Slouching toward Gomorrah…or Fascism?

In 1996 former Supreme Court nominee, Robert H. Bork, authored his dystopian vision of modern Western society, “Slouching toward Gomorrah”. A thumbnail sketch of that book’s thesis, according to Wikipedia:

“Bork's thesis in the book is that American and more generally Western culture is in a state of decline and that the cause of this decline is modern liberalism and the rise of the New Left. Specifically, he attacks modern liberalism for what he describes as its dual emphases on radical egalitarianism and radical individualism.”

It is indisputable that Bork and his like-minded cohort, virtually all of the hard reich wing and neocons, detest the very idea of egalitarianism for this, of necessity, diminishes their perception of their own imagined superiority. Individualism is perceived as being fine for the exalted class (of course, Bork and his fellow travelers belong to this class) while it is anathema for the unwashed masses. This goes almost without saying.

For Bork and his reich wing cohort, egalitarianism is fine among those in the ‘lower classes’, however, it should never even be suggested that there is any equality whatsoever between the lumpenproletariat and the ‘masters of the universe’ class to which the reich wing belong.

Just as the concept of egalitarianism is all well and good (as long as it is confined strictly and solely to the lumpenproletariat), the concept of individualism is to be kept as the strict domain of the uber class. Yes, it is all well and good to be ‘quirky’, ‘peculiar’, ‘idiosyncratic’ or ‘unpredictable’ if one is a member of the anointed ‘elite’, however, to even try to imagine oneself as a unique and valuable entity for one of the despised lumpenproletariat is heresy of the highest order. If members of the lumpenproletariat began to see and value themselves as individuals deserving of value and respect, why chaos would ensue! It would become ever so much more difficult for the ‘elite’ managerial class to sell whatever predigested pablum to the masses that was in the ‘elite’s’ interest.

Rather than ‘slouching toward Gomorrah’, as Bork suggests, it seems far more evident that we are, as a nation and a society, ‘slouching toward fascism’. As was pointed out by the father of modern fascism, Benito Mussolini:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

In the minds of the über class, every combination of corporate power is to be applauded, nay, even aided by the State at each and every turn. Massive state sponsored corporate welfare, relaxation of any and all regulations, even the selection of ‘corporate leaders’ to head governmental regulatory agencies and boards is to be celebrated. However, the very thought of allowing, permitting or enabling members of the lumpen to in any way combine to better their lot, be it through unions, collective bargaining or any other conceivable means of self organization is simply beyond the pale.

As is obvious to any who have eyes to see and a mind to cogitate, at least since the time of Reagan, the American society has been going ‘back to the future’. Hard won workers’ rights have been eviscerated, anti-monopoly statutes have either been repealed or simply remain totally unenforced. The Supreme Court, at least since the Burger court, has been drifting reichward. Since the ascension of Rehnquist, followed now by Roberts and with the addition of Alito, that reichward drift has become a very sharp turn to starboard indeed. Individual rights, workers’ rights, minority rights have all suffered severely. Under Rehnquist and Roberts, the rights of property, capital and the State have far outpaced and displaced the rights of workers’, minorities and the common man.

So, the cogent question is, are we ‘slouching toward Gomorrah’ or have we been ‘slouching toward fascism’? To this writer, that ‘slouching toward fascism’ has turned into an all out sprint.

Scooter and Martha and Paris, Oh My!
An examination of ‘justice’ for the rich and especially the powerful

Unless one were in a coma over the last 3 months it would be impossible to miss the myriad stories on Paris Hilton, especially the manufactured furor over her release from jail after a total of one day. Many of the loudest haranguers were from the retributive punitive conservatives, oddly enough, the very same group who howled the loudest over Scooter Libby’s conviction and applauded the loudest at the commutation of his sentence.

What is often missed in all the fulminating over the ‘light’ treatment of Paris Hilton is the following:

1. The ‘crime’ for which Paris was convicted was a misdemeanor; literally, “An offense less serious than a felony.”;
2. Paris was jailed for ‘operating a vehicle on a suspended license’; not DWI, not for an accident involving property damage or personal injury;
3. With the immense and intense degree of jail overcrowding, it is illogical to jail someone who poses virtually no danger of flight.
4. A sentence of ‘home detention’ would have been more than sufficient a punishment, especially for a notorious ‘party girl’ who would have been put ‘out of the loop’ for the time of her detention.

