| Could a modern democracy succumb to Fascism? |
| First, we must define "Faciscism." Franklin D. Roosevelt in an April 29, 1938 message to Congress warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism: The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. {Italics added} The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe it its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in histroy is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power," April 29, 1938, in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 7, (New York, MacMillan: 1941), pp. 305-315. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=ppotpus;cc=ppotpus;rgn=full%20text;idno=4926315.1938.001;didno=4926315.1938.001;view=image;seq=00000345 With his aristocratic connections, [Herman Goering] helped to persuade President Hendenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor [of Germany]. The Reichstag [the German Parliament] went up in flames. Goering seized the opportunity to impose an emergency police state.
Source: "Nuremberg: Goering's Last Stand" - History International (cable channel) - August 2009 He arrested all political opponents According to a study last year by The Pew Center on the States entitled “One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008,” the prison population of the United States has nearly quadrupled over the last 25 years while the nation’s population has grown by less than a third. We now have more inmates per capita than any of the 36 European countries with the largest inmate populations, and our total number of inmates is more than all the inmates in those countries combined. Source: "Getting Smart on Crime" By CHARLES M. BLOW NY Times - August 14, 2009 The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study. For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to those in other countries. Then with the “war on drugs” and the focus on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared. One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, according to the Sentencing Project. Source: "Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?" By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times - August 19, 2009 He replaced judges and lawyers with Nazis "But he [Bush political advisor Karl Rove] did not recall much more basic facts about the matter such as whether there were specific US Attorneys that White House officials wanted to replace during the President's second term, or what statements he made to [Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff] Kyle Sampson and [the Justice Department's White House liaison] Monica Goodling at a political briefing he led just weeks before the final stage of the removal process was launched. Rove and [Bush legal advisor Harriet] Miers testified that they both fielded complaints from Domenici and his chief of staff and Heather Wilson and state Republican Party officials about Iglesias's "refusal" to prosecute cases of voter fraud and that he was dragging his feet on securing an indictment in a corruption case he was investigating. But, as documents released by the committee show, those complaints were made in the context of Iglesias's failure to help Republicans win elections by using his office to prosecute Democrats. "White House emails and the testimony of Rove and Miers establish that Iglesias was targeted for firing no later than May 2005 and that the White House reached a 'decision' to fire him by June of that year," the [Judiciary Committee's] report said. "This campaign was clearly designed to interfere with Iglesias's prosecutorial judgment in order to obtain political advantage for Republican candidates. Iglesias himself has explained that the reason he did not bring more vote fraud cases is because 'the evidence was not there.'" With regard to Miers, Congressional sources said lawmakers would press her to further explain her involvement in a federal corruption investigation into Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi that resulted in the DOJ violating its own internal regulations. Paul Charlton, the US attorney in Arizona who was one of the nine fired, was investigating Renzi. The committee's report said: "In the weeks before the 2006 election, leaks surfaced indicating that then-Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona was under federal criminal investigation. After a complaint from Scott Jennings of Karl Rove's office, Harriet Miers called Paul McNulty seeking a statement that would have 'vindicated' Renzi. "Two days later, unnamed Department officials did in fact make several misleading and highly favorable statements to the media on behalf of Mr. Renzi, Source: "Conyers May Call Rove, Miers to Testify Publicly About Attorney Firings" by: Jason Leopold - truthout.org - 20 August 2009 And he engineered the pillars of Nazi oppression..… On August 19, the New York Times revealed that the company was, in fact, a central part of a secret CIA assassination program that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. These disclosures follow allegations--made under oath by former Blackwater employees--that Prince murdered or facilitated the murder of potential government informants and that he "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe." Source: "Flushing Blackwater" By Jeremy Scahill - The Nation - August 26, 2009 "What the [Centeral Intelligence] agency was doing with Blackwater scares the hell out of me," said Jack Rice, a former CIA field operator who worked for the directorate of operations, which runs covert paramilitary activities for the CIA. "When the agency actually cedes all oversight and power to a private organization, an organization like Blackwater, most importantly they lose control and don't understand what's going on," Rice told The Nation. "What makes it even worse is that you then can turn around and have deniability. They can say, 'It wasn't us, we weren't the ones making the decisions.' That's the best of both worlds. It's analogous to what we hear about torture that was being done in the name of Americans, when we simply handed somebody over to the Syrians or the Egyptians or others and then we turn around and say, 'We're not torturing people.'" "What we know now, if this is true, is that Blackwater was part of the highest level, the innermost circle strategizing and exercising strategy within the Bush administration," [Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Intelligence Committee] told The Nation. "Erik Prince operated at the highest and most secret level of the government. Clearly Prince was more trusted than the US Congress because Vice President Cheney made the decision not to brief Congress. This shows that there was absolutely no space whatsoever between the Bush administration and Blackwater." As The Nation has reported, Blackwater continues to operate on the US government payroll in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where it works for the State Department and the Defense Department. The CIA will not confirm whether Blackwater continues to work for the agency (or, for that matter, if it ever has). The relationship between Blackwater and the CIA quickly evolved. Shortly after [Blackwater owner Erik] Prince arrived in Afghanistan in May 2002, according to a former Blackwater executive who was with Prince, the Blackwater owner focused on winning more business with government agencies, providing private soldiers for hire. Prince hired several other former CIA officials to run what amounted to his own private CIA. Most notable among these was J. Cofer Black, who was running the CIA's counterterrorism operations and leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden when Blackwater was initially hired by the CIA in 2002. Black left the government in 2005 and took a job at Blackwater running Prince's private intelligence company, Total Intelligence Solutions. Attorney Susan Burke and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), who are suing Prince and his companies on behalf of their Iraqi victims, have alleged that Prince is "equivalent to a top mafia boss who is responsible for all the day-to-day crimes committed at his direction and behest." If the case proceeds, the process of discovery could blow the lid off some of the darkest secrets of the powerful security contractor and its secretive owner. Burke and CCR are suing Prince and his companies directly rather than his individual employees because they say Prince "wholly owns and personally controls all Defendants." Burke also alleges that Prince has committed "violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal statute permitting private parties to seek redress from criminal enterprises who damage their property." Among the allegations are war crimes, extra-judicial killings and assault and battery of Iraqis. Meanwhile, in another development, Prince's lawyers have responded to explosive allegations made against Prince by two former employees. In sworn affidavits submitted by lawyers representing the Iraqis suing Blackwater, the two alleged that Prince may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. One of the former employees alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." They also charge that Prince was profiting from illegal weapons smuggling. Source: "Blackwater: CIA Assassins?" By Jeremy Scahill - Tne Nation - August 20, 2009 |
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