Crossposted from Docudharma
Remember when they were an opposition party? Remember when they were on our side? I’m sure most of you have noticed by now that they just aren’t anymore.
Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Democrats Who Enable Bush
by Helen Thomas
President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.
Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.
(SNIP)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush’s war.
(SNIP)
So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?
Read more at CommonDreams.org
So what’s a good democrat to do? Damned if I know! I see little to be optimistic about. For all of my political life I have looked to the democrats for sanity and decency (as in doing the right thing). They were once the party of the downtrodden, the working class, the average American. They were the party that supported human rights and social justice, the good, solid American patriots dedicated to the betterment of humankind and the improvement and elevation of all humanity.
They once stood between us and corporate amorality and corruption. Now all is compromised. Our government has been bought and paid for by the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Our country no longer belongs to us.
Not unless we take it back.
But will we?
It depends it seems to me, on whether or not enough of us wake up in time. Many here of course are painfully wide-awake and have been for a long time. But others, even in the ranks of democrats and those who fancy themselves progressives, are mesmerized by trivial nonsense, sports mania, entertainment, celebrity gossip or any of a thousand other distractions, including the shell game of modern electoral politics, to pay sufficient attention to what is really going on – a fascist/corporatist take over of America. People who still trust that electing more and better democrats will substantially change any of these unprecedented dynamics are fooling themselves. We are stuck with tyranny and perpetual war purely for profit – unless we take strong action to change it. We have to wake people up!
If we don’t somehow summon up the will and wisdom to resist these bastards, and resist much bigger and harder than we have up to this point, the America we all know and love will be lost and gone forever.
When I first started blogging a couple of years ago people gave me hell for claiming America was succumbing to a fascist takeover. A lot of people are still in denial but if you’re paying attention at all there is nothing the least bit funny about what’s going on in the USA.
Blackwater: Are you scared yet?
by Naomi Wolf
Thu Sep 27, 2007 at 02:05:53 PM PDT
The New York Times reported today that Blackwater, the infamous organization that has been accused of killing civilians in Iraq, "has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms." A mercenary firm in Iraq with an itchy trigger finger is bad enough. But it now appears that Blackwater’s activities may be massively expanded -- and not in Iraq.
In little noticed news, Blackwater, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc were recently awarded a collective $15 billion -- yes, billion -- from the Pentagon to conduct global counter-narcotics operations. This means that Blackwater can be deployed to engage with citizens on a whole new level of intimacy anywhere around the world -- including here at home. What is scarier than scary is that Blackwater’s overall plans are to do more and more of its armed and dangerous ‘security’ operations on U.S. soil.
In my recently released book, The End of America, I describe the 10 steps that would-be tyrants use to close down a democracy and produce a "fascist shift." The third of the ten steps is to ‘Develop a Paramilitary Force.’ Without a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the people’s representatives, democracy cannot be closed down; however, with such a force available to would-be despots, democracy can be drastically and quickly weakened.
From Naomi’s recent dailykos diary, Blackwater: Are you scared yet?
It’s been happening for a long time, there has been a fascist takeover in this country. The signs are sufficiently obvious - those who doubt it need to wake the fuck up! For decades our government has secretly been on a tear in the third world. Yes the government of the USA is the biggest terrorist organization on the planet.
Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere? Is it because our leaders want to save democracy? Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless peoples? Is our national security threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify U.S. policies are false ones. But this does not mean the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem "wrongheaded" but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful.
The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits. The American people have had to pay the costs of empire, supporting a huge military establishment with their taxes, while suffering the loss of jobs, the neglect of domestic services, and the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in overseas military ventures.
The greatest costs, of course, have been borne by the peoples of the Third World who have endured poverty, pillage, disease, dispossession, exploitation, illiteracy, and the widespread destruction of their lands, cultures, and lives.
from the chapter Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy from the book Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti
For decades we have trained torturers and terrorists at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia and elsewhere to commit despicable deeds the likes of which no half-assed semi-decent American would approve. These people are monsters – and they are the inner circle of our government!
Our leaders are hypocrites, liars, and thieves. And the secret agenda they have supported for decades has been anti-human, anti-democratic, and anti-American.
