Category: Politics

America’s Brown Shirts


Paul Craig Roberts was on to something when he wrote in 2004 of America’s rise to fascism through right wing talk radio. The airwaves are filled with abuse against those who oppose the government of G.W.Bush and his policies.

Bush’s conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and to demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.

Show hosts, who advertise themselves as truth-tellers in a no-spin zone, quickly figured out that success depends upon constantly confronting listeners with bogymen to be exposed and denounced: war protesters and America-bashers, the French, marrying homosexuals, the liberal media, turncoats, Democrats, and the ACLU.

Talk radio’s “news stories” do not need to be true. Their importance lies in inflaming resentments and confirming that America’s implacable enemies are working resolutely to destroy us.

Using tactics that resemble the Nazi Brown shirt movement’s slogan, “All opposition must be stamped into the ground”, talk radio has made dissent unpatriotic and akin to treason, the punishment of which is death. Hosts have attacked people who oppose the wars on terror, and they have attacked liberals, multiculturalism, immigration, and just about everything else not in lockstep with current right wing philosophy and just about anyone else not a card carrying member of the Republican Party. Those politicians that right wing radio supports lend their voices occasionally to these efforts, calling the shows to be tossed soft ball questions by hosts or make unchallenged policy announcements to an eager fan base which finds its voice in the voice of the Right. Rallying the people to the cause of talk radio’s right wing hosts, talk show hosts are even applauded by those very politicians the brown shirts support. Witness this dialog between the sitting president Bush and Rush Limbaugh on the occasion of LImbaugh’s 20 year anniversary on the air.

THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You’ve stunned me! (laughing) I’m shocked. But thank you so much.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s hard to do.

RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m here with a room full of admirers. There are two others that would like to speak to you and congratulate you, people who consider you …

… friends and really appreciate the contribution you’ve made.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

The divisive nature of talk radio has its own hazards for the American society in general. The latest victims of the polarization right wing radio fascism brings to American society were killed while worshipping on a Sunday morning.

Jim David Adkisson told investigators all liberals should be killed and admitted he shot people Sunday morning at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by CNN affiliate WBIR.

“He felt that the Democrats had tied his country’s hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets,” the affidavit said. “Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement … he would then target those that had voted them into office.”

Talk radio pundits will not accept responsibility for the actions of their brown shirts; America, unlike Nazi Germany is an extremely litigious society, but the responsibility is theirs. On any given day, a listener can hear between three to nine hours of talk delivered to bolster an Administration intent on waging wars throughout the globe, usurping the rights of citizens in order to fight those wars and withholding for itself the right to interpret, frame and enforce laws. Vigilantism at the top makes it much easier for the Jim Adkissons of the world to carry it out against fellow citizens.

Guess what some are saying is the greatest threat America has ever faced?


And it ain’t al-Qaeda, jihadists, or surprisingly my choice, the press. It’s Republicans! I’m not so sure I wholeheartedly support this notion because there have been a few Republicans who’ve called a spade a spade and denounced what’s going on in the American body politic, but there is a fringe, mentioned in the article whose mention I would like to underscore in the excerpt below.

The neoconned Republican Party is the greatest threat America has ever faced. Let me tell you why.

Republicans think the United States is the salt of the earth and that American hegemony over the rest of the world is not only justified by our great virtue but necessary to our safety. People this full of hubris are incapable of judgment. People incapable of judgment should never be given power.

Republicans have no sympathy for anyone but their own kind. How many Republicans do you know who care a hoot about the plight of the poor, the jobless, the medically uninsured? The government programs that Republicans are always adamant to cut are the ones that help people who need help.

I have yet to hear any of my Republican friends express any concern whatsoever for the 1.2 million Iraqis who have died, and the 4 million who have been displaced, as a result of Bush’s gratuitous invasion. Many tell me that the five- and six-year long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are due to wimpy Americans “who don’t have the balls it takes” to win. Killing and displacing a quarter of the Iraqi population is just a wimpy result of a population that lacks testosterone. Real Americans would have killed them all by now.

Macho patriotic Republicans are perfectly content for US foreign policy to be controlled by Israel. Republican evangelical “christian” churches teach their congregations that America’s purpose in the world is to serve Israel. And these are the flag-wavers.

Neoconservatives, such as Billy Kristol, insist that loyalty to the country means loyalty to the government. Thus, criticizing the government for launching wars of aggression and for violating constitutionally protected civil liberties is, according to neoconservatives, a disloyal act.

In the neoconservative view, there is no place for the voices of citizens: the government makes the decisions, and loyal citizens support the government’s decisions.

In the neocon political system there is no liberty, no democracy, no debate. Dissenters are traitors.

The neoconservative magazine, Commentary, wants the New York Times indicted for telling Americans that the Bush regime was caught violating US law, specifically the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, by spying on Americans without obtaining warrants as required by law. Note that neoconservatives think it is a criminal act for a newspaper to tell its readers that their government is spying on them illegally.

Judging by their behavior, a number of Democrats go along with the neocon view. Thus, the Democrats don’t offer a greatly different profile. They went along with the views that corporate profits and the war on terror take precedence over everything else. They have not used the congressional power that the electorate gave them in the 2006 elections.

The author of this essay is a former official in the Ronald Reagan administration, most probably making him a Republican himself! I applaud him for his courage and honesty. I disagree with him however, when he states towards the end of his article, that Democrats can’t be any worse. In due time, with the same forces at work on the Democratic party they can produce equally disastrous results as we’ll come to see in the near future.

Don’t quit your day job!


Someone please tell me this candidate for US Senate in Kentucky is NOT a  serious candidate, nor a libertarian! In a radio interview in Kentucky, US Senate candidate Sonny Landham had this to say in response to questions posed to him about his fellow Arab/Muslim Americans.

there has been a holy war going for thousands, and thousands, and thousands of years. Long before we were ever thought of. The Muslims look at infidels. Anyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel. Whether you are a Jew, a Bhuddist, a Catholic, a Protestant, or an atheist, you are still an infidel. They will lie to you, and they will not tell you the truth because it is not a sin for a Muslim to lie to a infidel.

If I had my way, I would stop Arabs coming into this country. And I would take all, uh, non citizens of the United States, finger printing them, and having a complete background check before they set foot into this country.

Tom Dec: Uh, pretty good, how are you? Uh, um, why do you support bombing the OPEC countries if they don’t turn over oil to us, and how exactly is that a libertarian position?

Sonny Landham: Uh, this, that was not quite what I said. My first statement was, do the steps that we have in the switch and drill, and somebody said, well that’s not my diplomatic way and if that doesn’t work, I said I would bomb those camel dung-shovelers back into the sand, and you’re going to wind up having to do it. Now, I’m pro-Israel all the way. As far as my book goes, Israel can do no wrong, Israel has a right to survive. It’s the camel dung-shovelers that say Israel does not have a right to survive, we don’t recognize Israel. Well, pal, I am for Israel. The biggest thing we ever did was to stop Israel…Israel in the six day war.

In case you’re wondering, the other candidates in the race are Democrat Bruce Lunsford and Republican Mitch McConnell, the incumbent.

Could it be American Jews are Israel’s worst enemy?


There’s no reason for the United States to go to war with Iran or conduct a military strike against Iranian targets.  The only reason such talk graces the printed pages of American newspapers and magazines or finds its way on American airwaves or the ethernet is because of Israel.  It appears however, some in Israel don’t think it’s such a good idea either.  Again and again, former Mossad chief Halevy has downplayed the Iranian threat in articles published in Israeli sources, and again and again his proclamations have been ignored by American media!  What gives?  Could it possibly be that American Jews, many of whom are former leftists turned neocons, are believers in the notion of “permanent revolution“?  Such a notion surely sounds like the global war on terror proclaimed by Bush, which has no end in sight nor success markers and which with the choice replacement of capitalism with democracy would be enough to get the hearts and minds of most Americans enlisted and on board.  More insidious however are those American Jews who are Israel firsters, who put the interest (or rather their perceived interests of Israel) above those of the United States.  In a misguided attempt to help their country of choice, they believe using the full power and might of the US military is enough to keep Israel safe.  The problem is they do so from afar, in the relative safety of the US, whereas some Israelis on the ground in Israel have different ideas of what’s Israel’s interests.

I do like that such leftists turned neocon Israel firsters are easily spotted.  The tactics they are using to engage America with Iran are the same faulty, deceitful tactics they used with Iraq.  Here and here are other examples of  lies straight out of the play book of the Office of Special Plans’, formerly run by Doug Feith  where the reality is completely different.  No doubt there are some Israelis who want war with Iran as there are some Americans but such a war would not serve either of the countries’ long term interests, inflict very high civilian casualties in Iran, Iraq, possibly Israel and could have a more devastating effect globally than the Iraqi war has had to date.

