Some articles that crossed my path this week:
The Rise Of A ‘Democratic’ Fascism
The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism. "To initiate a war of aggression...," said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, "is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. -more-Stop The Fast Track To A Future Of Global Corporate Rule
Several major international agreements are under negotiation which would greatly empower multinational corporations and the World Economic Forum is promoting a new model of global governance that creates a hybrid government-corporate structure. Humankind is proceeding on a path to global corporate rule where transnational corporations would not just influence public policy, they would write the policies and vote on them. The power of nation-states and people to determine their futures would be weakened in a system of corporate rule. The Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) over the past five years, is currently pushing Congress to pass trade promotion authority (known as fast track) which would allow him to sign these agreements before they go to Congress. Then Congress would have a limited time to read thousands of pages of technical legal language, debate the contents and be banned from making amendments. -more-The Illusion Of Democracy
It is ironic, considering democracy's pitiful state worldwide that, in accordance to its etymology, it literally means "common people's rule" or, more simply, "people's power." The English term democracy and the 14th-century French word democratie come from the Greek demokratia via the Latin democratia. The Greek radical demos means "common people," and kratos means "rule, or power." How did we manage to pervert such a laudable notion of power to the people and diametrically turn it into a global system of rule at large under the principles of oligarchy and plutocracy? Everywhere we look, from east to west and north to south, plutocrats and oligarchs are firmly in charge: puppet masters of the political class. They have transformed democracy into a parody of itself and a toxic form of government. The social contract implied in a democratic form of governance is broken. -more-Rahm Emanuel, Face Of Democratic Fascism, Deserves To Lose
Chicago's mayoral election may look like a local event, and the media mostly cover it as a local event, but the presence of a large, diverse, and energized opposition demanding change on basic issues of fairness and justice gives the city's local result a potentially important, totemic meaning for the country. The outcome of the April 7 runoff election, which includes 40% of the city council as well, may signify whether peaceful change is possible, or whether the suffocating status quo will grow more stifling. There is another way of gauging the April vote: is Chicago yet ready to reject the police state practices of its local government? Is Chicago ready to reject a mayor who seems content to allow police state behavior to go unexamined and unpunished? -more-How the Public Are Deceived by the ‘News’
If the public is systematically lied-to
by the Government and by a virtually uniformly cooperative press
suppressing key facts in order to pump that lie, such as was the case
during 2002 and 2003 in the lead-up to America’s invasion of Iraq, then
there can’t possibly be an authentic democracy, because democracy is
founded upon a truthfully informed public, and so any ‘news’ institution
that violates its solemn public trust of reporting the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, is traitorous to democracy itself. That’s why the press has been called “the
fourth estate” of government. The first three “estates” are the
aristocracy, the clergy, and the public. If the press represent not the
public, but instead one of the two other classes — the aristocracy
and/or the clergy — then what exists is a dictatorship by that actually
ruling class against the public, not a democracy by the public. The
public cannot rule in such a country. They instead are manipulated in
it. -more-
For a Crime He Didn't Commit
This nightmare is an example of our criminal justice system that is typical of a totalitarian bureaucratic state. A man was coerced into a false confession for a crime he didn't commit. He was convicted and went to jail. He couldn't prove his innocence until he got out of jail but he couldn't get out of jail until he confessed his "crime" and showed remorse. The ultimate catch 22! Listen to the story here or read the story here. More from the Innocence Project: here
American democracy is doomed
America's constitutional democracy is going to collapse. Some day — not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies — there is going to be a collapse of the legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent. If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better, more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen. Very few people agree with me about this, of course. When I say it, people generally think that I'm kidding. America is the richest, most successful country on earth. The basic structure of its government has survived contested elections and Great Depressions and civil rights movements and world wars and terrorist attacks and global pandemics. People figure that whatever political problems it might have will prove transient — just as happened before. -more-Update:
The PTB (Powers That Be) want you to feel afraid, powerless, desperate and apathetic. Don't fall for that. Stay positive! These systems of power were built by humans and they can be dismantled by humans.What we can do:
