FASCIST AMERICA: In Ten Easy Steps

Fascist America is a thought provoking essay by Naomi Wolf in which she identifies the basic blueprint for fascism and asks how far the Bush/Cheney administration has gone towards implememnting this blueprint in the US.

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Fascist America: In ten easy steps

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Interestingly I heard Wolf being interviewed on the radio a few days ago. She said that a friend of hers who had lost relatives (I think it was relatives) in the Holocaust had been telling her for some time about how fascistic the US is becoming, but Wolf thought this was an extreme reaction. But when Wolf looked into it she was surprised by what she found. Wolf said that she was escpecially struck by similarities between changes in German politics in the early 30's and changes in US politics today. Then as now, people are expected to surrender civil liberties for the sake of National Security. Then as now, people are told that this is necessay because of a marginalised, exaggerated and much fabricated threat. (Then as now, a false flag stood at the summit of these changes?)

FILM: Loose Change - Final Cut

It was just over a year ago whilst flicking through some YouTube videos that I first came across the documentary Loose Change. I'd only had access to the internet for a couple of months and in that short time nothing had left me as gobsmacked as this film. I even recall watching it again as soon as it finished - I literally couldn't get my head around what I'd just witnessed. In time, after reading various studies and accounts of the events of 9/11, I came to realize that whilst many of the questions raised by Loose Change were justified and salient, many of its assertions were not. A second edition of the film didn't resolve these problems. The film nevertheless introduced me to a lot of a lot of questions which previously I'd been completely unaware.

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On 11th November 2007 Loose Change - Final Cut was released. I'm pleased to say it's a completely new film from beginning to end. More importantly, it is restrained in its assertions and based on verifiable information and eyewitness testimony. This can in no small part be due to the involvement of David Ray Griffin who acted as a script consultant and fact checker for the film.

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As I write I've seen the film twice. However over the past day the film has been removed from all free access sites (at least the ones I know of). Rather than detailing the content of the film I'd like to mention just one issue, covered by the film, which reveals just how criminal and murderous the current Bush/Cheney adminstration really is (as if you need telling).

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You will remember the vast pyroclastic clouds of dust that consumed lower Manhatten on 9/11. This dust was a highy toxic coctail containing - in regard to WTC's 1 & 2 - 200,000lb's of aesbestos, 800,000lb's of lead from around 100,000 computers, mercury from tens of thousands of fluorescent light bulbs, radio-active material from smoke detectors and large quantities of concrete and glass which was pulverised into tiny particles when the buildings came down. Jenna Orkin, a Brooklyn resident and part of the World Trade Centre Environmental Organization, described the alklinity of the air as the equivalent of drain cleaner.

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Given all these toxins it's clear that anyone caught up in the immediate aftermath of the building collapses was at great risk of serious and potentially fatal damage to their health. This risk would remain for many weeks in and around ground zero. In spite of knowing this, in the days after 9/11, rather than warning first responders, workers and New York residents of the dangers of unprotected exposure to the air, the Environmental Protection Agency, under orders from the White House, issued false reassurances to the public. All EPA press releases were sent to the White House for approval and were edited to 'add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones'. Indeed first responders and rescue workers were actively encouraged not to wear protective breathing masks for fear that this might alarm the public. A week after 9/11 Christie Whitman, head of the EPA, announced that the 'air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink'. This was a lie. And it was a lie told at the behest of the White House in order that Wall Street be reopenned.

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According to Loose change - Final Cut, 70% of the 40,000 ground zero rescue workers have developed respitory problems, 100's have developed dust related cancers and to date over 80 have died. Many predict that this is only the beginning of a health disaster that will in time kill and cripple many more people than the initial 9/11 attack. This is manslaughter at the hands of the US government and the EPA.

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A portion of the proceeds of Loose Change - Final Cut will be donated to the Feal Good Foundation, a group devoted to supporting first responders and educating people on the catastrophic effects of the aftermath of 9/11.

FILM: Orwell Rolls In His Grave

Orwell Rolls In His Grave is a film which asks whether America has become an 'Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth'.