In the case of Martha Stewart the ‘common knowledge’ is that she was convicted and imprisoned for violating SEC rules. Of course, like the large percent of the American public who still believe that Saddam Hussein was guilty of either planning or funding the 911 terrorists, this ‘common knowledge’ is wrong. What Martha Stewart was actually convicted of was of lying to the FBI. This was not lying to a grand jury. This was not perjury on the stand. In both those cases, the offense is lying while under oath! In Martha’s case, the misstatements or lies were made to the FBI during an interview; not in a deposition, not a court action, but an interview with the FBI. As opposed to depositions and court actions, Martha did not have a chance to review her records and could, very plausibly, have made a mistake in recollection, a defense far less plausible in a deposition, grand jury appearance or a trial.

In the case of the infamous Scooter Libby, he was actually convicted of multiple instances of perjury and obstruction of justice. The reichwing echo chamber’s spurious claim that ‘there was no underlying crime’ is simply fallacious and fanciful. By that self same standard, the perjury which formed the basis for the impeachment of Bill Clinton was indeed perjury which did not rest on any ‘underlying crime’. The lie in deposition of Bill Clinton was of a personal nature and involved a consensual sexual encounter and there was no crime or possible crime that this lie was made to obscure. Scooter Libby, by contrast, lied under oath to a grand jury so as to obstruct a criminal investigation and so committed repeated acts of perjury which are felonies.

Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby is a continuation of Scooter’s obstruction of justice. Now that Scooter has been freed of the possibility of becoming 350 lb. Bubba’s girlfriend in prison, he has absolutely no motivation to reveal the identities of those above him in the chain of command who were involved in or perhaps even initiated the release of top secret information the release of which seriously compromised national security.

In summation what we see is that simply being rich and notorious, like Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart, is not sufficient to have relatively innocuous charges treated appropriately. In fact, the notoriety of the two women may well have led to their cases being treated disproportionately harshly. In Paris’s case we have a bubble headed bleached blonde being treated like a hardened criminal. In Martha’s case we have a high visibility, powerful woman who, interestingly enough, was a Democrat, being treated much more harshly than Republican ‘white collar’ criminals whose crimes were far more egregious and resulted in far wider damage to the public at large. In the case of I. Scooter Libby, convicted of multiple serious felonies, the underlying crimes that he was perjuring himself to cover seriously damaging the intelligence community and national security, he will get to go scot-free; not even serving as much jail time as Paris did even at the time of her first, premature, release.

So, the motto must be: “Being rich is wonderful. Being famous is nice. Knowing where the bodies are buried…priceless!”

In the Footsteps of Whom?

After watching a number of "Star Wars" commemorations, it dawned on me. We, as a human society, have gone from this:


to this:

and now to this:

and this:

In the eyes of the world, at the very least since America's Iraq Attack (and, arguably, longer) we are now treading in the footsteps of storm troopers of yore.

Though the vast majority of the media, even some 'liberal' media, continue to blither and blather about 'our brave troops, protecting our way of life', the simple fact is that Bush, unwittingly (how else!) actually spoke the truth on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 when he stated that "combat operations in Iraq had ended." The simple truth is, the 'War in Iraq' had ended. From that point onward, it was no longer a 'war'; it was an occupation, pure and simple.

Why won't we call it an 'occupation'? There are a multitude of reasons. For one, in an occupation the occupier has many obligations under international law, none of which have we adhered to. Another is it is very much a different thing to tell the grieving relatives "Your beloved died fighting for this country." than "Your beloved died in an illegal occupation of a sovereign foreign country."

Please remember, the German people were also told that their relatives in the Wehrmacht were fighting to protect them, all the while the Wehrmacht were occupying foreign lands, killing foreign civilians, and destroying foreign infrastructure. Are we, in any material way, different from Wehrmacht troops in the Soviet Union, France, or Poland? We should think about it seriously.

Media Blindness

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair

Today, in light of the blatantly obvious failure of the MSM* over at least the last 6 years and, arguably, since the inception of the Reagan administration, it is more than necessary to reflect on the above quote by Upton Sinclair.

It is obvious to any but the most Kool Aid saturated conservative/neocon camp followers that the MSM has fallen flat on its face during virtually the entirety of the GW Bush administration. We have the blatant examples of Judy Miller’s “reporting” leading up to the Iraq invasion. However, just as obviously we have the outright ‘cheerleading’ of those ‘liberal’ pillars of the MSM, the New York Times and the Washington Post, preceding the invasion and continuing mostly to this day of the Iraq occupation (let us not mince words here). What’s even more horrifying is the current war whooping of the self same ‘liberal’ pillars (and, obviously, most of the rest of the MSM) pushing for ‘firm action’ against Iran, up to and including the ‘limited’ use of nuclear weapons!

