Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2002 3:32 pm Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
Let\'s face it, the USA is undergoing an unprecendented assault on all of what it\'s people hold dear, not by inivisble terrorists but from it\'s own government, even from both sides in the US Congress and the Supreme Court.
Is it an attack on the \"American Way Of Life\", maybe maybe not, it remains to be seen. Is it an assault on how justice, the legal system, and constitutional rights work, most definately yes.
The USA is moving towards becomming a fascist dictatorship, much like the past problems in England and France where the King took away power from the Parliaments, and became a dictator.
Webster\'s defines \"Tyrant\" as an \"Usurper of Sovereignty\", and as \"an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution\"
The election of 2000 applies to the first part, and events & actions by the President since 9/11 bear the coming fullfillment of the second part. We have until 2004 to live in this tyranny, and we should ask ourselves will we ever see another free election with no cheating that year or ever again.
The restructuring of the Homeland Defence with the addition of FEMA and the other 21 agencies will have little to no Congressional over sight will constitute a National Police Force similar to the KGB and Gestapo. While it may not seem like much at present, the public will eventually try to give this agency more powers so as to uniformerly train, equip, and administer local police forces. If that does not happen a OHS liason (political officers) will be given to each town\'s police most likely.
Will this affect the American Lifestyle? Probably not to an unprecedented degree. It\'ll mostly affect what happens when you have run ins with the legal system, and red tape. No one cares to have run ins with cops or courts, there are already too many bad cops, and too many blackhearted judges in the system. Unfortunately these new systems will give those types more power to abuse. Your life will remain pretty much the same, eat sleep work play, but you\'ll find that more and more things will become taboo and not to be spoken of lest the cops or your neighbors beat the crud out of you.
Just atke note that these early stages are your chances to talk to congress and you friends to spread the word that we are heading the WRONG direction, that we need to wake up and take things back to pre 9/11 structures and laws. They worked, it was our President and his administration that did not.
Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2002 3:36 pm Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
A couple of articles to go with that:
[quote]Bush announces new US domestic security organisation
By Richard Evans
PRESIDENT George W Bush has announced the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to co-ordinate the country\'s response to the threat of terrorism.
In what the White House is calling \'the most significant transformation of the US Government in over half a century\' the new Department will act as a marshalling point for intelligence and resources from over 100 different government agencies who now have a role in homeland defence.
A staff of around 170,000 people, headed by the president\'s current homeland security adviser Tom Ridge, will act as a central collection and analysis point for terrorist-related intelligence , which the Government says will facilitate production of a more comprehensive threat analysis than that produced by \'the current confusing patchwork of activities.\'
US intelligence agencies have been roundly criticised in recent weeks for supposed failures to adequately share intelligence and co-operate in the tracking and surveillance of Al-Qa\'ida terrorist suspects in the run-up to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The Government also hopes that drawing the country\'s counter-terrorism effort under one umbrella organisation will prevent duplication of various intelligence agencies\' collection efforts.
Intelligence analysis will be just part of the new Department\'s remit, however. A budget of $37bn will also allow it to co-ordinate communications with state and local government, private industry, and the public about threats and preparedness. It will also take the lead role in harnessing efforts to protect the US against \'bio-terrorism and other weapons of mass destruction\', helping to train and equip first responders, managing federal response activities, and advising on critical infrastructure protection. This latter role will involve assessing the vulnerabilities of the country\'s water and food supplies, health systems, transport networks, financial institutions, and energy industries, among others. [/quote]http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jtsm/jtsm020607_1_n.shtml
[quote]Bush’s new Department of Homeland Defense: the scaffolding of a police state
By the Editorial Board
8 June 2002
The sudden announcement by President George W. Bush that he will seek the creation of a huge new federal Department of Homeland Defense, to control most federal domestic policing and security programs, must be understood on two levels. In its timing, it is a transparent attempt to distract public attention from the revelations of advance warnings to the government about the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In its substance, the proposal represents an acceleration of the moves towards presidential dictatorship that have characterized every step taken by the Bush administration since September 11.
The consolidation of agencies such as the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Transportation Security Agency and others—22 in all, from five separate government departments—represents an unprecedented concentration of police powers at the federal level. The new cabinet level department would become overnight the third largest in the federal government, in terms of manpower, with 170,000 workers, behind only the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
As outlined by Bush, it would carry out four main functions: border and transportation security, emergency and disaster preparedness, the development of countermeasures for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, and the centralized storage and analysis of information on potential threats, to be supplied by the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government spy services.