The film shows how a memo written in 1971 by corporate lawyer Lewis Powell - The Powell Memorandum - started the Neo-Cons and corporate elite on a mission to control and manipulate the media for their own gain. In the memo Powell said that 'consumer activists' were infecting the general population with an anti-corporate bias, a message which soon circulated around many of America's most wealthy industrialists. One of those industrialists, Mellon Scaife, following Powell's memo, paid $250,000 to set up the Heritage Foundation, the first Neo-Con group devoted to influencing and controlling the media.

The film goes on to chart how the Neo-Con's and Corporate elite have steadily come to control the mainstream media. And of course, this has not come to be without casualties: namely democracy and a free press. In 1987 under the Raegan administration - in a move that Hitler or indeed any fascist tyrant would have proud of - the 'Fairness Doctrine' was eliminated from US law, meaning that the media were no longer compelled to air opposing views. Another fascistic gem was accomplished in 1996 under the Clinton administration. Behind closed doors the rules of the airwaves were re-written in the Telecommunications Act. No longer were independent radio stations protected from corporate take overs. And lo and behold, a company called Clear Channel - with board members who funded both the Clinton and George W Bush political campaigns - went from owning a few radio stations to owning almost 1100, they also owned a further 236 stations overseas. Clear Channel soon had access to 110million American listeners and owned 47 of the top 50 listenned to radio stations in the US. There were dissenters, of course. However the three major US news networks devoted a total of only 19 minutes air-time, over 9 months, to the implimentation of Telecommunications Act. The dissenters were silenced, and they were silenced thanks to Raegan's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine: opposing views were simply and lawfully ignored.

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As the trailer says, in March 2003, as America and Britain began their hostile and criminal invasion of Iraq, a CNN/Gallop poll revealed that 69% of American's believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Are we in an Orwellian world where 'outright lies can pass for the truth'?

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[Watch the full film here.]

Joined up Journalism

'Burning Chilli Sparks Terror Fear' hails the BBC on Wedenesday 3rd October. But Osama wasn't anywhere to be seen. And by no stretch of the imagination could the culprit, a 9lb pot of burning red hot chilli peppers, be said to have links to Al-Qaeda. No. The story is in actual fact pretty drab. Some people were cooking, burning chilli's as per some recipee, some other people noticed the smell, called 999, the police came, firefighters came, both realized that the smell was the smell of people cooking chilli's, and that was that. The headline should in fact be: 'People Over-React to Cooking'. But the press is never slow to find a story that can have the word 'terror' crowbarred into the headline.


'World Troubles Affect Parenthood' hails the BBC on Monday 8th October. A YouGov survery carried out on behalf of the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) reports that the greatest fear of 70% of the UK population is 'Terrorism'. Fifteen percent are so concerned that they can't bring themselves to have children. Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the MHF, says: "The world is currently facing a number of different threats that seem to be resulting in a general level of heightened anxiety..." Well, the greatest anxiety-inducing threat is the press with their crowbars. How about you stop bombarding us with these bizarre and tedious 'terror' stories -whose purpose is neither to inform nor enlighten but to constantly scare the shit out of us - and let us get on with our lives in the plain and simple knowledge that the real 'terror' threat - aside from the one posed by the media - is actually pretty God damn miniscule. The headline should in fact be: 'Relentless Terror Stories Induce Fear'. The equation isn't complicated, is it?

BREAKING NEWS: All The Mandela's Are Dead!

I'm sad to have to announce that all the Mandela's are dead. The news was broken yesterday at a press conference with US president George W Bush. In his own inimitable words he announced:

"I thought an interesting comment was made — somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, “Now, where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

See the announcement here.

BOOK: What Uncle Sam Really Wants - Noam Chomsky [part 1]

At the end of World War II the US had 50% of the worlds wealth and only 6.3% of the worlds population. According to Chomsky - quoting George Kennan, head of US State Department planning until 1950 - America's post World War II task was to "devise a pattern of [international] relationships which will permit [the US] to maintain this position of disparity." Crucial to this task was the need to combat and dispell the "dangerous idea that the government has direct responsibilty for the welfare of the people." US planners called this dangerous idea Communism.