Why is this so? Especially in light of the MSM’s glaringly obvious errors with regard to the entire Iraq debacle; the ready acceptance of the existence of Iraqi ‘WMD’, the unquestioned reliance on questionable statements issued by the Administration, the conjured ‘ties’ to Al-Qaeda, the acceptance of fairy tales of Iraqi involvement of 9/11? Again, Sinclair’s quote gives us the answer. The Establishment media has degenerated into little more than a mouthpiece and megaphone for the Establishment itself. The incestuous relationship between the ‘media elite’ and their primary sources, the ‘political elite’ virtually precludes any serious adverse questioning of the ‘political elite’. Ditto for any serious questioning of any current ‘common knowledge’. If the ‘accepted’ political/media meme is that “Iraq has and continues to develop WMD.”, then the MSM (and especially the pillars of the Establishment media, be it print or electronic) firmly slams the door marked ‘Case Closed’ on any dissonant opinion which runs contrary to that meme.

Now, lest the ‘liberals’ out there in the audience start clapping and shouting, “Yeah, that’s right!”, let us recall that that ‘liberal’ darling, Slick Willy Clinton, though harassed and harangued by the MSM for his personal failings (and they indeed were myriad), was given as much a free pass as GW Bush has been in undermining the Constitution (let’s not forget that many of the provisions that were included in the Patriot Act were elucidated during the Clinton Administration), the beginning of the destruction of civil liberties in the US (starting with the raid on the compound at Waco and proceeding thru the "The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996" and thence to the extraordinarily harsh "Immigration and Nationality Act" of 1996). Though harassed, harangued and harried about truly inconsequential private indiscretions, the MSM was in the main either mute or approving of all the above mentioned acts that were so very deleterious of civil liberties in this country and, in point of fact, laid many a foundation for the further destruction of civil liberties that are so egregious a mark of the present administration.

But, perhaps the single most obvious example of Establishment and Establishment Media (MSM) perfidy and disingenuousness was the entire frame and reporting on the situation in the now late Yugoslavia. Granted, the first explicit bricks in this wall of perfidy were laid by the Bush I administration in December of 1991 when the U.S. followed Germany’s lead in illegally recognizing the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia during the Maastricht Treaty negotiations. Illegal due to the fact that such recognition was in blatant violation of the Helsinki Final Act to which all, the U.S., the European Union countries and Yugoslavia were all signatory. The Helsinki Final Act in pertinent part states:

“III. Inviolability of frontiers
The participating States regard as inviolable all one another's frontiers as well as the frontiers of all States in Europe and therefore they will refrain now and in the future from assaulting these frontiers.

Accordingly, they will also refrain from any demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any
participating State.

IV. Territorial integrity of States
The participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States.

Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force.

The participating States will likewise refrain from making each other's territory the object of military occupation or other direct or indirect measures of force in contravention of international law, or
the object of acquisition by means of such measures or the threat of them. No such occupation or acquisition will be recognized as legal.”

However, the unilateral ‘recognition’ by ”the West” of the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia was, quite obviously, a violation of both the ‘Inviolability of frontiers’ and the ‘Territorial integrity of States’ cited above. For those wishing to get a better understanding of this complex question, please read the entirety of the Helsinki Final Act here.

Perhaps most egregious was the full court press of the media, from the very outset, for ‘advocacy journalism’ and totally eschewing traditional even handed, fact based journalism. Perhaps ‘first among equals’ in the advocacy journalism field was Christiane Amanpour. The matchless Ms. Amanpour started from her own personal bias as both an Iranian elite and a Muslim. From the outset every claim of Alija Izetbegovic’s Muslim ‘government’, no matter how outlandish, no matter how inflammatory, no matter on the absence of evidence, was transmitted by Amanpour and her myriad imitators as absolute and proved truth. Much if not most Western, especially U.S. ‘reporting’ done during the Bosnian War was done from the environs of Sarajevo, capital of the Izetbegovic government. This is akin to the ‘reporting’ coming to us from the Green Zone in Baghdad today. When infrequent excursions were outside of Sarajevo the media was always supplied with Muslim interpreters (since, as in Iraq, no one spoke the local language nor knew much if anything of the local history and culture). It was primarily on the basis of such egregiously biased reporting that the Clinton administration (not unlike the early days of happy news coming from Iraq) made much of its Balkan policy.