The evil of Christian zionism


Two of America’s more quoted Christian evangelists are in the news for the same reason.  Pat Robertson and John Hagee are calling for another war in the Middle East against Iran.  In Robertson’s case he wants the Israelis to hit at or strike Iran.  In one of his more delusional interviews, Robertson asserts:

But with Israel, it’s not a question of whether they can be moderate or extreme. The question is the survival of their nation. And if Iran gets nuclear weapons, they have announced in advance they’re going to use them against Israel. And Israel has no choice but to make some kind of a strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities, and to do so fairly soon.

Nobody wants to do it, but nevertheless, they’re going to have no choice. They do have nuclear submarines they can launch cruise missiles from. I don’t believe the U.S. would allowing a refueling in Iraq, although some people have mentioned something like that.

This is 2002 all over again.  Completely ignoring his own country’s NIE of 2007 which states Iran does not presently have the capacity to build nuclear weapons has dismantled any weapons building program and has shown no signs of starting one, even surreptitiously, Robertson makes more than a leap of faith in his declaration, ‘ when Iranians get nuclear weapons they’ll use them against Israel’.  In fact, the leading religious figure in Iran has said his country is prohibited from using nuclear weapons, nullifying any statement anyone else may or may not make on behalf of Iran.  One interesting note about Robertson’s  statement on Israel not being able to refuel in Iraq is Israel and the US are coordinating closely on tactical issues surrounding Iran.  In fact, Israeli jets have used American military bases in Iraq for some time and the forward most base puts Israel within a 5 minute strike of an Iranian nuclear facility.

John Hagee’s Christian’s United for Israel held their convention in Washington, which could be seen as no more than a political rally for John McCain, who by the way has tried to distance himself from Hagee, and which has as its theme, ‘Your chance to vote for Israel’.  One of the workshops of the convention was Iran: Eye of the storm, which talked about the need to get rid of a “nuclear” Iran.  Israel firster Joe Lieberman spoke at the convention, despite cries from Israeli Jews for him to kick Hagee to the curb, to make the case for sanctions against Iran and warning of an attack if they don’t work.  Lieberman used the same fear mongering expressions based only on conjecture, alleging

A nuclear Iran is a mortal danger to all of our allies in the Middle East–both to the Arabs and Israel–and it is a threat to us. A nuclear Iran would transform the balance of power in the region in the worst possible way. As Iran continues to expand the reach of its missiles, it will soon not just be the Middle East that is threatened, but Europe as well.

The President of Iran has made his genocidal intentions toward Israel clear. And he regularly leads his Iranian audiences in chanting “Death to America.”

It’s interesting Americans and Israelis both want the US to attack Iran but for different reasons.  The US wants  to protect its ally, while the Israelis want Americans to do it in order to spare Israelis the nuclear option. Either way, the use of religious Christian figures to call for war increasingly makes Islam seem like the ‘religion of peace’ indeed.

Are the Brits finally catching on?


It’s not enough the US relied on the faulty Downing Street memo and used its existence as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.  Effectively blaming the British for America’s mistake, the British government still seemed to be in synch with US policy in Iraq.  Well, maybe not anymore.  Now it appears the British government is questioning the integrity of US leaders, including George Bush when it comes to torture.    There is a very long paper trail  which indict the Bush Administration in it’s decision to torture, or bend the rules concerning torture of people it has captured in this phony war on terror, so there is plenty for the British to hang their hat on when condemning US policy.  Citing a committee report which

said there were ‘serious implications’ of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. ‘The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,’ said the committee. ‘We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.’

it marks a definite shift in British attitudes towards  America.  This observer only wishes such a shift began four years earlier before headlines such as these graced papers around the world:

British troops in torture scandal

British troops accused of sexually abusing Iraqi boy, 14

British soldiers tortured Iraqi civilian to death…

Propelling the propaganda, part deux


The US administration has asked Americans to sacrifice their lives to fight the war on terror, while it tries to keep them deprived of information particularly about the failures of that war. The leaders are smart enough to remember the lessons from the Vietnam war in terms of how to spin war while keeping enthusiasm high for warmongering, but they weren’t smart enough to keep us out of a losing proposition. Any and all images which depict the human suffering of the war are kept out of the media because such images tend to evoke the emotions that are as self-preserving, instinctual as self defense because this administration, in fact the federal government of the United States is consumed with the notion of war and it needs all able bodied people it can muster to fight, even when that fight is not in the best interest of the people.

