San Diego Mayor has change of heart about gay marriage.

This is an amazing admission of a change of heart for Jerry Sanders the San Diego mayor. He is a courageous man to come out with this. See the video. As a conservtive, in the end he felt that human relationships and equal protection under the law were the most important. How wonderful!

Sulaimaniya: the Tombstone of Iraq.

Yesterday (9/19/07) I heard a radio piece about a Russian who is opening a casino in Sulaimaniya, Iraq, of all places. Apparently he has the first license and is going to be allowed to serve beer but not other types of alcohol. He said men come carrying their K-47s and have to check them at the door like Tombstone, Arizona, in the wild west days. He said he thinks the casino venture will be successful because the customers have good cars.

Okay, that is an interesting story. Apparently the leaders of this town in the Kurd controlled north, including the Mayor, have figured out a way to make gambling capitalism a part of their new "democracy" in a manner that doesn't offend too many rules of Islam. Perhaps, but I'm sure there is more to this story to come.

And perhaps today's (9/20/07) story in the BBC just might be related. The BBC reports the US has announced that it has captured an Iranian officer who is a member of the Quds force that the US is do determined to demonize.

Here's the beginning to the story:

Iranian officer 'seized in Iraq'

US-led forces in Iraq say they have arrested an Iranian officer operating in the north of the country.

They say the man was a member of the Quds Force - an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards - and was detained in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.

"This individual has been involved in transporting improvised explosive devices," the American military said.

The US has accused the Quds Force of helping arm Shia militias in Iraq. Iran denies any involvement with militants.

A statement by the US military said the arrested man had been involved in the "infiltration and training of foreign terrorists in Iraq".

Did you note the town in whcih the "Iranian officer" was detained, yep, Sulaimaniya.

Okay, they set up the story telling the US press release side of things. We have been conditioned to believe this is an evil man who is involved in "infiltration" and "transporting improvised explosive devises."

But is this real or just more US propaganda passed along by the BBC as a willing conduit?

Let's look at the rest of the story:

According to a spokesman for the regional government in semi-autonomous Kurdistan, he was taken away overnight in a raid on a Sulaimaniya hotel.

A government official in Baghdad said the arrested man had been part of a commercial delegation, but gave no further details.

Tehran says it supports the US-backed Iraqi government, and blames the violence on the continuing conflicts within Iraq since US-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Can you do the math? Let's see, he was arrested in a Sulaimaniya HOTEL, not in a camp training people to place IED. And the Iraqi government official says the Iranian was "part of a commercial delegation." That's is as least as reliable and credible as any thing tha tcomes from the US military.

Well now, I don't know, maybe its just my overactive imagination (or maybe its good intuition), but something about these two stories seems to go together. Was this so-called Quds officer actually "on holiday" to go to the new casino in Sulaimaniya? Was he there in cognito as a commercial delegation in a hotel so as not to get caught offending his Islamic community? Or was the commercial delegation there to witness how the new casino was going and possibly become backers or suppliers in the casino?

So far what we can feel is credibly established is (1) that an Iranian guy was kidnapped from his hotel by the US military; (2) the US has until now claimed without any evidence that the Quds force has been supplying IEDs to Iraqi insurgents; (3) the US is now trying to connect the Iranian Quds to provide the missing evidence of their claim, and (4) an Iraqi government official says the Iranian was part of a commercial delegation.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that whatever the Iranian was doing, he wasn't doing what the US military said he was doing.

For comparison with the reliability of the US military version of things, check out Greg Palast's report on the fake Sheik Abu Risha: Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked: The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny and the video reporting that it is based on.

Whatever is going on in Sulaimaniya, it sounds like it is jumping with activity and with promises of get-rich-quick business deals and opportunities under the cover of capitalist democracy. I don't think we've heard the last of Sulaimaniya.

Greg Palast Tells the Truth Again.

The best investigative reporter in the USA does it again by presenting the facts about the phony Sheik who received millions in bribe money from the USA. Palast also exposes the real Sheiks who also are getting the millions but didn't want to share. They are the ruthless murderous "leaders" of ethnic cleansing that the USA have bought to be "friends." Unfortunately, these new friends are criminals of the worst sort.

Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked:
The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny

A special investigative report from inside Iraq
by Greg Palast

Monday, September 17, 2007- Did you see George all choked up? In his surreal TV talk on Thursday, he got all emotional over the killing by Al Qaeda of Sheik Abu Risha, the leader of the new Sunni alliance with the US against the insurgents in Anbar Province, Iraq.

Bush shook Abu Risha's hand two weeks ago for the cameras. Bush can shake his hand again, but not the rest of him: Abu Risha was blown away just hours before Bush was to go on the air to praise his new friend.

Here's what you need to know that NPR won't tell you.

1. Sheik Abu Risha wasn't a sheik.
2. He wasn't killed by Al Qaeda.
3. The new alliance with former insurgents in Anbar is as fake as the sheik - and a murderous deceit.

How do I know this? You can see the film - of "Sheik" Abu Risha, of the guys who likely whacked him and of their other victims.

Rest of story at Bush’s Fake Sheik Whacked: The Surge and the Al Qaeda Bunny

Election Litmus Tests - Why I Will Never Vote for Hillary

Some people don't belive in Presidential Litmus Tests. I do. But not just one, I have several.

That is why I will never vote for Hillary Clinton. She fails too many of my Litmus Tests.

Litmus Test #1: The Iraq war is wrong, immoral, and illegal, and doesn't even achieve the stated goals, so withdrawal as soon as possible is the only viable plan.

Hillary fails this litmus test. By her own admission she actually believed George Bush's lies about the war and wasn't smart enough to know he was lying. Not only that, she still doesn't recognize there was not good reason to go into Iraq and no good reason to stay, yet she is a believer in USA global military hegemony and advocates keeping troops inside Iraq for the long haul This is completely unaccepable.

Litmus Test #2: Health care needs to be single-payer, government supervised payments (not government doctors), not-for-profit, i.e., the plan proposed by HR 676.

Hillary fails this litmus test. Hillary's plan is a mandatory health insurance plan, not a health care plan. Her plan makes criminals out of people who can't afford health insurance if they don't buy it. Her plan lines the pockets of the profiteering medical insurance industry.

Litmus Test #3: As with slavery, the Death Penalty needs to be abolished if we are to become a fully civilized nation. Why should we continue to be in the company of The People's Republic of China, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of Congo as the "most prolific executioners in the world"? The USA is along with these and other dictatorships (such as Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Egypt, etc.) among the Death Penalty club of nations in a "coalition of the killing."

Hillary fails this litmus test. Hillary supports the death penalty knowing that it is flawed yet refusing to admit it is incurably flawed.

Litmus Test #4: Human rights for immigrants is essential. The Border Wall is a travesty. Walls are not the way to deal with border issues. The Berlin Wall was once a symbol of totalitarian oppression, now the Israeli Wall and the USA Wall are the symbols of totalitarian oppression in the 21st Century.

Hillary fails this litmus test. Hillary voted for and continues to support the building of the Wall along the Mexican border. The Wall being only built along Mexico is racist in its conception. And should we even mention the anti-environmental and anti-ecological impacts?

Litmus Test #5: Israel is a spoiled child who is now committing oppression upon innocent Palestinians in a manner all too similar to how the Jews were oppressed. Israel has managed to turn the whole Gaza Strip into one giant ghetto. The inhumanity of Israel's illegal occupation and containment of Gaza and the West Bank are insufferable.

Hillary fails this litmus test. She continues to support Israel blindly without question. She supports Israel's inhumane Wall. She opposes a Palestinian state unless it is dictated by Israel's terms. She would condition aid to the Palestinian's based on their "violence" yet would not do a thing about Israel's violence.

Litmus Test #6: Separation of Church and State is an inviolate doctrine of democracy.

Hillary fails this test as she is a member of the Christian right-wing Senate prayer group run by the religious nuts of "the Fellowship"!

Litmus Test #7: Weapons of impersonal destruction like land minds, cluster bombs, and uranium coated weapons are anti-human, anti-nature, anti-sanity. These weapons must be banned. They alread meet the defiinitions for weapons banned even though the USA refuses to admit it.

Hillary fails this test. She has not challenged the war industry on the fundamental wrong of making these weapons.

Litmus Test #8: Abortion needs to be a universal human right. Anti-abortion legislation is an indicator of fascist tendencies in society.

This is the only test Hillary passes, at least I think she passes, sort of. She has stated, "I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected." So even here she doesn't have the guts to challenge the label and instead accepts and uses the right wing's false framing label of "partial birth abortions," and she doesn't go the distance to say that abortion is an issue between a woman and her doctor, period.