The Bush administration presented the plan as a measure to protect the American people. But it would be more correct to say that the new department will concentrate the police forces of the government for the purpose of surveillance and repression against the American people.
As the Washington Post noted, the agencies to be combined in the new department “go well beyond policing the borders.” The newspaper continued: “They reach deep into American life, doing everything from coordinating disaster relief to tracking down foreigners working illegally in restaurants. Some experts said this could prove controversial, because it blurs the boundaries between gathering intelligence on foreigners and doing the same with American citizens.”
Perhaps the most ominous measure is the inclusion in the Department of Homeland Defense of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), now headed by Bush’s former campaign manager, Joseph Albaugh. FEMA was designated as the lead agency in plans developed 20 years ago under the Reagan administration to impose martial law in the event of a new and unpopular Vietnam-style war in Central America. FEMA’s brief included the establishment of prison camps at mothballed military bases for the detention of hundreds of thousands of US citizens and foreign immigrants.
Similar moves are now being considered against the Arab-American and Asian-American population, and all other potential opponents of a new US war against Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East—or in Colombia, the Philippines, Georgia, or some other target of US aggression. This has already been foreshadowed in the roundup of thousands of immigrants after September 11 and their ongoing mistreatment in jails and detention facilities.
Only three months ago the American media was filled with reports about the Bush administration’s decision to establish a “shadow government” in the wake of September 11, with the dispatch of designated executive branch officials to secret bunkers, without the knowledge or approval of Congress. But today there is not one comment from the media or the Congress connecting those preparations of a behind-the-scenes dictatorship to this week’s unveiling of the scaffolding for a police state.
Not a single voice in Congress opposes what amounts to a gross violation of fundamental US constitutional principles: separation of powers, checks and balances, congressional oversight of the executive branch, and the right to privacy and freedom from government prying. Congressional oversight of the new behemoth agency will be far more limited than the current supervision of 22 separate smaller agencies. Bush cited the lessened congressional scrutiny as one of the main advantages of his reorganization plan.
The White House plan was greeted enthusiastically by former Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, Congresswoman Jane Harman, and other influential congressional Democrats, as well as by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt. All pledged speedy action on the plan, and endorsed Bush’s appeal for passage before the end of 2002—a flagrant attempt to steamroll the changes through Congress without any serious public discussion or debate.
The centralization of all federal domestic security forces into a single agency parallels another major action by the Pentagon, which in April won White House approval to set up a new four-star command, dubbed the Northern Command, covering the North American continent. For the first time in US history, all troops, planes and ships on the territory of the United States and Canada will be under the command of a single officer—an action always rejected in the past, even during World War II, for fear of its dangerous implications for civilian control of the military and democratic governance.
These measures are combined with constant alerts, warnings and sensationalized publicity of alleged terrorist threats, aimed at keeping the American population off balance and creating the conditions where some new catastrophe—perhaps on an even more terrible scale than September 11—can become the occasion for an outright suspension of democratic rights and the imposition of martial law.
The secretive manner in which the plan was drawn up, and the sudden and improvised manner in which it was released, have their own significance. The process bespeaks an administration in enormous crisis, concerned that its political support is eroding, that the US and global financial situation is balanced on a knife edge, and that emergency powers may be required to deal with domestic social unrest.
Less than two months ago, top White House officials dismissed Democratic Party proposals for a new cabinet department for homeland security, calling it, at best, a possibility for the distant future. Budget Director Mitch Daniels told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee April 11, “The president has said from the outset that the structure for organizing and overseeing homeland security may evolve over time as we all learn more and as circumstances change.” The only circumstance that has changed significantly since then is the credibility of the administration, shaken by the wave of revelations of advance warnings of September 11 that were ignored or suppressed.
The Washington Post, in what purports to be an inside account of the decision, described what it called “a seven-week deliberative process secretive even by the standards of [the] Bush administration.” To call this process “deliberative” is surely misleading. Who was deliberating? Only four top Bush aides reportedly discussed and drafted the proposal: Bush’s present homeland security adviser Thomas Ridge, Budget Director Daniels, White House chief of staff Andrew Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez. The plan then went to Bush and Cheney for ratification.