It should be noted here that GW Bush simply built on Bill Clinton’s horrendous example of illegal war (Clinton, like GW Bush, received NO Security Council imprimatur to launch his illegal war on Yugoslavia). Granted and admitted, GW bush’s illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been larger disasters than Clinton’s 78 day bombardment of Serbia in 1999.

It also begs to be noted here that in the entire mess in Yugoslavia, the MSM cleaved to the Clinton (Amanpour, CNN) line every bit as closely as it did to GW Bush’s line, particularly in the run up to war and the early days of the occupation.

In conclusion we should note, the ownership of the MSM (which, thanks to Bill Clinton’s “Telecommunications Act of 1996”) has shrunken to a very few corporate hands. With the media consolidating into fewer and fewer hands (virtually all of whom have business before the FCC) the ‘news’ will continue to be heavily massaged and will continue, inexorably, to follow the stinking winds emanating from the cesspool that is Washington, D.C. and the corporatists that are our true masters.

*MSM - Main Stream Media

Welcome to Pottersville: The Batmobile Lost a Wheel…#links

Welcome to Pottersville: The Batmobile Lost a Wheel…#links

Gravel Won’t Be Buried

Mike Gravel, anti-war ex-Senator from Alaska, was the big surprise at the 4/26/2007 Democratic Presidential Candidates debate.



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AmeriKKKa as Mr. Magoo

Just for a bit of context for those who are not acquainted with or don’t remember Mr. Magoo:



From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mr. Quincy Magoo is a cartoon character created by John Hubley in 1949, for UPA. Hubley based the character on his former professor Francis Peabody Magoun, who bore some physical resemblance to the character. Voiced by Jim Backus (also famed in popular culture for his role as Thurston Howell III in the 1960s sitcom "Gilligan's Island"), Quincy Magoo is a wealthy, short-statured retiree who gets into a series of sticky situations as a result of his nearsightedness, compounded by his stubborn refusal to admit the problem, in which the affected people (or animals) think that he is a lunatic, rather than just being near-sighted.

Additionally, though not noted in the Wikipedia reference, at the end of each miraculous episode where, through sheer dumb luck or fortuitous happenstance Magoo emerges unscathed (though often causing immense havoc in his wake) he would wryly comment to himself, “Magoo! You’ve done it again!”

I recently saw a Mr. Magoo cartoon again when, at the end of the cartoon Magoo is congratulating himself, that it struck me: AmeriKKKa IS Mr. Magoo!

At the very least since the post WWII period, as AmerKKKa has bestrode the world stage as one of the pre-eminent world powers (and, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, as THE single world hyper power), she has been evincing the same near totally blind, blundering mien of Mr. Magoo, less his much more benign character. What do I mean? Let us count merely a few of the ways.

1. Iran - 1953 Because Mohammad Mossadegh, the legally and legitimately elected Prime Minister of Iran was determined to claim a more reasonable percentage of the oil revenues for Iran (and because he had enforced the Parliament’s nationalization decree against the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later to become British Petroleum, BP) the British determined that Mossadegh must go and a more pliant ruler (who in this case was Shah Reza Pahlavi) must be installed. So Operation Ajax was born. Through a variety of clandestine operations and maneuvers (led by Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson), a coup was fomented and the Shah was installed. And, it worked. For 26 years. At which time the Shah was forced to flee Iran and was replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeni. At which time the American Embassy was attacked by a mob of enraged (due to US involvement in overthrow of Mossadegh and our unquestioning support of the Shah) Iranian students and the embassy staff was taken hostage and kept so for 444 days. In 1953 like Magoo we wryly commented to ourselves, “Magoo! You’ve done it! (This being the first CIA overthrow) So, just like Mr. Magoo, we blithered and blundered into the internal affairs of Iran and so created a monstrous situation that has plagued us ever since.
   
   2. Guatemala - 1954 Following our glowing ‘success’ in Iran in 1953, the CIA, at the behest of United Fruit, went back to its bag of tricks seeking to overthrow the legal President, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. This they managed to do and, again in the words of Wikipedia, “…was ousted in a coup d'état organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, known as Operation PBSUCCESS, and was replaced by a military junta, headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, plunging the country into chaos and long-lasting political turbulence. [emphasis added]
   
   Time skip; numerous other ill advised interventions yielding, at best, temporary benefits but long term damage. Now that I’ve whet your appetites, I commend you to do a little solo research, don’t want you to think I’m picking and choosing here.
   