Unfortunately, passing only 1 (barely) out of 8 of my Litmus Tests won't get me to vote for her. As Hillary is a certified member of the corporate establishment who bankroll her, I would rather vote for a candidate from a party not in the two-party dictatorship than vote for Hillary. I prefer my fascism as open as possible rather than to have to deal with the stealth fascism of Democrats like Hillary Clinton who only confuse people into voting for their own oppression by the corporate plutocracy.

Who you gonna call, if you want not for profit health care?

How could Rose Ann DeMoro write an article on Hillary Clinton's proposed health care plan, complain that Hillary learned the wrong lesson when she is proposing a plan that lines the pockets of the profiteering health "care" industry, and state Hillary's "plan is a smorgasbord of the worst elements of what we've seen and heard from some other presidential candidates", all without mentioning the name of the one candidate who is proposing exactly the plan that DeMoro wishes?

DeMoro says Hillary "might have decided to cut them [i.e., the health care Incs,] out of the business of profiting off pain, suffering and medical debt, and proposed a very different solution, such as expanding Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Program to cover everyone." Well, DeMoro, too, "might have decided" to mention that Dennis Kucinich is the only presidential candidate whose health care plan does exactly that!

One has to wonder why Kucinich, the only truly pro-labor candidate (e.g., for repeal of Taft-Hartly) who is also for a single payer not-for-profit health care plan, is totally absent from the health care discussion by DeMoro who is a nurse and national vice president of the AFL-CIO. Perhaps if the AFL-CIO would support Kucinich and his health care plan, then DeMoro would not be wondering what his name is or act like there is no candidate offering the plan she wants.

Gregory Wonderwheel
Santa Rosa, CA

Votes and Vetos

Portside Tidbits
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007
From: Gregory Wonderwheel
Subject: Votes and Vetos.

A veto by any other name is just as effective. The
Democrats are using a double standard when is comes to
impeachement of Bush and funding the war on Iraq. When
it comes to impeachment, the Dems are vetoing putting
the measure forward because they say they don't have
the votes to pass it. Yet when it comes to funding the
war they put if forward becasue they say they don't
have the votes to override a veto.

In practice, the Congress doesn't have to worry about
the presidential veto if they exercise their "veto" of
the funding bill in the same way that they veto
impeachment. The President's funding bills are
effectively "vetoed" if Congress just doesn't let any
funding measures out of committee. While the Democrats
can't vote to override a veto, they should be able to
not vote at all as long as funds are for continuing the
war and thus their veto defunds the war.

Comprehending American Fascism

Sunday morning (9/2/07) I heard the last half-hour of Peter Laufer interviewing Naomi Wolf discussing her new book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Like me, Wolf is a person who is not afraid to use the "F" word, fascism. Yes, folks, the USA is now a fascist state!

Many in the left are afraid to say plainly that the USA is fascist. Usually it is because they think the "F" word undercuts the position of criticism because in their minds to call the USA fascist would mean that the USA would look like fascist Germany or Italy at their worst. As I expected, a man did call in to the program to tell Naomi that fascism was what happened historically in Germany and Italy and that the USA is not there yet, so to call what we have fascism is not accurate. At best this is just a misunderstanding of what fascism is.

One historical expression of fascism is not the only and forever expression of fascism. That would be like saying lung cancer is not cancer because my uncle had cancer and it was in his prostate. Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy were expressions of the disease of fascism, but Bush's USA just as certainly also an expression of fascism, even if it looks different to the untrained eye as it attacks the body politic through different organs of manifestation. So how can we diagnose this social disease?

Wolf presents an analysis of 10-steps that America has taken to cross the threshold into fascism. I hadn't seen her list until Sunday. I created my 10-point list below based on the book The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich, the 14-point list by Lawrence Britt, the 14-point list by Umberto Eco, and other sources on fascism. Britt's and Eco's lists are similar but different and I felt the need to provide a more generic, simple, and inclusive list. Each of the items on their lists fits within this list. Wolf's 10-steps are also identifiable within this 10-point diagnosis as particular expressions of the some of the symptoms. I first presented this 10-point list for diagnosing fascism in a public forum on November 6, 2004, at The Sixth Biannual Radical Philosophy Association's Conference titled PHILOSOPHY AGAINST EMPIRE, held on November 4-7, 2004, at Howard University, Washington D.C.

The 14 Points Linking Fascism from:
Dr. Lawrence Britt: “Fascism Anyone?”
Free Inquiry Magazine, Spring 2003 (5/11/03)


14 Ways of Looking at Fascism from:
Umberto Eco: “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”
New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15.
Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.

The Ten Factors of Fascism

Here are the ten primary symptoms of fascism by which any government and system of social control can be measured to determine is fascistic tendencies.

1. Authoritarian/Autocratic government and family style.
2. Patriarchal government, social, and family style to justify everything from religion to politics.
3. Plutocratic control of government and information
4. In-Group Supremacy of leadership as a social system
5. Anti-life and Anti-nature social attitude used to alienate citizens from each other and themselves.
6. Violence & war used as instruments of foreign policy and social control
7. Mass Appeal supports the government and is used to dumb down the sharing and transfer of information and to gain the demagogic support.
8. Deception as a regular means of social control.
9. Fear Mongering as a regular means of social control
10. Sanctimony as a social style and the use of religion( or religious substitute) is a regular means of social control.


If these ten symptoms can be identified as having substantial influence in the government and the decisions by the law makers, then the government is an expression of fascism. These symptoms are present in every fascist state to an identifiable degree of influence. If one or two are completely missing then it shouldn't be called fascism. For example, if there were no plutocracy and rule by corporations and instead a hereditary nobility ruled through a king then even with the other factors present it would be monarchy not fascism. Also, if there were no deception or fear mongering used as the primary means of propaganda for social control then it would not be fascism; totalitarian dictatorship perhaps, but not fascism.

Other factors of historical incidence, such as whether or not the state has a single dictatorial figure like a Hitler or a specific nation-wide "youth" movement such as the Nazi Youth, are secondary symptoms useful only to the extent that they are specific manifestations of the primary symptoms.

And it is important to understand as a baseline phenomenon for diagnosing the society and not just the government that what is found in the government is found in the family, because it is the family that is the primary building block of fascism and the primary source for the inculcation of fascist ideals and frames of thinking. George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute has elucidated this connection between the family's fascist values becoming the family values of the fascist nation.

This is a fundamental point for understanding the functioning of fascism in a society. Fascism is not a dictatorship that is imposed on a society. Fascism is not an external influence from "outside" the nation. Fascism is a dictatorship that the society as a nation imposes upon itself and embraces in the name of its family values, because those family values are essentially fascistic. If the nation is fascistic and elects a fascistic father figure like George W. Bush, then the nation is fascist even if the father figure leaves office at the end of his term. In other words, fascism thrives in the context of a pseudo democracy like the USA where fascists can point to the external forms of democracy for the purpose of maintaining the curtain in front of the dictatorship of fascist values.

How Do the Symptoms Function?

Let's look at the ten factors a little more closely to see their characteristics and how they work to influence society and destabilize democracy. This is an outline highlighting the themes and characteristics that anyone should be able to follow and identify.

1. Authoritarian/Autocratic (follow the leader)
a. Cult of the leader.
b. Authoritarian hierarchy (rather than collaborative hierarchy) is reflected in all social institutions.
c. Leadership cult even in “democracies” (democratic dictatorship)
d. Domination and Dominionism
e. Externalization of Salvation from savior or messiah from the outside, belittling idea of heaven is within.

2. Patriarchal (father knows best, mother in her domain, children seen and not heard)
a. Sexism and sexualization
b. Mother sentimentalization verses nurturing
c. God the Father
d. Family values means obeying father: in the family father is boss, in the state Father of the nation (president, fuhrer) is boss, in religion the church Father (pope, rabbi, ayatollah) is boss, in the universe Father God is the boss.1

3. Plutocratic (wealth is good, poverty is deserved for the weak or lazy)
a. Corporatism is the fascist form of plutocracy: mass production w/o democratic decision making. amassing wealth with protectionism by govt.
b. Government controlled by business for purpose of supporting business while claiming government victimizes business.
c. Destruction of the commons: privatization of public resources and profits with socialization of private sector’s costs.
d. "We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order." Adolph Hitler
e. Exploitation and repression of labor in the name of ownership interests.
f. Wealth as an absolute good., wealth = capital, poverty = labor.

4. In-Group Supremacy (we/us are good, they/them are bad)
a. Race, the Biological Superstition
b. Tribalism to Cultural Chauvinism
c. Class and caste stratification, dehumanization of the subservient classes/castes.
d. Xenophobia.
e. Selfishness and egotism the ultimate “in-group”
f. Nationalism against international humanism, patriotism to suppress debate.
g. Cronyism as a paradigm

5. Anti-life and Anti-nature (this world is sin, the other world of heaven is freedom)
a. Mechanical View of Biology.
b. Biology is bad, nature is dirty, belittling notion that oneness with the earth and nature is redeeming.
c. Anti-sexual orientation, sex out of marriage is a sin, gay marriage is a sacrilege heterosexual marriage is a sacrament, but suggestions of sex are okay in the name of commerce.
d. Blood literalization and idolization (in racism and inheritance)
e. Cult of the Land and Nationalist-Patriotism of the Soil (false earth worship).

6. Violence & war (might makes right, weakness is a sign of wrongness)
a. Violence as legitimate and preferred problem solver.
b. Violence is brave and heroic, nonviolence is cowardly, pacifism is unpatriotic.
c. Militarism, war, and conquest are manifestly destined in this world therefore just another part of unavoidable sin.
d. Empire is peace: pax Romana. pax Regis, and the Iroquois “Great Peace”

7. Mass Appeal (group think & cultural conformity are primary values)
a. Mob Mentality used to prevent mass organizing.
b. Anti-individual and False Individualism: “one whole people”, ditto heads.
c. Ruling Caste and Underclass Mental Hegemony, denying distinctions
d. Propaganda, sloganeering, and branding. Form over substance or function.
e. False sense of community in mass communications
f. Patriotism is conformity not dissent.

8. Deception (truth is what we say it is, honesty is dangerous)
a. Lies in the name of national security.
b. Secrets in the name of national security.
c. Stating the opposite: reaction as revolution, 1984 Newspeak.

9. Fear Mongering (fear rules the roost)
a. Vulnerability is a constant reminder for supporting the leader/party.
b. Insecurity is a benchmark used to prevent critical thinking.
c. Pointing the finger at “responsible” scapegoats both within and outside society.

10. Sanctimony (good & bad are opposites not polarities, self-righteousness reigns)
a. War of Images creating hypocritical holiness. Clean and Pure Vs. Bad, Evil, Sick, and Polluting, e.g., evil empire, axis of evil, communist cancer, socialist plague, etc.
b. Religion used as the tool of the state for social enforcement, e.g., crusades, witch hunts, godless red scare, holy war, etc.
c. Schizopolarity: Primary polarity split that fixates the other polarity factors into a complex that concretizes consciousness.

How To Diagnose Fascism

Using the above characteristics and examples, one can ask the questions that elucidate whether the symptom is present or not. The questions are critical, because by asking the question the reader may apply the test to develop their own critical analysis for evaluation and diagnosis of their own government. This is by no means an exhaustive list of questions for each symptom. This list is sketchy and just an initial outline. The reader is encouraged to consider and add questions under each category of symptom.

1. Authoritarian/Autocratic

Q: Is there an authoritarian leader?

"I'm the decider" pretty much sums it up.

This point is often misunderstood by those who say the USA can't be fascist because there is no "dictator" like a Hitler or Mussolini. The genius of USA fascism is that it has elevated the role of the presidency through the use of the two-party dictatorship into a serial dictatorship of the plutocracy revolving between the so-called "two" parties so that the embodiment of a single individual father figure head is not required. Bill Clinton bombed Baghdad on a regular basis and then George Bush could railroad and ramrod through an uncritical Congress an illegal invasion of a country that had never attacked the USA and never threatened to attack the USA. Between the two, Clinton and Bush, there was only a difference in tactics. The abdication of Congress and the media to provide any check and balance against Clinton's bombing of Iraq and Bush's war on Iraq (e.g., Dan Rather's comments about marching to the leader's orders) clearly demonstrated how electoral fascism works in the USA with the "allegiance" to the current leader's authority overriding all other concerns, such as the concern for facts and evidence to support allegations of threats against the USA.

Q: "Is the leader's view more important than the peoples' view?"

Mass demonstrations against the impending invasion of Iraq did not slow down the invasion by a step. Our "I'm the decider" president had decided and no discussion by the people was going to interfere. Congress abdicated to this variant of the strong leader's "will" regardless that the Constitution establishes that it is Congress that declares war, not the president. Such abdication is a clear sign of authoritarian influence on the checks and balances of democracy.

Q: Is the “character” of the leader more important in elections than the direction being led?

When the frame for selecting a "leader" is that the leader's character issues are more important than what the leader actually stands for as far as the direction the leader would lead, then fascism has influenced the election. This does not mean that "character" issues are irrelevant, but that they are used in such a way that they obfuscate the candidates actual agenda. For example, in the USA a person who admits to being an atheist is unelectable because the frame is that a person of good character goes to church. The actual character of the person as a liar, war monger, or corporate pirate becomes irrelevant to the public persona of character provided by the photo-op of the candidate on the steps of the church.

Q: Is surveillance of citizens justified in order to maintain the authority and security of the state?

Congress's recent approval of Bush's unwarranted wiretapping and other surveillance methods demonstrates the bipartisan fascism in the USA today.

Q: Is disagreement with the President/PM tantamount to treason?

The examples from Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld clearly demonstrate this.

O: Is a strong Leader justified by weakness of the people?

This is more surreptitious but is also present. For example, who said,

“People need somebody to watch over them. . . . Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.”?

[Answer: Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger from a 1990 profile in U.S. News and World Report.]

2. Patriarchal

Q: Does the Masculine principle dominate?

Clearly in the USA the patriarchal principle dominates. No woman president. Few women in Congress. Even the existence of Hillary Clinton in the political landscape does not speak otherwise because legitimacy as a candidate is derived entirely from her association with her husband, a previous patriarchal precedent.

Q: Is the Feminine principle sentimentally revered but actually considered second class?

Yes. From Eve to Hillary, the Feminine principle is second class. For example, that is why Hillary must wear pants suits, in order to send the subliminal message that she too can wear pants as much as any man. A woman must give up the signs of femininity if she is to compete in patriarchal politics.

Q: Are "Family values" used as a propaganda tool to reinforce absolute hierarchy within the society?

Q: Is there rampant sexism?

Pretty obvious in both government and the families that support the current administration.

Q: Is Machismo highly valued?

Again, the short phrase "I'm the decider" speaks volumes. And don't forget the flight suit photos on the aircraft carrier with the "Mission Accomplished" backdrop.

Q: Is sexuality transformed into playing with weapons of war?

This is a psychological nuance that is usually only appreciated in humor. Missiles and their use are definitely substitutes for sexual gratification. Rumsfeld's flippant comment "You go into war with the equipment you have" is another, though more subliminal, example. In order to appreciate the context of Rumsfeld's comment it must be remembered that in fact what he said is a lie. In WWII we declared war but did not "go into war" until after we had the equipment we needed, not the equipment we had. In fact the USA's delay in entering the war while it retooled factories and created the military equipment it needed was a great concern and worry to our allies. But the president on that occasion knew that you go into war when you are ready.

3. Plutocratic

Q: Is government overly influenced by business, protective of corporations, and used against labor interests?

This is one of the traditional and historical benchmarks of fascism. When the private-interest influence is greater than the public's influence, then the dictatorial control is established, even if the private-interest is successful through propaganda means to convince the voters to vote against their interests. In the USA we have a two-party dictatorship where the plutocrats control both parties in what have essentially become two wings of the one Corporatism Party. A shell game is played between the so-called "two" parties creating the appearance that they differ in fundamentals when in fact they only differ in how the masses will be treated under plutocratic control, while the question of the existence of plutocratic control is not considered legitimate. It must be remembered that the small-business interests follow the big business interests in the name of stability. The middle classes support the plutocratic dictatorship as long as they perceive (1) stability for business interests, (2) a comfortable share of the wealth for themselves,(3) the plutocrats endorse the generally puritanical middle class values even if they don't share them, and (4) the plutocrats maintain the illusion that anyone may join their ranks if they strike it rich.

Q: Is the power of corporations protected by the state?

The plundering of the US Treasury by the contracts with the corporate cronies of Bush is obvious. Under Bush not even the phony illusion of bidding for contracts is maintained. See the many good references on the role of corporation in present day society such as the book When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten and the film The Corporation
by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, and Joel Bakan.

From The Toronto Star:

Naomi Klein's new book a lightning rod
Her new book, The Shock Doctrine, details the rise of disaster capitalism with painstaking care, showing how big business often steps in after global misery

Sep 04, 2007 04:30 AM
Vit Wagner
Publishing Reporter

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, a painstakingly detailed analysis of how corporations manipulate natural and manmade disasters to line their pockets and further their privatizing agenda, is not a marginal, academic treatise by a lefty think tank targeted at a small, like-minded audience.
Continued ...