The reorganization plan was unveiled with virtually no advance notification to Congress, or even to the cabinet officers whose departments and responsibilities would be radically altered. The House and Senate Republican leaders were reportedly informed on Wednesday evening, 24 hours before Bush gave his nationally televised speech. Democratic congressional leaders learned of the plan the same day it was presented to the country.
Bush’s nationally televised speech Thursday evening was true to form: a string of platitudes, non sequiturs and lies delivered in a barely literate fashion. He spoke for only 11 minutes, with less than half of this time devoted to the subject of what he called “the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s.”
Bush declared his support for “the important work of the Intelligence Committees of Congress,” which are now engaged in a closed-door investigation into the performance of US intelligence agencies before September 11. The administration, however, stalled the investigation for nearly nine months, finally agreeing to cooperate only after it became convinced that the joint House-Senate panel was committed to a whitewash.
There must be no “finger pointing,” Bush insisted. In other words, no leading figures in the government or state apparatus are to be held accountable for actions that contributed to the deaths of more than 3,000 people—the worst single loss of civilian life in US history. But how can there be a serious investigation if its premise is a free pass for high officials? The outcome of such a procedure—general amnesty—has been determined before any facts have been examined. This fits the textbook definition of cover-up, and it makes a mockery of the pretense that the establishment of a new super-police agency is motivated by the need to protect the American people.
Bush stated: “I do not believe anyone could have prevented the horror of September the 11th. Yet we now know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.”
The first assertion is an absurdity, the second is pure sophistry. Bush says that nothing could have prevented September 11: actually, routine enforcement of air travel security precautions would have sufficed, since the 19 alleged hijackers boarded planes armed with box-cutters, in many cases after buying one-way first-class tickets—something that in and of itself is supposed to arouse the suspicions of airport security. At least some of the alleged hijackers paid cash—another occurrence that is supposed to prompt special attention from security personnel.
This is to say nothing of the mounting revelations about FBI and CIA knowledge of the identities and Al Qaeda affiliations of many of the hijackers in the eighteen months leading up to September 11.
As for the claim that we “now” know “thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us,” this would suggest that the government was unaware of such terrorist threats prior to September 11. This canard is in line with the basic pretense that everything the Bush administration has done since that day—both abroad and at home—was entirely unpremeditated.
But on September 10, as the White House recently admitted, a National Security Decision Directive calling for all-out war on Al Qaeda, including an invasion of Afghanistan, was sitting on Bush’s desk awaiting his signature.
All the evidence suggests that, far from September11 being unpreventable, it was foreseen by the US intelligence apparatus and permitted to happen. The most innocent explanation—although not the most plausible—is government negligence on a colossal scale, rising to the level of criminal negligence. The more plausible explanation is deliberate complicity. A significant faction within the American state viewed a major terrorist atrocity as a reasonable price to pay to obtain the necessary pretext for a war in the oil-rich regions of Central Asia and the Middle East.[/quote]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/bush-j08.shtml
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2002 2:24 am Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
Have you read \"The Ominous Parallels\" (1982)by Leonard Peikoff?Our freedoms been going down the drain for some time now,slowly but surely. Why do you think so many Nazis were welcomed into North America.:
------------------------------------------------------
Each of the philosophic principles essential to the rise of Nazism in Germany has a counterpart in present-day America.
Is the freest country on earth moving toward totalitarian dictatorship? What were the factors that enabled the Nazis to seize power in pre-war Germany? Do those same conditions exist in America today?
These are the questions raised — and answered, with frightening clarity — by Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand\'s intellectual heir, in his powerful book The Ominous Parallels.
\"We are drifting to the future, not moving purposefully,\" Peikoff warns. \"But we are drifting as Germany moved, in the same direction, for the same kind of reason.\"
Some of the \"ominous parallels\" between pre-Hitler Germany and the United States that Peikoff identifies are:
Liberals who demand public control over the use and disposal of private property — social security, more taxes, more government control over the energy industry, medicine, broadcasting, etc.
Conservatives who demand government control over our intellectual and moral life — prayer in the schools, literary censorship, government intervention in the teaching of biology, the anti-abortion movement, etc.