   3. Iraq - 1990 The manufactured crisis that became ‘Desert Storm’ (the Gulf War) and began the murderous chain of events that has led to the incomparable disaster that is Iraq today.
   
   Prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein (who had been a long term CIA asset and who had been heavily aided by the U.S. during the 8 year long bloodletting that was the Iran-Iraq War) had consulted with U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie to clarify the U.S. position on Iraq’s ‘occupation’ of Kuwait. Kuwait had been slant-drilling into Iraq’s oil reservoirs and was being extremely unwilling to even negotiate with Iraq on these matters and certainly weren’t about to stop stealing Iraq’s oil (primarily because they had been encouraged by G.H.W. Bush to stand firm; America would ‘protect’ them). Ambassador Glaspie was instructed to state that: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America."(Wikipedia)
   
   Upon receiving the above apparent ‘blessing’ of the United States, Saddam ‘invaded’ Kuwait to terminate their slant drilling practices (and to extract some payback for the oil that had been stolen in the period prior. It was this invasion of Kuwait that provided G.H.W. Bush his causus belli for the initiation of ‘Desert Storm’.
   
   4. Yugoslavia - 1991-1999 Even though Yugoslavia’s internal affairs had been meddled with at least since the Reagan Administration, part of the Reagan Administration’s worldwide war with the ‘Evil Empire’, the real disaster began during the G.H.W. Bush Administration. The Bush I administration cut off all aid for Yugoslavia unless each republic essentially voted to renounce their federation which formed the country of Yugoslavia. This was brought to a head in December 1991 when the newly reunited Germany firmly and insistently backed the secession and recognition of its Nazi era allies, Slovenia and Croatia. Blackmailing the Europeans by holding hostage the negotiations in Maastricht to form the European Union and pressuring the Bush I administration, the European Community jointly and severally violated international law in the form of the Helsinki Final Act which guaranteed the “inviolability of national borders and respect for territorial integrity”. (Wikipedia) All of the members of the EC (future EU), Yugoslavia and the United States were all signatories of the Helsinki Final Act and were bound by this treaty.
   
   This pattern was continued with the 1992 recognition of Bosnia as a sovereign nation, again in violation of the Helsinki Final Act.
   
   A detailed description of the continued and repeated violations of international laws would require a paper in and of itself. Suffice it to say that the period 1991-1999 in Yugoslavia was a study in blunder, bombast, and simple unadulterated lunacy on the part of Albright, Blair, Clinton and the West. Without any understanding of the recent history, language, culture of the peoples that made up Yugoslavia, the West and particularly the U.S. were blinded by domestic political concerns as well as a heretofore unseen campaign of biased propaganda and PR.
   
   In the final analysis, due to the continual blundering intervention of the West (i.e., U.S.), 2 Muslim dominated states were established in the heart of Europe (Bosnia and Kosovo) and provided a haven and a training area for several of the 9/11 hijackers. Blowback is a bitch.
   
   5. Iraq - 2003 We have come almost full circle. Again, as was the case in Bosnia and Kosovo (see above) on the basis of manufactured casus belli, manufactured ‘intelligence’ and just plain lies, G.W. Bush (Bush II) invaded Iraq. Though combat operations were concluded by May, 2003, Mr. Magoo’s AmeriKKKA has deluded itself into believing that a war is still being fought (true, 650,000 Iraqis have expired as well as 3,000 Americans) but, this is and has been an occupation, not a war.
   
   So, just in the extremely short exposition above (note, I have not even touched on such matters as the Korean War, the War in Vietnam, the endless and constant ‘interventions’ by whatever name in Central America) that we have a rather prolific record of blundering, murderous interventions that, even granting the best of all possible intentions, simply do not yield the ‘golden fruit’ the American people are constantly told they will. We are like a blinded bull in a china shop, very adept at wrecking the place and of little or no utility in cleaning up the mess and putting the pieces back together.
   
   Worse yet, because of this record of truly disastrous intervention, we have lost virtually all the ‘good will’ and kind feelings of people around the world that we had had as late as 1945 (even excepting such ‘minor’ matters as nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki). As each day comes upon us, we are being more and more generally perceived not unlike Nazi Germany in 1939. Not unlike Imperial Japan in 1937 when they committed the Rape of Nanking.
   
   And, unlike the likable Mr. Magoo, we can no longer say ‘Ah Magoo! You’ve done it again!’ 9/11 has shown us and the world just how much venom we have created worldwide with our hubristic attitude and actions. Care to guess what awaits us?