Q: Is the power of labor suppressed or eliminated by the state?

Again, yes. NAFTA is a perfect example where outsourcing to countries without protection of labor is encouraged. Also, here at home, labor is hamstrung and controlled by the Taft-Hartley Act (passed over Truman's veto and which he had described as a "slave-labor bill") and other such laws.

Q: Is wealth for oneself and one’s group a high value, while hatred of the "enemy" (domestic or foreign) who has wealth and its power, is justified?.

Thomas Franks' book What's the Matter With Kansas? portrayed the workings of this dynamic very well, describing how people who vote for the wealthy Republicans do so on the one hand with envy of the Republican wealthy and on the other hand with hate toward the Democratic "elites". All the while these populist voters ignore that it is the wealthy Republicans who are primarily draining and misusing the people's tax dollars for their own personal incomes.

4. In-Group Supremacy

Q: Is there a class or caste structure that dehumanizes the servant and subservient classes/castes and/or defines the ruling class as more deserving?

There is certainly in the USA. This is the flip side of the plutocracy and it's self-justification based on social Darwinism. Rest in peace, Leona Helmsley.

Q: Are there powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism?

Nationalism is the state equivalent of tribalism. Nationalism is used create a group-think that supersedes the facts and to divide humans from each other and their own humanity. Where patriotism is defined by nationalism itself, rather than by upholding the ideals and principles that define the better conscience of a nation, then fascism can take root. There are examples of this symptom too numerous to count in the speeches of President Bush.

Q: Is identification of enemies/scapegoats used as a unifying cause?

It was "communism" now it is "terrorists" and al Queda hiding everywhere and threatening to invade us against who we must be unified and not question our leader.

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, From his cell at Nuremberg Trials 1946
- from Nuremberg Diary by G M Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)

Q: Is there rampant cronyism and corruption?

Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. ad nauseam.

Q: Is the "privilege" of being born in an especially favored country threatened by a plot of international conspiracy against the homeland and used for control?

Germany had its Fatherland Security Department and we have our Homeland Security Department. Germans in the 1930s in black leather coats said on the trains, "Your papers, please," and Americans today in blue blazers say it in the airports.

Q: Does society define itself using racist distinctions?

Many would put this question first under this category or, indeed, have racism as a separate category. However, to place racism as a separate category would overlook the essential function of "us-them" as the defining symptom. The elementary school exercise of Jane Elliot shows that the color of eyes or even clothes can become the matrix for expressing this symptom. I have heard it said that the USA can't be called fascist because Condoleezza Rice holds such a high office, because in a fascist state, which must by definition be racist, she could never get such a appointment. That mistaken attitude is exactly what I hope to overcome by presenting the type of analysis I am here. Racism is just the most pernicious and most handy frame of mind to exploit tribal prejudices by expanding them to the national level. Fascists rely on the confusion of being a "nation" with being a "race" so they can conveniently tap into the primitive prides and prejudices of perverted family-clan-tribe instincts. However, doing so in an overtly racist manner is not absolutely required. For example, the Tutsi-Hutu conflict in Rwanda did not rely on "race" per se, but on tribal distinctions that amounted to racism when the question of who would rule the nation became fused with the tribal distinctions.

By the long efforts of many people, even at the cost of their lives, overt racism is not acceptable in the USA. Therefore under the current conditions of public opinion anyone of any race can join the ruling in-crowd if they can sufficiently demonstrate their loyalty to the plutocrats. The presence of Condoleezza Rice or Alberto Gonzales in the administration had nothing at all to do with whether the current regime is fascist or not. At this moment in history the Arabs are the enemy race as far as the propaganda machine goes. However, that is not to say that racism does not exist in American fascism. The Berlin-style wall along the Mexican border is a perfect example of the nexus of in-group supremacy that combines nationalism with both homeland security propaganda and overt and covert racism. The current Supreme Court's step back from Brown vs. Board of Education is another example of the background of racism prevalent in the USA.

5. Anti-life and Anti-nature

Q: Is nature viewed as an enemy or commodity, and on the individual level is natural sexuality viewed as sinful?

An anti-life and anti-nature frame of reference permeates fascism and clearly this is found in the violence against nature upon which the plutocratic corporate structure is established. Natural functions of the body are viewed as sinful or representing an evil aspect of humanity. This self-loathing of one's own natural pleasures and sexuality becomes translated into homophobic reactions to those who are not in the sexually defined "in-group" supremacy because they are people whose natural sexuality is not submerged. This comes out when religious types say they don't hate the sinner just the sin. In fact what they hate is their own sexuality and sexual acts of others when they are engaged in as an expression of pleasure rather than as a duty of procreation.

Of special note is the manner in which the anti-abortion propagandists have usurped the phrase "pro-life" to represent their anti-life and pro-death world view. The anti-life aspect is amply demonstrated by how this faction abandons the child after it is born while they demand that all pregnancies completed.

Where nature is elevated as an ideal, it is a one-sided and uneducated parody of nature based on false assumptions, chief among them the false ideas of "race" and social Darwinism, used to justify the rulers position in society.

Q: Is the “national soil” an object of reverence with “farmers” idolized as the prototype of patriotism?

What we actually see in the USA is the hypocrisy of the great propaganda machine that "reveres," idolizes, and idealizes the "family farm" and then does nothing to protect it while the giant agribusiness corporations are given every kind of government support to thrive while they run the family farmers out of business.

Q: Is there disdain for the importance of human rights?

Corporate rights and the "right" to make profit generally have a higher priority in our government than human rights.

Q: Is there a social contempt for the weak or disabled?

One expression of this is the stem-cell debate.

Q: Does the society support the death penalty?

The USA is in the company of Communist China in supporting the death penalty.

Q: Is there an undercurrent of rejection of modern views on the nature of nature and life?

The rejection of the science and working theory of evolution and the embrace of the fantasy that life was created by a God-man as revealed in a book is essentially anti-life and anti-nature because it sees nature not as the direct expression of fundamental reality but as something alien to and opposed to reality.

6. Violence & war

Q: Is a military or a warrior class in top control in society with militarism used as a paradigm for problem-solving?

Currently in the USA there is the interesting phenomenon of a class of cowards and wanna-be warriors in control of the warrior class. Be that as it may, Bush has identified himself completely by his use of violence and war as the premier tools of foreign policy, far and above the use of diplomacy or the golden rule. The only candidates in the current presidential race who seem to understand this dynamic of fascism are Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and Ron Paul, who each in his own way has stated the current "war" is not only unconstitutional but not a good use of foreign policy. Kucinich has made this a central part of his campaign unequivocally stating that he does not support the use of violence and war as "an instrument of foreign policy." What does that mean? Does it mean he would never go to war? Of course not. What it means is that war should be a weapon of defense against actual attack, not a toll of foreign policy or regime change for other sovereign countries. All the other candidates strive to portray themselves as the strong leader who is not afraid to use war as a tool of foreign policy to achieve the national interests (e.g., to attain a world-wide hegemony of natural resources.)

Q: Is there social supremacy of the military/and militarism?

Yes, there is a social stigma against anyone who openly criticizes the soldier-class. Throughout the media and the churches "support the troops" is uncritically equated with support for the military mission of the president, even when that mission has nothing to do with defense against attack and is a blatant offensive attack upon another nation. If a person dares to say the troops have no business being deployed in an illegal criminal enterprise on foreign soil for the profit of American based corporations and therefore the troops should be brought home immediately, that person is accused of not "supporting the troops."

Q: Is torture sanctioned by the state?

Guantánamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib, CIA "black" sites are some current examples of state sanctioned torture.

Q: Is the value of life derived from struggle?

A fundamental frame for fascism is that life itself is struggle and the value of life is in struggle. The primary struggle against our own nature is exteriorized as the struggle against "the enemy" de jour. We as a nation deserve our supremacy only through our struggle against the evils in the world. Political devils are created and maintained as evil incarnate in order for the nation to live in fear and derive pride and value in our struggle against them. As the cold war ended with communists embracing capitalism in one form or another, fascists needed a new enemy and conveniently the new Pearl Harbor of 9/11 occurred and now we are able to engage in the perpetual war on terrorism. Bush engages in his phoney war on terrorism, not as an uncomfortable necessity but, as a value defining struggle that elevates both himself and the nation for experiencing it. The complete bankruptcy of principle and values that are required to conduct the struggle are conveniently overlooked and ignored.

Q: Is there a culture of heroic death?