So, the news that people want to bring to America that truly reflects the costs of war has to be suppressed. What I found interesting about this story of the public affairs director of Arlington Cemetery was even after she secured the permission of the families of those being buried in Arlington, the Army tried to limit access to such funerals even though such limitations were baseless. I love how people want your enthusiasm, your patriotism, but only on their terms. Support the troops has been the battle cry for this war, yet the reality is so much more different. Hiding behind empty slogans is not characteristic of a great Republic, but rather of a banana republic.

POV on Obama’s Muslim “problem”


A very well written editorial on Obama’s senseless way of dealing with critics who call him a “Muslim” in an attempt to negatively influence the campaign. The writer of this piece does such a good job expressing my own sentiments that I’ll let his words speak for me:

I WISH Barack Obama were a Muslim. Better that than having supercilious staffers whisk women in Islamic head scarves out of photo-ops. Better that than telling Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, not to come help Obama in Iowa and North Carolina.

Better that than wooing red states by wobbling before the modern equivalent of the Red Scare. In his year-and-a-half-long run for president, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. This has the musty feel of light-skinned African-Americans passing for white, paranoid over daylight visits from dark-skinned relatives.

Obama’s campaign has been far more inclusive than John McCain’s. Yet as of late, Obama’s handlers are so bent on passing their biracial, binationally-raised man as a pure-blooded American – a new commercial plays up his “values straight from the Kansas heartland” – that they are reinforcing the perception that Muslim Americans are impure.

Asked what he would say to Obama if he had the chance, Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society, said, “It’s a tough question, and it’s sad that it’s a tough question. . . . I would suggest that he might have to do the same thing [on Islam] that he did on race. He addressed it head-on in a landmark speech. He gave his speech in a mature way. If he could speak in the same way to that, it could be inspiring for our country and the world.”

It is understandable why Barack Hussein Obama and his handlers suffer from PTSD – post-traumatic smear disorder. Political woodpeckers hammer falsehoods from the right. Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton, when asked whether Obama is a Muslim, tackily peeped, “there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.” Despite nearly hitting the third rail over his former Christian pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, only 58 percent of Americans think Obama is a Christian, according to a Newsweek poll in May.

It has been so outrageous that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, an independent and a Jewish American, said the “whisper campaign” was “wedge politics at its worst.” Kaleem said of Obama, “We feel sympathy for him because it’s not just him who should be called out; it is also the people in the media and politics who made a cottage industry out of him being a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that all Muslims are subversive.”

But the sympathy may be short-lived as Obama’s “Fight the Smears” part of his website has some Muslims feeling betrayed by an over-the-top effort to denounce every Obama-is-a-Muslim claim as a “lie” and saying, “Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.” How about something like, “Senator Obama is a Christian who, having lived in the world’s largest Muslim country [Indonesia], having traveled in Pakistan and having many Muslim friends, appreciates American pluralism like no other candidate in US history”?

A more positive approach by Obama of affirming Muslims while affirming his Christianity actually fits the nation’s values. A new Pew Research survey finds Americans more open than ever to a range of religious viewpoints. Muslim Americans themselves, according to a 2007 Pew survey, are “largely assimilated, happy with their lives,” and “decidedly American in their outlook, values, and attitudes.”

This obviously all came together for Ellison’s election, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has noted that his district has more Lutherans than Muslims. Ellison this week told The New York Times about Obama, “A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there’s nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way.”

A lot of Muslims are waiting because, seven years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, an undercurrent of suspicion remains. In the 2007 Pew survey, a third of Muslim Americans said that within the last year, they had either been treated with suspicion, called offensive names, profiled by police, or even attacked. Kaleem, a graduate of MIT, said he sometimes is asked during grant proposals how radical his group is.

“In a way,” Kaleem said, “it is good that these missteps have come out in public so we can start talking about the undercurrent, which is the real issue.”

Obama himself has said “Christians and people of other faiths lived very comfortably” with each other when he lived in Indonesia. It is time for him to live comfortably with Muslims in his campaign.

In a 2006 trip to Chad, Obama issued the Muslim greeting for peace. A wise Obama would say “assalamu alaikum” at home, too.