nationalism, or internationalism when it is based on a politico-economic ideology like

capitalism or communism. As will be discussed further, the essential principle applies to any kind of identity politics that distinguishes between "Us" and a "Them" and asserts "Our" interests as primary. At what point, then, does this basic pattern, which is neither good nor bad in itself, become malevolent and get properly labeled as "fascist"? One could say that it turns ugly when sports fans, for example, start physically assaulting one another rather than just rooting for the home team. At the scale of international relations, when nationalism becomes aggressive and predatory, then we can clearly identify the pattern as fascistic. The simplest manifestation is that of the schoolyard bully, usually consisting of a leader and his loyal followers. Writ large, it supplies the tacit or explicit rationale for all wars. It must be stressed that there is nothing inherently wrong with group identification. On the contrary, without it we would be alienated and lost. The turning point is when a healthy sense of group pride turns into belligerent arrogance and racism; when patriotism becomes an excuse for hating foreigners, when we start dehumanizing and vilifying others, when we go along with a party line that gives us the right to oppress and dispossess outsiders. Usage Many observers have remarked that people use the words "fascist" or "fascism" in a context that has only the vaguest reference, if any, to historical events that occurred in the previous century. However, there is a remarkable consistency to the usage that is commonly overlooked. First of all, it is always negative, something to be rejected and actively opposed. Second, it is always used to refer to something characteristic of a particular group of people unlike us, people with whom "we" don't identify, all of whom have in common this "fascistic" quality. And it always contains some explicit or implicit accusation of injustice, abuse of power and arbitrary use of force. At this point it should be becoming clear that fascism is a word that may have been coined in the context of 20th century European politics, but which has been adopted in popular speech to refer to something far more basic, universal and timeless, for which no handier term existed. I suspect that the peculiar potency of the word derives from the enormously successful wartime propaganda of the

Allies that strove to identify "our enemies" du jour with evil incarnate, and kept alive through a myriad of films, books and the approved version of history taught to young people. It is no accident that fascists are always the "other," while "we" are always both the victims and the heroic warriors keeping "them" at bay. Let's look at some circumstances in which a person or some group of people are typically labeled fascist. Children sometimes accuse their parents, or caretakers, of being fascists. What they mean is that their liberty to do as they please is being unfairly circumscribed. No, you can't stay up late playing video games. You can't sleep over with your friends, or whatever. They are fascists because they have used the authority vested in their position to control your behavior and activities. You must comply, because they have a monopoly on the use of force, the ability to withold whatever you want or feel you need and are entitled to, and in the last resort, to inflict physical punishment if you do not obey. Another frequent use of the term occurs in the context of confrontations with the police. They represent authority, as signified by their uniforms and the fact that they are armed and have the government sanctioned option to use their weapons. Nowadays, in our generally disaffected mood, the Government is commonly perceived to be fascist. Here, the relationship to the Roman fasces is obvious - they are identified with the State and its power. A wonderful example of the notion of fascism as it is popularly understood is the character of Nurse Ratchett in Ken Kesey's classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." She represents the absolute and arbitrary power of established authority to control others' lives. One might accuse one's boss of being a fascist for exactly such reasons. They have the authority and the power and, as you see it, they abuse it. In terms of politics, the term is generally employed in reference to parties whose ideology asserts a prerogative to rule based on ethnocentric supremacy, a form of extreme nationalism. However, it has been applied to a variety of political views based on group identity if that identity is used as a rationale for precedence over others. "We" could just as easily be "the working class" as self-proclaimed representatives of national or religious identity. It is useful to remember that both the Italian Fascist party and the Nazis

considered themselves to be socialist, while the Spanish and Japanese parties openly appealed to conservative, traditionalist sentiments. In terms of a useful definition of fascism, these distinctions are meaningless. Let's try a thought experiment to test our own fascist propensities. Create a mental list of those characteristics that constitute your identify. I will provide an example by doing this for myself. I am male, Caucasian, an American, a Jew by birth and a Buddhist by inclination, a senior citizen and retiree, a veteran, a writer, a revolutionary, left-handed and blue-eyed with dark hair. And that's just a partial survey. To what extent do I identify with each of the groups just enumerated? The answer is all of them, to a greater or lesser extent. By identify I mean that there is some emotional attachment, some sense of tribal belonging, however vague and illdefined that might be. But is that really who I am? Note that all of the above are accidents of birth, except for being a Buddhist and a writer, which are the result of choices that I made (I enlisted in the Army when I was young, confused and looking for a place to hang my hat, and almost immediately regretted it), Also note that, with the exceptions mentioned, all of these identity groups have a story associated with them, ranging from some simple positive affirmation to a long and complicated narrative. Let's look at them one by one in terms of fascist potential. Male - Just ask a feminist (or vice-versa) White - Just ask anyone who isn't American - The Free (to dominate, monopolize, control and bomb) and the Brave (when backed up by overwhelming firepower) Jewish - When I was young I thought Chosen People meant chosen to suffer. But things morph and change, and now it appears to mean to make others suffer (see the Old Testament). Buddhist - Yes, there are Buddhists who claim exclusive possession of the Truth Senior/Retiree - Ah, the Gray Panthers and AARP Veteran - Ever been to a VFW gathering? Writer - Those who really know about

stuff, the intellectual elite Revolutionary - the Vanguard of the People (the new ruling class in waiting) Left-handedness - Well, you know, we are more intuitive and creative And so on and so forth... Examples Fascism, as herein defined, is ubiquitous and has no particular origin. It seems to make sense, then, to talk only about the two varieties with which I'm most familiar, being both an American and a Jew. Coincidentally, they also represent the greatest political challenges facing our world today. American fascism American fascism, by definition, became possible once the inhabitants of the Colonies began to see themselves as other than ordinary Englishmen who happened to reside on the other side of the Atlantic. They had to become an identity group. That self-perception solidified, at least among the disaffected, as soon as friction arose between the two populations, culminating in the War for Independence. Victory arrived with all of the fascist accoutrements, tribal symbols, a selfglorifying national narrative and, of course, a flag. However, those who had the responsibility of fashioning the new nation were an unusual assembly of highly educated, sophisticated people (mostly lawyers) who were well aware of the dangers the fledgling republic was facing not external dangers, but internal ones. Much consideration went into creating obstacles to giving birth to what we are calling a fascist state. But the seeds had already been planted; America's development was dependent on the processes of genocide and slavery. If one overlooks American poaching in Canada and Florida and similar early adventures, one could say that it was pretty much a done deal once the Republic engaged in its first full-blown war of international aggression, which resulted in the acquisition of the northern half of Mexico. Not too much later, the United States proclaimed itself a full-blown Imperialist power in the European tradition with its conquest of the Spanish territorities of the Phillipines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, while at the same time grabbing Hawaii from its indigenous population. Something needs to be said at this point

about two terms that are closely related to fascism, "racism" and "imperialism." Fascism necessarily includes racism. Just as in the case of individual egoism, group ego requires the solidification of the sense of separation and distinctness from the other. Furthermore, in order to start going down the road to full-blown fascism, group identiy must become chauvinistic, that sense of overwheening pride in ourselves and our superior characteristics. The expression of this sense of superiority over others is what is called racism, and America, as we know, is a profoundly racist country and always has been although the "other," aside from the old standbies - the blacks, the Indians and the Hispanics - kept changing depending on who the latest immigrants were. The next step, to full-blown imperialism, requires nationalistic aggression against other states. Whether to acquire loot in whatever form, or to expand control over an ever increasing territory, the drums of war are frequently heard around the land. All of this has become fully institutionalized in the U.S., to the extent that the prevailing national doctrine is now perpetual war (the current Pentagon term is "the long war"). Not that long ago President Calvin Coolidge could say that "the business of America is business." But times have changed; imperialist war - business by other means to paraphrase Clausewitz has become our major occupation and economic activity - and, no doubt, will in due time be our undoing, as history so clearly tells us. This pattern of serial aggression, which requires creating enemies when they don't conveniently present themselves, is inherent in the dynamics of fascism. All empires have fallen when they have become fully overextended, militarily, financially, geographically and in every other respect. America now has clearly has opted for this destructive and self-defeating strategy. Jewish fascism (aka Zionism) Another clear, albeit bizarre, example is Israel, which would no doubt quickly implode without the requisite unifying principle of an external enemy with which the nation must always be at war, or preparing for war. I refer to it as Jewish fascism because it predates the Zionist project. When I was in Hebrew school in the early 50's, in preparation for my bar mitzvah, I thought I should read the Old Testament. What struck me was that much of it conformed to what we were being