In the USA, yes. For example, the soldiers currently dying for a false criminal invasion and occupation are considered heros regardless of the real reason for their presence in a foreign land and the cynical cause of their death.

7. Mass Appeal

Q: Does "salvation" (the answers to ultimate questions) come from outside rather than from within, from the group rather than the individual?

With all the American propaganda about individualism, in fact the current government exists as an expression of group-think. Salvation, whether religions or political, is not to be left to the individual's ccnscience or insight, rather it is conceived as being derived from a reveled text that becomes the basis for conformity.

Q: Is form preferred over substance, slogan over content, symbol or sign over acts expressing the values the symbol represents?

The use of slogans in support of fascism is a tool that Hitler learned from American and British propagandists in WWI. Fundamentally, the entire structure of capitalism is based on advertising and advertising itself is the essence of fascist propaganda.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.
~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter six.

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
~ George W Bush, 5/24/05

Q: Is there a controlled mass media?

In the USA, the corporate controlled mass media provide the propaganda platform for access to the masses, first and foremost through advertising, which is the most pernicious form of propaganda because it is so subtle and deceivingly subliminal.

What, for example, would we say about a poster that was supposed to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as 'good'?
We would only shake our heads.
~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter six.

Q: Is there social disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts?

The disdain for intellectuals is highlighted in the fascist attempts to insert "creation theory" into the education curriculum.

The second really decisive question was this: To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or to the less educated masses?
It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses...
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be exerted in this direction.
~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, chapter six.

Q: Is seductive populism such as “anti-elite” rhetoric preached by politicians who are elites themselves?

This is the most fascinating effect of successful propaganda. By the effective use of sloganeering and playing to the emotions, people can be led to beleive that the propagandists are not in fact the very elites who the people are supposed to hate. Again, Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter With Kansas detailed this phenomenon with great clarity.

8. Deception

Q: Are government lies and secrecy “justified” by rationalization and used routinely to prevent public scrutiny?

Deception and the next symptom "fear mongering" go hand in hand as the most effective form of deception is used to create fear. The deception by Colin Powell at the UN is the perfect example of deception used for the purpose of creating fear. WMD lies, refusal to respond to subpoenas, please add to the list.

Q: Are there fraudulent elections?

Florida 2000, Ohio 2004. Read Greg Palast on vote caging.

Q: Is political language an impoverished vocabulary with the use of Newspeak?

Listen to any Bush speech and the answer is obvious. "Compassionate Conservatism,""Healthy Forests Initiative," "Peace Through Strength," and "War on Terrorism" are but a few examples of fascist Newspeak at work.

9. Fear Mongering

Q: Are patriotism and nationalism in the face of outside threats used to manufacture consent and suppress dissent especially within the lower classes subjected to that power?

“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
~ George W. Bush

Is there obsession with national security?

Q: Is there an obsession with crime and punishment?

Bush was a hang-em-high pro-death penalty governor and has supported the obsession, all the while actually doing nothing about the causes of crime nor anything to support the rehabilitation of people convicted of crimes. The obsession with punishment is pure hypocrisy when there is no acknowledgment of rehabilitation as a social response to crime.

Q: Does society show a fear of differences and of strangers?

Yes, that is why the term "illegal alien" is used so predominantly in media propaganda. The attacks Islam and the confusion about

Q: Do government leaders and media propagandists appeal to the frustrated middle class, the humiliated and frightened?

This is the stock in trade of the hate-jockeys like Rush Limbaugh. Again read What's the Matter With Kansas or visit the Rockridge Institute's website to see how framing is aimed at the middle classes.

10. Sanctimony

Q: Are political discussions grounded in right-wrong, good-evil, us-them polarities?

From the "Evil Empire" to "Axis of Evil" the use of reducing everything to us-good verses them-evil is the hall mark of fascism. From the psychological perspective, this factor of sanctimony is the key symptom of the edifice of fascism. It is the chemical agent that fixates the whole mental structure. Everyone has moments where the need to control appears authoritarian, or where the normal desire to achieve can appear as a love of wealth. But such normal emotions do not become fascistic until they become fixated by the psychological process I call schizopolarity. In schizopolarity the polarities or oppositions that arise naturally as part of the development and function of consciousness become split (hence "schizo-") apart and seen as separate and warring entities. Their actual connection is concealed as if one could triumph over the other and vanquish it. This delusion of a split in the nature of polarities becomes fixated and affects the mind's ability to meet life's complexities in a flexible manner. Basically, the conceptual polarity of "good and bad" become split apart and the two poles of the split become aligned with perceptual polarities. When this happens, for example, patriarchy becomes identified with "what's good" and matriarchy is tinged with "what's bad." The list of the other nine symptoms are a list of one side of nine polarities that fascism identifies as good and which are used to support, rationalize, and maintain the fascist perspective and frame of mind.

Because of the connection between religion and the conception of good and evil, fascist regimes cannot exist without a sanctimonious religious (or religious-like) perspective that defines the rulers as inherently "good" and defines anyone who opposes their rule as "evil."

Q: Is religion (or a religion substitute) used as a tool of the State to homogenize the masses and control opposition?

Since the days of slavery when the Bible was used to justify the dehumanization of slaves, the image of God has played an important and essential role in the fascism of the USA. In communist countries the Communist Party line became and effective religous substitute as historical materialism supplied a more or less effective good vs. evil alternative. Again, among the list of attributes that is seen as making a political candidate unelectable in the USA is the label atheist. Bush called his Middle East adventurism a "crusade." Every time the name of God is evoked in a Bush speech supporting our attack and occupation of a foreign country we see religion used as a tool of the State.

Q: Are religion and the ruling elite tied together?

This is a variation on the previous point, but is important to appreciate as an item of fascism in the embodiment of leaders and elites. Where the leaders is portrayed to the masses by periodic and regular photo presentations of he and his wife attending church, participating in prayer breakfasts, making speeches to religious groups, etc., the media propaganda is tying the leader to religous values without questioning what those religious values are or whether or not the leader is actually living up to them.

Hillary Clinton's participation in the Senate's prayer group is another example that should raise significant bipartisan questions as it has with Steve Soto in The Left Coaster who reviewed a recent article in Mother Jones, "Hillary's Prayer," by Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet. Soto writes:

Ignorance cannot be an excuse here, because a Google search would tell you the Fellowship believes that Christian elites have a duty to rule the world, and serve Jesus Christ in a higher calling than their duties as leaders of nations. Plainly put, according to Sharlet, “the Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.” The notion that Christian elites should rule the world for the rest of us, and should lead their countries not for the benefit of all, but to pursue God’s plan as defined by the Fellowship and founder Doug Coe runs contrary to what this country was founded upon, and is anything but progressive.

Are we to assume that Hillary endorses what the Fellowship stands for, given her 14-year association? Alternately, is it possible that she doesn’t literally accept what the Fellowship espouses, or that she associates with them out of a lack of egalitarian and progressive faith options for senators and representatives inside Washington?

[Soto also asks,] But there is another question that deserves an answer as well. Why is it acceptable for both the National Prayer Breakfast and the singular Senate prayer group to be sponsored by a group advocating Christian theocracy and elitism?

Is it acceptable because the citizens are kept in the dark by their mainstream education and information media about this aspect of American fascism. But isn't it reassuring to see such a strong bipartisan support for this type of fascist element in Congress?

Q: Are tradition and revelation treated with near worship status?

Whether it is from the recesses of history or the recesses of imagination, tradition and revelation are treated as sacred cows that support the notion that political authority is not to be questioned. George Bush, when asked if he consulted with his father the previous president said that he consults with a higher father. Rather than this being taken as a sure sign of intellectual weakness, it was accepted unquestioningly by the media.

Q: In the name of moral certainty is critical analysis suspect and irrationalism valued?

The whole "War on Terror" is an example of this. In the aftermath of Powell's performance of deception at the UN the mainstream media did not critically analyze the "evidence" he presented and instead simply regurgitated it while calling his performance masterful. Even when the deception became unavoidable after the domestic alternative media and foreign press exposed the fallacies, the mainstream news media such as CNN portrayed it as "the mistaken WMD intelligence that was presented to the public" (emphasis added) rather than as the lies and deception that it was.

Fascism is Alive and Well ... Actually, Rampant.

This has been a somewhat sketchy outline of how to diagnose fascism in your own home nation. The purpose is to provide the 10-point reference of symptoms so that every citizen can look at their own society and government to see for themselves how fascism is very much present as the dominant political force on the planet. I encourage people to work together on diagnostic lists such as this to create greater public awareness of the actual symptoms of fascism, that fascism has actual symptoms, and that the symptoms of fascism are not some arcane knowledge held only by academics and kooks.

It is only the mainstream propaganda machine that sells you the story that fascism was defeated and vanquished in WWII and that the great powers of Western Civilization are diligently protecting your precious freedom. In fact, the connection between freedom and financing is never analyzed by the mainstream media because to do so would expose the media's connection to advertising financing as the centerpiece of the today's system of fascist propaganda.

For (small d) democrats Impeachment Is the Issue of the Day

Why should you care? Well, because in a democracy the People are sovereign. Think about that. It means that there is no king, queen, nobility, or anyone who has a greater authority to say what kind of nation we will be. You are as equally in control of this country as any other voter. Sure your control is "diluted" in ratio to the number of voters, but it is still your control.

It is the apathy and disorganized mental condition that propaganda creates that allows people like George Bush and Nancy Pelosi to take your sovereign control from you, because you are isolated in your thinking processes. We are only one election away from a change in any direction! If overnight, a majority got tuned-in to the same thought waves and voted for real change, real honesty, real compassion, then the country would change. But fear prevents it, and the fear is created by the propaganda system that is maintained and supported by both the Republicans and the Democratic parties.

The Democratic leadership, like Pelosi, need to be spanked. It is not that they "don't get it." They get it quite nicely, thank you. They get it that they can keep in power by distraction, by pretense, so they never have to deliver the goods. If they keep the big bad Republicans as the fall guy then they can keep the show going. And the political show they perform is no more real than professional wrestling. Sure they get real bruises, but it is all choreographed with the gentleman's agreement that at the end of the day the system won't be changed so that the program can continue next week.

Here is a hopeful sign that the grassroots are awakening. Dave Lindorff in his Counterpunch column titled "Excuse Us, Nancy Pelosi" passed along a letter from Kathy Ember, a Democratic Committee member in Pennsylvania, and president of the Kutztown Democratic Club.

I am the president of a very active grassroots Democratic club just outside Philadelphia in PA. Recently, I got an email from Nancy Pelosi, asking all of us to help build the grassroots.

EXCUSE me Nancy, but we have been working our butts off out here for years trying to do just that. WE are the ones that put that Democrats back in power in Congress. We've been there for you, but you have let us down by not holding the current administration responsible for their crimes.

Not only are you losing us...you are making it impossible for us to "build the grassroots". Do you know how people look at you now when you ask them to join the Democrats? They laugh in your face. Why, they want to know, should we join or support a party that has done nothing toward getting out of Iraq or impeaching this president?

I am in contact with other Democratic clubs across PA. Some have recently changed the word "Democrats" in their name to a lower case "d". Others have abandoned their association with the Democrats altogether and have formed instead "citizen action groups."

When will the Democrats in Washington wake up and realize that it's not impeachment that will hurt the party...it is the lack of it.

That's clear enough. But the Democratic leadership still believes it can ride the tiger's tail and not be accountable to the grassroots.

Look at the numbers. After being elected in sea change of party control, the Democratic leadership has now steered Congress into an historically low approval rating!

August 21, 2007
Congress Approval Rating Matches Historical Low
Just 18% approve of job Congress is doing

by Jeffrey M. Jones

GALLUP NEWS SERVICE

PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds Congress' approval rating the lowest it has been since Gallup first tracked public opinion of Congress with this measure in 1974. Just 18% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, while 76% disapprove, according to the August 13-16, 2007, Gallup Poll.

We have to assume the Democratic Party leadership is not "stupid." So why don't they "seem" to care? As I see it, their tunnel vision fixation on maintaining the two-party power sharing system with the Republicans means that they will not dare to do anything that would rock the structural boat. Of course, as the Clinton impeachment showed, the Republicans have no such qualms when it comes to exercising power. In fact the Republicans relish in such power plays because they know that as long as they can maintain that they are acting on their principles, that their base won't abandon them. They know that like a battered wife, the Democrats are too frightened to pull the plug on the two-party marriage of convenience. The Democrats on the other hand do not have any clear "principles" and would not assert them if they did because to do so would threaten the marriage.

So why should you care? Because if you don't care you are letting your country be ruled by people who don't care about your freedom. When the principle of the rule of law becomes a mere political expedient, then every other principle is a mere sham. If you don't care, then you are supporting the two-party dictatorship that has usurped the sovereignty of the people every bit as much as the one-party dictatorships do. Because in the end, while the two-party dictatorship allows for more "play" or "slack" in the totalitarian control, it maintains the limits of that control just as rigorously.

So when the grassroots can be manipulated to put the Democrats into majority in Congress, still the Democrats will do nothing to support the principles of democracy held by the grassroots if it looks like to do so would rock the boat of political bureaucracy. To say it another way, the Clinton impeachment achieved its purpose to hamstring Clinton without hamstringing the money behind the presidency and Congress. If Bush were to be impeached, the situation is different, because that would threaten the money behind the Congress and the presidency. It would threaten the war profits, the oil profits, and the political profits that profit the Democrats just as much as the Republicans.

Now let's look at how this factors into the excuses that John Conyers says publicly. I believe that Conyers, if left to decide for himself, would put impeachment on the table, but I also believe that Conyers is,if nothing else, a loyal person and his loyalty extends directly to the Democratic Party leadership who has stated clearly that impeachment is off the table. In that situation, Conyers won't contradict Pelosi, and instead he provides her with excuses.

So what does Conyers say? In his recent interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Conyers offers up once again the usual lame excuses.

We also are trying to make sure that we don’t bring resolutions or hearings that would put the election in jeopardy.

This is their key strategy point. They actually argue that the Democrats have a better chance in the 2008 elections if they do not pursue impeachment. I think Ember's letter and the Gallup Poll approval ratings demonstrate how hollow that strategy is.

We could close down the Congress -- I have been in more impeachment hearings than anybody in the House or the Senate. And our legislative attempts to reverse so many things would come to a stop.

Well, actually, until the Iraq war is closed down, the Congress too should be closed down for other business. That's not hyperbole. We are in the midst of perpetrating an ongoing criminal enterprise in Iraq. It is bad enough that we are stealing their resources and high jacking their vehicle of democratic self-determination, but we, by our presence as a hostile invading and occupying force, are the primary proximate cause of the thousands of thousands of civilian deaths, whether or not our troops are pulling the trigger.

Instead of reversing the war, the Democrats have continued to fund the war. Instead of reversing the Patriot Act Democrats have supported continuing unAmerican surveillance of citizens. Instead of reversing the flight of business, Democrats have supported enhanced trade with China. The list goes on and on. One wonders what the Democrats are crowing about when they claim to have reversed anything?

AMY GOODMAN: Why would impeachment hearings put the election in jeopardy?

REP. JOHN CONYERS: Well, because unless I’ve got the Constitution in one hand and a calculator in the other, so I’ve got any kind of hearings on removing both the President and the Vice President -- or putting it in reverse, remove the Vice President and then the President -- within the months remaining, would require 218 votes in the House of Representatives. That’s my calculator giving me this information. And then, in the Senate we need two-thirds to convict. Notwithstanding all of my progressive friends that would love to see me start impeachment hearings, those votes I do not think exist in the House of Representatives or in the US Senate.

This question about counting votes prior to impeachment investigation has not been clarified by Conyers. Is he actually talking about the 218 votes necessary to simply refer the matter of impeachment to his committee or is he talking about the 218 votes needed to adopt articles of impeachment after they might be recommended by the committee?

If the latter then it is a red herring at best, because then Conyers is pretending that the Nixon precedent has no educational value. Impeachment proceedings led to Nixon's resignation without the House ever voting on the bill of impeachment. Why? Because it was the hearings themselves that became convincing. More recently, we have seen Rove and Gonzales resign when the heat of investigations got too close. Impeachment hearings would shed light on the facts and create the opportunity for people to see the truth and identify why impeachment is warranted.

In our system of impeachment, the impeachment investigation is not supposed to start out with 218 votes in favor of impeachment itself. If Conyers is using this line of "not having 218 votes" as not having 218 votes in favor of impeachment, then Conyers is deliberately misleading the American people about the fundamental purpose of impeachment hearings which are to hear and decide whether to recommend or dismiss any action on impeachment to the full House.

The committee hearings should begin when there is simply enough probable cause to believe the president might have committed "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Under usual House Practice (see Section 6, page 540):

In most cases, impeachment proceedings in the House have been initiated either by introducing resolutions of impeachment by placing them in the hopper, or by offering charges in a resolution on the floor of the House under a question of constitutional privilege. Deschler Ch.14 Sec.5.