The Rise of Fascism in America
by Gary Alan Scott
Fascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm—but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns—plenty of bread and circuses. But "consent of the governed" will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among the elite, and a degree of debate will be permitted; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized—usually by "the people" themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by a thoroughly impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, left ignorant of current events by a corporate media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of "national security," and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of "enemies" selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new "security structures" targeted at the populace. In time, this will be seen as "normal," as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone. It will all seem normal.
--Chris Floyd, November 10, 2001 Moscow Times (English edition)
Since the 1970’s, American businesses have grown larger and more monopolistic, helped along by deregulation, the repeal of anti-trust laws, and a steady transformation from manufacturing to capital management (dare I say, "capital manipulation"?). As Paul Bigioni puts it in his excellent essay entitled "The Real Threat of Fascism": "If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of Big Business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way which recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions."
CommonDreams
We are a nation at peril, but we are not alone. Globalization, the polite term for the corporatist/fascist takeover of the planet, threatens the entire world, and must be resisted.
We have the brave monks of Burma to look to for inspiration. They face the same forces we face, the forces of black-hearted greed, and they face it peacefully and with extraordinary courage for they know they must. We also must resist the anti-democratic junta here in the USA in solidarity with the brave monks of Burma – and for the love of our own country and the world.
Corporate greed and American imperialism (a.k.a. globalization/corporatism/fascism) are behind the horrors in Burma and elsewhere in the world.
Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma’s natural gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Offshore natural gas facilities deliver their extracted gas to Thailand through Burma’s Yadana pipeline. The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military.
The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal.
Chevron’s role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear. According to Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights International: "Sanctions haven’t worked because gas is the lifeline of the regime. Before Yadana went online, Burma’s regime was facing severe shortages of currency. It’s really Yadana and gas projects that kept the military regime afloat to buy arms and ammunition and pay its soldiers."
From Chevron’s Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime’s Lifeline by Amy Goodman
We need to bring our renegade government to heal and start acting like the decent world citizen our country was meant to be.
I’m not giving up the America I love without a fight! I hope there are millions and millions of Americans out there who feel that just as strongly as I do – for only that would give me faith in the future.
I cannot bear the thought of a future without a free and democratic America. I have no interest in a world like that, and I am very uncomfortable with how close we have come to it.
My point in sharing these thoughts with you is to encourage everyone to think outside the ‘electing democrats’ box. That’s fine and good as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go very far these days.
If the democrats were to suddenly wake up and do the right thing, they’d immediately defund the Iraq war, begin impeachment proceedings and file criminal charges against the entire Bush administration.
Until they do that we will know that they are not on our side and the answer to our exceedingly grave problems will not be solved at the ballot box.
We must find another way. And it begins with organized resistance.
Organize!
Then we strike! Then we march. Then we strike again and again and march again and again until we bring them to their knees and take our country back.
America belongs to the American people – NOT to American corporations, multinational corporations, the Pentagon, or Wall Street!
Informative links for the curious and concerned:
BushFlash
A Brief (But Creepy) History of America's Creeping Fascism
Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps
Globalization 101
Corporate Predators
Multinational Monitor
Corporate Crime Reporter
Our Most Important Mission: Prevent War with Iran
Only a U.S. Withdrawal Will Stop Al Qaeda in Iraq
Global Warming Facts
Wake up your friends and neighbors to what is really going on in the world. We have to stop lying down and taking shit off these fascist bastards! They will kill all life on this planet if we allow it.
History demands of us that we do our patriotic duty and take our country back from the anti-human, anti-democratic, anti-American forces that have seized her from her only rightful owners – the American people!
America
In the realm of political thought there has never been a more powerful idea than America. For the first time in history a nation was formed expressly to protect the liberty of its citizens, who were conceived as equals, from the predations of tyrants. The founders knew tyranny first hand and were determined to design a system that would preclude it from ever taking hold in the United States of America.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. . . ."
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
It was an audacious act to break away from England to form a country of equals who would rule themselves rather than be ruled by a sovereign. The world had never seen anything like it. A country devoted to liberty and equality was a novelty, one that spoke to the hopes and dreams of humanity, one that said life could be more than suffering, struggle, and the debasement of the masses.
America
If we love this country we will do the right thing – and take it back!