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One Good Apple

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US planners realised that the greateat threat to continued US supremacy was what they called 'Third World nationalism' or 'ultranationalism'. In other words, the threat was foreign governments which were responsive to 'popular demands for the immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses'. Why was this a threat? Well, for two reasons. Firstly, the US required 'governments that favour private investment of domestic and foreign capital, production for export, and the right to bring profits out of the country.' That is, the US sought to develop or enforce relationships with foreign governments whereby Gross National Production (GNP) would be increased but not for the people of that country, rather for the benefit of US investors and a small domestic business elite (an 'economic miracle'). Incredibly this meant that as a country increased its production levels it simultaneously increased the amount of poverty and starvation amongst its people. Secondly, were any government seen to be becoming 'nationalistic' - that is, increasingly concerning itself with the welfare and living standards of the masses - the danger was that people in neighbouring countries would see this, realise it was possible in their own country, and thus demand it of their own governments. To US planners, Third World nationalism (or democracy, or good government, call it what you will) was a virus which could not be allowed to spread.

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We all know about Nicaragua...?

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In his film Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (2003) Australian journalist and documentary maker John Pilger estimates that the US has attacked and overthrown governments in 72 countries since World War II; using means such as manipulating elections, destroying popular social movements, political subversion, bombing, terror, torture, using chemical weapons, and assasinations. Indeed, the US has a school devoted to teaching predomininatly Latin American soldiers in some or all of these methods: the School of America's at Fort Benning, Georgia (recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). One of the countries that fell foul to the US and this 'school' was Nicaragua.

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In the late 70's and early 80's, Oxfam reported that in Nicaragua, under the Sandanista government, there was a 'substantial effort to address inequalities in land ownership and to extend health, educational and agricultural services to poor peasant families.' Elsewhere Oxfam described the strength of the Nicaraguan governments commitment to 'improving the condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the development process'. In 1983, Jose Figueres - the so called 'father' of Costa Rican democracy - declared that "for the first time, Nicaragua has a government that cares for its people." How was this met in the US? George Shultz, US Secretary of State under Reagan, described the Nicaraguan Sandinista government as a 'cancer'. And thus the US set about cutting it out: it launched the contra war, and it compelled 'the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to terminate all projects and assistance' to Nicaragua. 'Because they weren't under US control,' Chomsky says, 'they had to suffer and die.' And they did suffer and they did die.

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You might wonder as to how or why the American people would stand for this? Well, according to Chomsky, there's at least two reasons. Firstly, during the 1970's, US television networks - all networks - devoted exactly one hour of coverage to Nicaragua (and this was entirely about the 1972 Managua earthquake). During this time Nicaragua was ruled by the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza. For the US, so long as Somoza's tyranical rule was maintained, Nicaragua was of no concern. When this tyrany was threatened by Sandinistan democracy, it was then that Nicaragua became a problem. And thus, secondly, 'the attack against Nicaragua was justified by the claim that if we don't stop them there, they'll be pouring across the border at Harlington, Texas - just two days drive away...' That this claim was rediculous, implausable, absurd, didn't matter. Most Americans bought it without question. More recently this exact same rhetorical device - fight them there so we don't have to fight them here - has been used to justify atrocities in the middle east.

[To be continued.]

The North American What?

The North American Union (NAU) is a project intended to intergrate the US, Canada and Mexico into a single economic, constitutional and militarized entity - an entity comparible to the European Union (or, for that matter, the African Union, the Asian Union, the Pacific Union, etc). Many Americans aren't even aware that this project exists, never mind that it has actually been in progress for well over two years.

In Crawford, Texas in March 2005, George W Bush hosted Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vicente Fox in order to establish the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (or SPP). This agreement is widely seen as a front which will eventually - without any kind of congressional approval - lead to the dissolving of US Mexican/Canadian borders and the introduction of a new currency, the Amero. CNN's Lou Dobbs (one of the very few) reported the SPP agreement - not without considerable astonishment - whilst this whole affair slipped under the radar of the most American citizens.

Michel Chossudovsky, writing on Global Research, considers this North American alliance to be in part motivated by a mutually beneficial will to secure the Arctic for both militaristic and economic purposes. According to some estimates, the Arctic contains 25% of the worlds oil and gas reserves. In August of this year, a Russian mini-submarine planted a flag on the Arctic sea bed in an attempt to claim territory and, by extension, oil and gas reserves.