Political parties devoid of principles or direction and moved at random by pressure groups, each demanding still more controls.
A \"progressive,\" anti-intellectual educational system that, from kindergarten to graduate school, creates students who can\'t read or write — students brainwashed into the feeling that their minds are helpless and they must adapt to \"society,\" that there is no absolute truth and that morality is whatever society says it is.
A student radical movement (from the 1960\'s through the violent anti-nukers and ecology fanatics of today) who are, Peikoff maintains, the \"pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected.\" The radicals are nature worshippers who attack the middle class, science, technology, and business.
The rise of defiant old-world racial hatreds disguised as \"ethnic-identity\" movements and \"affirmative action.\"
A pervasive atmosphere of decadence, moral bankruptcy, and nihilist art accompanied by the rise of escapist mystic cults of every kind — astrology, \"alternative medicine,\" Orientalists, extrasensory perception, etc.
In an introduction to Peikoff\'s book, Ayn Rand describes The Ominous Parallels as, \"the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than myself\" and goes on to say that, \"If you do not wish to be a victim of today\'s philosophical bankruptcy, I recommend The Ominous Parallels as protection and ammunition. It will protect you from supporting, unwittingly, the ideas that are destroying you and the world.\"
In brilliantly reasoned prose, Peikoff argues that the deepest roots of German Nazism lie not in existential crises, but in ideas — not in Germany\'s military defeat in World War I or the economic disasters of the Weimar Republic that followed, but in the philosophy that dominated pre-Nazi Germany. Although it was mediated by crises, Peikoff demonstrates that German Nazism was the inevitable climax of a centuries-long philosophic development, preaching three fundamental ideas: the worship of unreason, the demand for self-sacrifice and the elevation of society or the state above the individual.
\"These ideas,\" Peikoff says, \"are the essence of Nazism and they are exactly what our leading universities are now spreading throughout this country. This is the basic cause of all the other parallels.\"
------------------------------------------
PT: For more on the Hidden Origins of Nazism check out this site:
Posted: Mon Jun 10, 2002 2:38 am Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
I wonder if Bush is considered to be \"Philip Dru\" by some
elite circles? Is Georgy related to the \"Bush\'s Beans\" family?
That might account for some of the stinky smell of politics
these days? Here\'s something from the coffee bean man:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Dru: Administrator belongs on the short shelf of political works which are read primarily for precautionary reasons. As with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Dru is a dauntingly candid description of one man’s ruthless ambition; like the Communist Manifesto, Dru can be read as a detailed schematic for subversion. The book, which expressed the \"ethical and political faith\" of a man who came to be known as the \"Assistant President of the United States,\"1 — is perhaps best regarded as a successor to Machiavelli’s essay The Prince: It set forth the designs of an amoral plotter who was the \"power behind the throne.\"
Just as it is impossible to understand the tragedy of modern totalitarianism without some understanding of the hate-drenched scribblings of Hitler and Marx, it is at best very difficult to understand the covert forces that have shaped America’s political destiny without some understanding of the fictional Philip Dru and his historical counterpart, \"Colonel\" Edward Mandell House. Although sixty years have passed since House’s death, the changes he wrought upon America’s political and economic system remain with us.
Although Dru can be profitably read for the insights it yields in retrospect, its real value resides in the insights it provides regarding the tactics and objectives of the Power Elite that House represented, which remains firmly in control of America’s political culture.
House, an austere figure who was born to a wealthy plantation owner in Houston in 1858, wrote Dru anonymously in Austin during a six-week period in late 1911 and early 1912. He explained in a private letter that \"Governmental affairs, both domestic and foreign, have been almost my sole interest since boyhood.\"2 Although he dropped out of Cornell after one year and was never elected to political office, \"Colonel\" House arguably did more to reshape American politics, with respect both to domestic and international affairs, than any single figure. Historian Thomas J. Nock of Southern Methodist University refers to House as \"one of the first ‘Kingmakers’ in modern American politics.\"3 After writing Dru, House — who had enjoyed a very successful career as a political kingmaker in Texas — chose New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson to be the vessel of his ambitions.
House was introduced to Wilson on November 24, 1911, shortly before the \"Colonel\" began writing Dru.4 Arthur Walworth, who edited House’s diaries for the Yale University Press, records that at that meeting \"a true marriage of minds took place. 4 They found a remarkable congruence in their ideas about men and measures. Afterwards House wrote to his brother-in-law: ‘Never before have I found both the man and the opportunity.’\"5 \"Almost from the first,\" House later recalled of Wilson, \"our minds vibrated in unison.\" Prior to meeting Wilson, \"I was like a disembodied spirit seeking corporeal form,\" House reflected. \"I found my opportunity in Woodrow Wilson.\"6
Perhaps the most important area of compatibility between House and Wilson was their shared enthusiasm for socialism. House used his fictional surrogate Philip Dru to express a passion for \"Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx,\" augmented with \"a spiritual leavening.\" As an academic, Wilson had written that \"we ought all to regard ourselves as socialists\" and inveighed against \"selfish, misguided individualism....\"7 In lectures he taught as a professor of international law at Princeton between 1892 and 1894, Wilson synthesized an internationalism rooted in socialist perspectives with concepts derived from a distortion of Christianity, yielding a Dru-like variety of spiritually leavened Marxism.8 Like House, Wilson was intoxicated with a sense of his own historical significance. Notes professor Nock: \"On his thirty-third birthday, [Wilson] wrote in his ‘Confidential Journal’ the stunning question: ‘Why may not the present generation write, through me, its political autobiography?’\"9
Dru envisioned nothing less than the abolition of America’s constitutional order through a military putsch. Charles Seymour of Yale University, who served with House in a secretive group called the Inquiry and later edited House’s intimate papers, observed that \"Philip Dru\"’s intention was \"to remake the mechanism of government\" by creating \"a new American Constitution, better fitted than the old for the spirit and conditions of the twentieth century.\"10 House candidly and frequently expressed his contempt for the U.S. Constitution. \"For a long time it had seemed to me that our Government was too complicated in its machinery and that we had outgrown our Constitution,\" wrote House in 1922. \"It has been my constant wonder that our people were willing to go along without protest with such an inefficient machine.... The negative character of our Government and its lack of responsiveness to the will of the people makes it less efficient than it should be.... One of the purposes in writing ‘Philip Dru’ was a desire to bring to our people a realization of this.\" House boldly asserted that the vision sketched out in Dru represents \"a really responsive form of government\" that would give the people \"as good government as they deserved....\"11 Professor Seymour notes that the House/Wilson/Dru ideology was not American constitutionalism, but rather \"social democracy reminiscent of Louis Blanc and the revolutionaries of 1848\" — in other words, revolutionary Marxism.
House’s fictional alter-ego Philip Dru is a young West Point graduate who leaves the U.S. Army to organize a military revolt against the government of the United States and the Constitutional order it was designed to protect. In typically overripe prose, House (who never served in the military; the title \"Colonel\" was strictly honorary) describes Dru as a messianic figure who triumphantly arrives in Washington \"panoplied in justice and with the light of reason in his eyes ... the advocate of equal opportunity ... with the power to enforce his will.\" After abolishing the old order, Dru appoints himself \"Administrator\" — that is, dictator — of the new regime, in which \"the property and lives of all [are] now in the keeping of one man.\" Like Julius Caesar, who accepted the crown amid anguished professions of chaste reluctance, Dru found the powers of a dictator to be \"distasteful,\" but he managed to curb his repugnance.
Having seized totalitarian power, Dru begins to remold American society. He issues a decree making any attempt to restore America’s constitutional order \"seditious, and ... [punishable] by death.\" Dru’s regime then embarks upon a program of radical social engineering that eerily prefigures both the Wilson Administration’s \"New Freedom\" agenda and FDR’s \"New Deal.\" Observes professor Walworth, Dru \"set up a system for social security, and arranged for the representation of labor on corporate boards and for a sharing of profits among the workers. Moreover, he imposed a graduated income tax, and developed a banking system that presaged the Federal Reserve; and he united the Great Powers of the world in a league for collective security.\"12 In Dru, House described a coalition that presaged the development of the League of Nations, an organization he would himself be instrumental in creating.