The House website on how bills work describes the usual hopper method in this way:

Introduction and Referral to Committee

Any Member in the House of Representatives may introduce a bill at any time while the House is in session by simply placing it in the "hopper" provided for the purpose at the side of the Clerk's desk in the House Chamber. The sponsor's signature must appear on the bill. A public bill may have an unlimited number of co-sponsoring Members. The bill is assigned its legislative number by the Clerk and referred to the appropriate committee by the Speaker, with the assistance of the Parliamentarian. (Emphasis added)

So, Putting those two sources together, it looks like impeachment would need to get an initial 218 votes for referral to committee only if the hopper method was not used. According to the House website, the hopper method is a routine referral to committee, if the Speaker approves the referral.

It appears that Speaker Pelosi is personally preventing the usual hopper method for referral to committee and that is what she means by "not on the table." Why has Conyers or the reporters interviewing him not made this clear? Thus it requires a resolution under constitutional privilege and 218 votes to refer impeachment to the committee only in order to get around Speaker Pelosi's apparent block at the hopper.

To get past Pelosi's block, the question is not about 218 votes to impeach, but about 218 votes to refer to committee for hearings on a recommendation or dismissal of impeachment charges. Any Representative who doesn't vote to refer the question to the committee is voting against impeachment even before the committee is allowed to put evidence on the record. That is a very hard vote to justify, because it is saying there should be no impeachment no matter what evidence is presented or what he has done. For example, the vote to refer to committee the impeachment charges against Nixon was 410 to 4. But after the hearings and the evidence only 6 of the committee's 17 Republicans voted to recommend articles of impeachment to the full House. Thus 11 Republicans still voted against. But only 4 voted against referral. So that shows that even though they were against impeachment when it mattered, they wouldn't vote against impeachment merely being referred to committee.

A representative who voted against even considering the evidence would be voting against a fair process and a hearing on the charges, not against articles of impeachment themselves. If that's the way they want to vote, then let them try to justify that to their constituents. Which way would Conyers and Pelosi vote?

If the chips were down and 218 would not support even a referral to committee, then those who didn't would really have their reelections put into jeopardy by impeachment becoming the central issue of their reelection. That is presumably the real reason that Pelosi doesn't want to put even the referral vote to the House.

After the evidence is in, a Representative can say he or she has reviewed the evidence and does or doesn't believe impeachment is warranted. But realistically, before even one item of evidence is considered, how many Representatives are not going to vote simply to refer the matter to the committee? As long as the Democratic leadership prevents the vote then we, the People, will never know. We will not have the Representative's vote as a matter of public record, no matter what Conyers' calculator is secretly whispering in his ear.

The committee hearings develop the evidence that should lead to the votes, not the other way around. After referral to the Judiciary Committee, the committee votes on the articles first, and then presents them to the full House. It is the presentation to the Judiciary Committee that organizes the evidence and forms the basis for writing the specific language for the articles of impeachment that then require a majority vote of the committee in order to put them before the full House.

By claiming to require 218 votes before he even allows the vote to refer to committee to be considered, Conyers is acting to close off an investigation before it can be started. It is not hard to think of a law enforcement metaphor that prevents an investigation. For example this is like the policemen who believes no jury would convict the perpetrator because he is an important member of the community, so the cop doesn't investigate and never hands over a report to the DA. If a majority of the House of Representatives is so bold as to vote against the basic idea of having a committee review whether there is enough evidence for impeachment or not, then the People need to know their names.

It appears that Conyers and the Democratic Party leadership are preventing a vote even on referral to committee in order to allow those who are against even considering impeachment from being exposed to public scrutiny and accountability.

If after the presentation of the evidence, there are not 218 votes to pass a bill of Impeachment to the Senate, then the Constitution has done its job, i.e., the prosecutor has reviewed the evidence and found it wanting. But until hearings are done and an actual bill containing articles of impeachment is up for a vote before the House, constituents throughout the nation just do not have the basis or avenue for lobbying their individual Representatives to vote for or against impeachment.

The Democrats and Conyers have established a shell game of excuses. Conyers is standing in the way of the voters and preventing us from weighing in on impeachment through our representatives by keeping impeachment off the table so our representatives can rebuff us by saying Conyers won't let it get on the table. Until there is a vote, each representative can hide behind the screen of obscurity. If there are not 218 Representatives who would even vote to refer impeachment to the Judiciary Committee, then that would end the matter quickly, the People would know who they are, and the People could decide if they should be reelected in 2008.

AMY GOODMAN: What would be the reasons you would list for impeachment, if you weren’t holding your calculator, just holding the Constitution?

REP. JOHN CONYERS: Oh, OK. Well, to me, we can accomplish probably as much as we would need to to make the record clear that there has been a great deal of violation of the sworn oath of office, abuses of power, through the hearings and inquiries that we can conduct. But it isn’t that -- and no one has ever heard me suggest that we don’t think that there is conduct that could be proven to be impeachable.

But when Ron Dellums and Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug and William Fitts Ryan of New York, when we -- Parren Mitchell -- when we introduced an impeachment resolution, the first one against a sitting president in over seventy-five years, when Richard Nixon was being investigated, it was at the beginning of his term. And although he had been overwhelmingly reelected, there was time for us to have the hearing. This -- the timing of an administration which will go down in history as probably one of the most disappointing, there isn’t the time here for it.

So, why doesn't Conyers remember that Sam Ervin also didn't want to investigate Nixon until he was forced by public pressure? If it took public pressure on Ervin it will take public pressure on Conyers as well.

Now we see Conyers playing the card of desperation by saying, "There isn’t the time here for it." Is that a hoot or what? Of course there is time. And of course he is doing everything in his power to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy by his own delaying tactics. I call this playing a desperation card because it is so lacking in substance. It is nothing more than B.S., i.e.,blowing smoke.

Why isn't there time? According to the History Place article on Nixon's impeachment, Sen. Sam Ervin began the Watergate investigation in February of 1973 for the purpose of investigating all of the events surrounding Watergate and other allegations of political spying and sabotage After a nearly year-long court battle over the release of Nixon's tapes, the three articles of impeachment against Nixon were approved by the House judiciary committee on the three days of July 27, 29, and 30, 1974. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. Thus, impeachment achieved its purpose from the beginning of the investigation to resignation in 18 months. There is no foreseeable reason for such a protracted delay of Bush's impeachment investigation in the courts. All the evidence against Bush is already in the public domain. It merely needs to be presented at a judiciary committee in an organized fashion to create the record. There are 17 months left in Bush's presidency and with no need for an original investigation like Watergate to occur we have plenty enough time.

In fact there was no preliminary investigation conducted by the House in Clinton's impeachment. According to the History Place entry on Clinton's impeachment, impeachment proceedings were initiated on October 8, 1998. The House and the Judiciary Committee did not need to conduct original investigations itself and instead relied upon testimony presented at the committee hearings. The Judiciary Committee sent a list of 81 questions to Clinton for him to either admit or deny under oath, and his responses then became the basis for one of the articles of impeachment. The committee voted on articles of impeachment on December 11, 1998, and upon the passage of H. Res. 611, Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, by the full House of Representatives. And the Senate trial lasted from January 7, 1999, until February 12, 1999. Thus, the impeachment and trial of Clinton took only four months. We have that much time.

There are books already published with the allegations of Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors. It would only take a relatively short time to present the case for impeachment by the appropriate witnesses. It should take only three or at most four months for the House to vote on articles of impeachment, but even if it took nine months, there would still be enough time for a Senate trial and impeachment would be worth it.

There is also the question of whether or not impeachment would be made moot by the end of Bush's term. In other words, the Constitution may allow impeachment of a president even after he has left office. Certainly it is arguable that if impeachment proceedings are begun while the president is in office, because Article I Section 3 of the Constitution provides that judgement may extend to "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of Honor, Trust or Profit under the United States" that an impeachment is not made moot simply by the president leaving office, because the judgement disqualifying from future office would still be an effective punishment. I would argue that leaving office would make impeachment moot only if removal from office were the only judgement available. [This is an interesting Constitutional question that I haven't researched yet. If anyone knows references to this question please email me.]

And besides, even if the Republicans could delay a vote on impeachment until January 2009 and that would make impeachment constitutionally moot, impeachment proceedings would still have been the right thing to do and in the name of upholding the rule of law. Conyers acts like he doesn't understand that the rule of law is an even more important legacy than whether or not Bush is able to run out the clock. By putting impeachment on the table now, Conyers would be saying that no matter how close to the end of a term a president is, he or she can't escape the checks and balances of our Constitutional democracy. However, by refusing to allow impeachment proceedings to go forward, it is Conyers who is preventing justice and it is Conyers who is thumbing his nose at our Constitutional system of protections. It is Conyers who is letting a criminal president get away with murder. It is Conyers who is establishing the precedent that a president doesn't have to worry in the least about committing high crimes and misdemeanors if he is near the end of his term.