taught was the essence of fascism, though I didn't make much of it at the time. Although I haven't read it, it appears that the Talmud, the primary scripture of the Orthodox ashkenazim, is a veritable manual of Jewish fascism. (4) Israel is exceptional in a number of ways: 1. It is the only nation that has ever been deliberately created with the express purpose of occupying foreign territory through the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants. 2. It is the only nation that required the invention of a "people" to carry out such a settler/colonialist project (1). 3. It is the only nation to have invented a religion (the Holycause) to complement its secular political ideology (Zionism). 4. It is the only nation that is wholly parasitical, dependent on extorting the economic means to survive from other societies that it (or its agents in other countries) has effectively subverted. Thus, Israel combines three convergent forms of fascism: ethnocentric (based on mytho-history much like the Nazi notion of an Aryan race); religious (nominally Jewish, although its founders were secular. Following the 1940's the place of Judaism as the sustaining religious identity was essentially replaced by Holocaustism, complete with a Holy Inquisition.); and, of course, virulently nationalistic. Fortuitously for the Jewish fascists, or maybe not so coincidentally (3), an extremely powerful ally emerged from within the American fascist world, the Christian Zionists. Although essentially a doomsday cult, it numbers, conservatively, 40-50 million Americans eager for Israel to build the Second Temple, thereby paving the way to Armageddon. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that, considering Israel's nuclear arsenal, endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past. Both Americans and Jews have made extraordinary positive contributions to world civilization, but a ruthless and predatory American imperialism and fascistic Zionism we can

do without. The Antidote The inner fascist in all of us claims to be one of the "good" people, the "superior" people, the "strong" people, or the "smart" people, but whatever flavor it comes in, we are one of the "entitled" people. The antidote to such delusions is the realization that we are just people, pretty much like everybody else, with as much right to be here as anyone else (and vice-versa). This realization cuts through self-deception, protects us from buying into whatever snake-oil the zealots happen to be selling today and contains within it the possibility of a sane society, however far off and illusory that may seem. We all belong to one tribe, humanity, and if we take our cue from those whom history has deemed wise, we realize that caring for others and the environment that supports us is the key. When we attempt to separate ourselves, individually as egomaniacs or as part of some fascistic identity group, then we're only asking for trouble. We may think we are protecting ourselves by attempting to control and manipulate others, but in the end what goes around comes around, a pointless and painful cycle that reason and experience tell us to abandon. Fascism as we have been describing it is a social pathology and it can legitimately be considered humanity's most urgent public health problem. If enough people come to understand what the disease is and how to diagnose it, perhaps there will emerge a means to inoculate ourselves. At this point American and Jewish fascism appear to have converged into an aggressive pathological force that endangers humanity more than any such phenomenon in the past. In the short term, it is imperative to dissolve the Jewish state of Israel. Such a state, which has no basis other than a fascistic narrative constructed out of paranoia and mythology, has no legitimacy in our world. It embodies all of the characteristics that humanity has resoundingly rejected in the last century settler colonialism, racism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide. The dehumanization and destruction of a people, along with the dispossession of their land and property, is utterly intolerable. The only feasible alternative is Israel's replacement by a pluralistic, democratic state that includes the

Palestinians as equals. There is no other viable solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire planet in nuclear devastation. In the long term, we must overcome the tendency to adopt belief systems that are based on blind faith, whether they take the form of political or religious dogmas. Only then can we grow up and have the opportunity to create a truly sane world. Notes: 1. American fascism: by political definition the US is now fascist, not a constitutional republic, by Carl Herman

2. The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand "...According to Sand, the description of the Jews as a wandering and self-isolating nation of exiles, "who wandered across seas and continents, reached the ends of the earth and finally, with the advent of Zionism, made a U-turn and returned en masse to their orphaned homeland," is nothing but "national mythology." Like other national movements in Europe, which sought out a splendid Golden Age, through which they invented a heroic past - for example, classical Greece or the Teutonic tribes - to prove they have existed since the beginnings of history,

"so, too, the first buds of Jewish nationalism blossomed in the direction of the strong light that has its source in the mythical Kingdom of David."... 3. Scofield Bible made uncompromising Zionists out of tens of millions of Americans, by Maidhc Cathail 4. The Babylonian Talmud (Complete Soncino English Translation)