Wilson eagerly embraced the Dru blueprint. Immediately after his election in 1912, Wilson sought refuge in a cottage in Bermuda \"to do a lot of thinking.\" His meditations were guided by a copy of Dru. Professor Walworth points out that \"Many of [Dru’s] prescriptions for reform ran parallel to those set down in Wilson’s The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the American People.\"13 That Wilson employed Dru as a policy template was attested by Franklin K. Lane, Wilson’s Secretary of the Interior, who wrote in a letter to a friend that \"All that book has said should come about.... The President comes to Philip Dru in the end.\"14
The anti-constitutional innovations that were brought about during Wilson’s tenure — particularly the imposition of the income tax and the Federal Reserve System — were directly derived from Dru. Granted, House and Wilson didn’t tear down the existing constitutional order through military violence, preferring instead to employ conspiratorial subtlety. House once referred to the \"graveyard\" secrecy with which he and Wilson plotted their strategy.15
Hindsight tends to have a telescoping effect; accordingly, it may be difficult to understand the radical nature of the Philip Dru agenda. The arsenal of House and his co-conspirators included ciphers and codes to disguise both written and spoken communications.16 Of course, they felt no compunctions about lying to the American public regarding their intentions, particularly with respect to key elements of the Dru agenda.
To take but one example: As devout socialists, House and Wilson eagerly sought the creation of a central bank. However, Wilson’s campaign platform explicitly rejected a central banking plan devised by Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich. No problem, House explained: \"The platform says ‘We oppose the so called Aldrich plan for the establishment of a central bank.’ This does not mean, I take it, that the central banking idea is opposed but that the Aldrich plan for a central bank is opposed.\"17 In fact, the Federal Reserve System created during the Wilson Administration, with House’s indispensable help, was indistinguishable from the Aldrich plan — and Aldrich himself was among its architects.18
House’s alter-ego Philip Dru displayed his creator’s gift for pious duplicity. Although he inveighs against the monied interests who are conspiring to control the American political system, he sees nothing amiss in bringing those same interests into his government, once he has obtained total power. It will be \"the educated and rich, in fact the ones that are now the most selfish, that will be in the vanguard of the procession,\" Dru explains. \"They will be the first to realize the joy of it all, and in this way they will redeem the sins of their ancestors.\"
Dru creates a ruling directorate in which \"corporations share with the government and states a certain part of their net earnings\" in exchange for representation in centralized policy-making councils. Dru insisted that \"it would be more to the advantage to have business conducted by corporations than by individuals in a private capacity.\" Accordingly, \"The people were asked to curb their prejudice against corporations,\" House narrates. \"It was promised that in the future corporations should be honestly run\" — under centralized government direction, of course. In similar fashion, House assembled an oligarchical vanguard that included such mega-bankers as Paul Warburg, Frank Vanderlip, and J.P. Morgan. These powerful representatives of the \"Money Power,\" along with a cadre of 100 \"forward-looking\" social planners that were called \"The Inquiry,\" helped to create the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which since 1921 has served as the ruling directorate for America’s Power Elite.
The CFR’s creation was necessary, in large measure, because of the failure of House and Wilson to achieve the crowning element of the Philip Dru agenda: The creation of a League of Nations that would unite the world under the reign of a socialist oligarchy. The League did come into existence, but the refusal of the U.S. Senate to ratify U.S. participation in the body left it impotent and largely irrelevant. In a fashion similar to Britain’s Fabian Socialists, who pursued the ends of revolutionary socialism through evolutionary means, House and his comrades created the CFR as a means of capturing America’s academic, economic, and policy elite, and catechizing it on behalf of socialist internationalism.
Many who are aware of the CFR regard it to be a stuffy but generally respectable institution — a think-tank composed of policy wonks and gray bureaucrats. This description is essentially correct. It is also entirely inadequate. The CFR is the institutional guardian of the Philip Dru vision; its role is to define a ruling \"consensus\" that is in harmony with that vision — spiritually leavened Marxism, as interpreted by a ruling vanguard of political, academic, media, and corporate leaders. The concise term that describes this philosophy is Fascism.