If the People's sovereignty is not upheld at the very minimum by at least having hearing of the impeachment charges against George Bush, who is arguably the worst criminal president in our history, then Conyers and the Democratic Party are the one's who should be held responsible and accountable for aiding and abetting Bush's crimes. Not only that, they will be laying the foundation for the future crimes of future presidents even yet to be born.

More On the Impeachment Struggle: Response to Solomon's Response

Portside is again leaning to starboard by sending out Mark Solomon's follow up to his lame attack against the impeachment struggle.

Now Solomon tells us

One can readily agree in principle with those who argued that all elected officials have a moral duty to uphold the Constitution and to pursue impeachment of the Bush administration in the light of powerful evidence of its high crimes and misdemeanors. However, politics (especially in the USA) is not driven by principle, but by power relations and by struggle inherent in those relations. The configurations of power and resulting social struggles are often complex and not given to idealized standards. Such is the case with impeachment where tactical considerations are inevitable.

My word! Why do we have to put up with Mark Solomon telling us to throw our Constitutional principles out the window because "politics (especially in the USA) is not driven by principle"?

Solomon's argument that peace and justice activists should "seek a consensus and unify around shared goals" is only the false logic of assuming the conclusion, that is, his conclusion. If impeachment of the greatest living perpetrator of crimes against peace and justice and humanity is not part of the consensus, then there are no real shared goals, only fake ones.

Solomon portrays himself as the hero who can see through the complexities of the "power relations" of government and steer the rest of us confused idealists through the treacherous shoals of realpolitik. In the end Solomon is just telling us poor misguided idealists to be quiet about impeachment and let our betters in activism decide whether upholding the Constitution is a realistic struggle.

Solomon has his logical knickers in a twist. Our struggle is of the principle, by the principle, and for the principle, so that the principle of the rule of law shall not perish from this Earth.

His words beg the question, why is Solomon struggling so hard against impeachment? If Solomon is not up for the struggle to preserve the principle of Constitutional law, then he is the one who should just shut up and get out of the way!

Post Script: Haven't the peace and justice activists who are opposing impeachment noticed that the Democratic controlled Congress now has even lower approval ratings than George Bush? Those activists providing cover for Conyers and Pelosi are hiding their heads in the sand! The Democrats were elected to stop the war and put this president in his place! The Democrats have refused to do either. These two issues are inextricably entwined and the belief that they can be separated, with impeachment put off the table while we fight against the war, is only playing into the hands of Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership, who after all, are the ones tying Conyers hands on impeachment.

The Democrats had better see the writing on the wall. They had a mandate in 2006 and so far they are squandering it. By 2008 they may be too weak by their self-inflicted damage to keep a majority in Congress, much less win the presidency.

The Lessons of History: Juan Cole and George Bush

Juan Cole's recent essay "Pitching the Imperial Republic - Bonaparte and Bush on Deck" published at Tom's Dispatch once again shows why Cole is our most insightful Middle East observer. (This same essay is also available in The Nation retitled as "Bush's Napoleonic Folly".) Using his research for his new book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East he compares President Bush to Napoleon and the relevance and lessons of Napoleon’s expedition in Egypt to our current American occupation of Iraq.

THIS IS A MUST READ for anyone who accepts that history has any value. Otherwise, you might just as well forget all about history and accept the propaganda that Bush feeds you.

Here are a couple excerpts from this marvelous comparison of the two republican tyrants.

My own work on Bonaparte's lost year in Egypt began in the mid-1990s, and I had completed about half of Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East before September 11, 2001. I had no way of knowing then that a book on such a distant, scholarly subject would prove an allegory for Bush's Iraq War. Nor did I guess that the United States would give old-style colonialism in the Middle East one last try, despite clear signs that the formerly colonized would no longer put up with such acts and had, in the years since World War II, gained the means to resist them.

Both men were convinced that their invasions were announcing new epochs in human history. Of the military vassals of the Ottoman Empire who then ruled Egypt, Bonaparte predicted: "The Mameluke Beys who favor exclusively English commerce, whose extortions oppress our merchants, and who tyrannize over the unfortunate inhabitants of the Nile, a few days after our arrival will no longer exist."

Bonaparte's laundry list of grievances about them consisted of three charges. First, the beys were, in essence, enablers of France's primary enemy at that time, the British monarchy which sought to strangle the young French republic in its cradle. Second, the rulers of Egypt were damaging France's own commerce by extorting taxes and bribes from its merchants in Cairo and Alexandria. Third, the Mamluks ruled tyrannically, having never been elected, and oppressed their subjects whom Bonaparte intended to liberate.

This holy trinity of justifications for imperialism -- that the targeted state is collaborating with an enemy of the republic, is endangering the positive interests of the nation, and lacks legitimacy because its rule is despotic -- would all be trotted out over the subsequent two centuries by a succession of European and American leaders whenever they wanted to go on the attack. One implication of these familiar rhetorical turns of phrase has all along been that democracies have a license to invade any country they please, assuming it has the misfortune to have an authoritarian regime.

Liberty as Tyranny

For a democracy to conduct a brutal military occupation against another country in the name of liberty seems, on the face of it, too contradictory to elicit more than hoots of derision at the hypocrisy of it all. Yet, the militant republic, ready to launch aggressive war in the name of "democracy," is everywhere in modern history, despite the myth that democracies do not typically wage wars of aggression.

Here's a great example of the "liberation" of those who oppose "liberation". How does one spell "Falluja"? My how we have evolved! Resistance fighters were then called half-savage barbarians and now we call them terrorists.

"Heads Must Roll"

In both eighteenth century Egypt and twenty-first century Iraq, the dreary reality on the ground stood as a reproach to, if not a wicked satire upon, these high-minded pronouncements. The French landed at the port of Alexandria on July 1, 1798. Two and a half weeks later, as the French army advanced along the Nile toward Cairo, a unit of Gen. Jean Reynier's division met opposition from 1,800 villagers, many armed with muskets. Sgt. Charles Francois recalled a typical scene. After scaling the village walls and "firing into those crowds," killing "about 900 men," the French confiscated the villagers' livestock -- "camels, donkeys, horses, eggs, cows, sheep" -- then "finished burning the rest of the houses, or rather the huts, so as to provide a terrible object lesson to these half-savage and barbarous people."

Cole's history clearly shows that Bush (and those in Congress who continue to vote to fund the Iraq invasion and occupation) have not learned a thing from history. It can't even be said that Bush and his posse had learned from Napoleon's mistakes and crafted a new and improved invasion of liberation. No, instead from the phony rhetoric of "liberation" to the bombing of civilian areas of resistance Bush has merely repeated the pattern of Napoleon's delusions and depredations.

It is interesting to compare Cole's trenchant historical comparisons with Bush's feeble attempt to evoke history in his recent Asia speech. Most of the news reports about Bush's speech focused on his comparison to Vietnam and his claim that to pull out of Iraq now would result in disaster for the Iraqis and their neighbors as the pull-out from Vietnam did for the Vietnamese and Cambodians. Bush of course ignored the facts by conveniently forgetting the role of the US bombing in Cambodia in the rise of Pol Pot. Bush also conveniently forgot that the original partition of Vietnam by foreign powers was a non-starter and that there would be no end to the Vietnam conflict until there was a fair vote on reunification, a vote which the USA had promised Ho Chi Minh and then reneged on. Likewise today, the major news media ignore that the invasion of Iraq by foreign forces was a non-starter in terms of "nation building" and that until the illegally ensconced foreign troops are removed from Iraq that there can be no resolution to the creation of a civil government.

In the virtually unreported other portions of Bush's Asia speech Bush made reference to the continued occupation of Japan by US troops now going on for over 50 years. (Yes, we are still occupying Japan.) Mark Shields, the "liberal" analyst on PBS's The News Hour, pointed out two important differences: first, in the over 50 years of occupation of Japan not a single US soldier has been assassinated by a resistor to the occupation, and second, and most important in my view, during the reconstruction of Japan not a single reconstruction contract went to an American corporation. Thus, even when Japan provided an historical example of an occupation that succeeded, this most fundamental variable (of how to rebuild a nation by giving the contracts for reconstruction to the nationals) was ignored by Bush in favor of making his friends, cronies, and political contributors rich with US tax dollars. This is how the modern republicans and Republicans plunder the treasury.

If you care to learn from history don't believe George Bush, just read Juan Cole.