It was House, not Benito Mussolini, who pioneered the concept of the corporate state. House cheerfully acknowledged that fact in an essay he wrote for Liberty magazine shortly after the election of FDR: \"In 1911, I wrote a book entitled Philip Dru: Administrator. It came in for considerable discussion, favorable and unfavorable. It was, in fact, a semi-political novel showing how a dictator seized the government of the United States and anticipated Mussolini by a number of years.\"19 At the time that House offered this admission, Fascism was the collectivist flavor of the month. Mussolini was the darling of both corporate and intellectual elites. Even the leaders of America’s \"mainline\" religious denominations could be found hymning the praises of Fascism: In 1935, Dr. John C. Bennett, president of the Union Theological Seminary, praised Fascism for its \"constructive value in a stage of the development of a new economic order.\"20
In an article published in 1935, House wrote a breathtaking apologia for Fascist imperialism in Africa. \"The tension in Europe will lead to new disasters unless the imperial urge of Mussolini has the opportunity to spend itself on African soil,\" declared House. \"The legions of Mussolini marching into Africa may lay the foundation for a new Roman Empire great enough to give the Italian people a chance to breathe. If Mussolini succeeds, Italy will expand in Africa without exploding in Europe.\"21
Arguably, Mussolini was even more faithful to the Philip Dru agenda than Wilson and House had been. After seizing power in a coup de main, Mussolini — who had been a revolutionary Marxist of the reddest hue — created a corporate state based upon an attenuated vision of socialism that emphasized \"spiritual\" and \"heroic\" values, rather than economic egalitarianism. His Fascist credo — \"Everything within the state; nothing outside the state; nothing against the state\" — was a perfect adaptation of Dru’s ruling philosophy. The Fascist regime was nothing if not \"responsive\" and \"efficient\"; as was often said, Il Duce made the trains run on time. Even his war against Abyssinia could be looked upon as a regionally adapted version of Dru’s war of conquest in Latin America.
Among Mussolini’s most devoted admirers was Roosevelt’s \"Brain Trust,\" which studied his corporatist state as a model for American reforms.22 Significantly, the Roosevelt clique turned to Fascism’s primary source for guidance as well: House was paid court by FDR, who sought his wisdom regarding foreign policy. The \"secret diary\" of FDR’s chief of staff Harold L. Ickes recorded an Oval Office huddle involving FDR and House on October 18, 1933.23 In the same source, Ickes also conceded that the Roosevelt Brain Trust was secretly \"working toward a society of modified Communism,\" a near-transliteration of Philip Dru’s objective, and a tidy summation of the Fascist vision.24
The Philip Dru vision was only partially consummated by Wilson; FDR was much more successful. Writing in July, 1937, Thomas W. Phelps, then Washington Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, offered the following remarkable acknowledgment:
\"As Congress puts the finishing touches on the legislative program for the first four years of the Roosevelt Administration, Col. E.M. House, confidant of President Roosevelt, emerges as the prophet, if not the real brain trust of the New Deal. Almost 25 years ago, House wrote of a revolution led by a young West Pointer, who triumphed in one brief but bloody battle; became a benevolent dictator and proceeded to reshape the American Government. In its large outlines, almost the entire revolutionary program has been put through or is in process of being realized under two Democratic Presidents who have served since House turned novelist for a few weeks.\"25
Shortly after this celebration of the triumph of Fascism in America, America found itself maneuvered into fighting Fascism as an ally of Stalin’s Soviet Union. In short order, House’s admissions were cast into the memory hole — along with every copy of Philip Dru that the ruling elite could get its hands on.
Columnist Westbrook Pegler, a capable and pugnacious critic of collectivism of all varieties, understood the significance of Dru as a totalitarian template. Pegler was among the most outspoken critics of FDR’s assault upon the Constitution; he had also issued incandescently critical reviews of Mussolini’s regime from Italy at a time when doing so required more than a little courage. Writing in 1954, Pegler informed his readers, in characteristically forthright fashion, that \"During all these years since 1911 or 1912, by the secret evil design of one man, the Government of this great republic has been corrupted and transformed into Fascism, which that man invented long before Benito Mussolini was heard of outside his native village. At that time Adolf Hitler was just another country boy in Austria.\" Pegler described Hitler and Mussolini, as well as Wilson and FDR, as disciples of House.26
Despite the efforts of the political elite to suppress the distribution of Philip Dru and disavow House’s embarrassing admissions, Pegler neglected no opportunity to remind the public of Fascism’s real origins. \"Wilson’s Rasputin, the most influential private citizen in America and indeed one of the most powerful human beings in all the world, copyrighted Fascism at a time when Mussolini was just a loud-mouthed, hand-to-mouth Communist in Milan, [and] Lenin and Trotsky were unknown vermin hiding in dark corners of Geneva and New York,\" noted Pegler in a typical column.27
For Pegler, writing at a time when the Congressional Reece Committee was investigating the underpinning and actions of the \"Invisible Government\" assembled by House and his co-conspirators, Philip Dru: Administrator was among the most valuable pieces of evidence in the effort to prove that America’s descent into collectivism was the product of premeditated conspiracy, rather than the impersonal labors of indifferent historical forces. \"[E]ven today few citizens have heard of [Philip Dru] and hardly one in a million has read it,\" he noted. \"And, of course, the press will still ignore it diligently.... Practically all our historians and our teaching professors either know nothing about all this or refuse to teach this historical information to their students. One of the most important political documents of our age has been blacked out.\" 28
That political document is now available in a reissued edition, and it remains just as timely today. This is not because of its deathless prose or its vibrant characterizations; indeed, there is hardly a page that can be read without embarrassment for the author’s ineptitude. The reader sufficiently diligent to plow through House’s congealed prose will be rewarded. Crucial descriptions of House’s malignant philosophy are embedded in rambling soliloquies and used to season improbable heart-to-heart talks between Dru and his inamorata, Gloria Strawn. In Chapter VI, \"The Prophet of a New Day,\" the full scope of House’s messianic delusions is revealed, as is his devotion to spiritualized Marxism. Chapters XIX-XXIV describe Dru’s military putsch. The remainder of the book presents a detailed outline of the Dru/House agenda, and the necessary institutions to bring that agenda to fruition. The political elite House represented is busily employing the ruling instruments that represent Philip Dru’s vision — the United Nations, the Breton Woods financial institutions, the Federal Reserve, the CFR and its kindred councils — to carry out the ongoing drive to create a new world order. Domestically, \"public-private partnerships\" remain in vogue — corporatist mechanisms drawn from House’s Fascist model. House’s vision of a \"responsive\" and \"efficient\" government unfettered by constitutional limitations is shared with near unanimity by the political elite and the media’s opinion cartel. And throughout the world — whether in the U.S., Latin America, the European Union, the Former Soviet Union, or Red China — there is a definable trend toward the acceptance of House’s modified Marxism as the dominant political and economic philosophy, as House’s disciples pursue the global triumph of his vision in \"graveyard silence.\"
Philip Dru: Administrator is arguably the most influential political tract of the twentieth century. Its influence has been written in blood and paid for in the coin of stolen liberties. But its malignant vision has not yet triumphed completely. Those who would defeat the designs of the Power Elite must first understand those designs — and they are on full display in Philip Dru.
William Norman Grigg
Appleton, Wisconsin
September 1998
Footnotes to the Foreword
1.Boston Transcript, February 22, 1915, as quoted in the diary of Edward Mandell House (hereafter \"Diary\") for February 18, 1915.
2.Ibid.
3.Thomas J. Nock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992), pg. 20.
4.Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters; Vol. Three, Governor 1910-1913 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1931), p. 294.
5.Walworth, pg. 7.
6.Nock, pp. 20-21.
7.Nock, p. 7.
8.Nock, p. 8.
9.Nock, p. 13.
10.Charles Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, Vol. 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926-2, 152-153.
11.House, letter of July 10, 1922, op. cit.
12.Arthur Walworth, \"The Historical Significance of the House Diary,\" Yale University Press, 1996, pg. 6.
13.Walworth, pg. 7.
14. George Sylvester Viereck The Strangest Friendship in History: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York: Liveright, Inc., 1932), p. 28.
15.Walworth, pg. 2.
16.Seymour, p. 115.
17.Baker, op. cit., pg. 142.
18.G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve (Appleton, WI: American Opinion, 1994), 3-23.
19.House, Liberty magazine, January 7, 1933, as quoted in \"Philip Dru: Fascist Prototype,\" J.B. Matthews, American Mercury, November 1954, 133-134.
20 Seymour, 160-161.
21.Bennett, John C. Social Salvation: A Religious Approach to the Problems of Social Change (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935), p. 165; as quoted in Alan Stang, The Actor (Boston: Western Islands, 1968), p. 80.
22.House, Liberty, September 14, 1935, as quoted in Matthews, op. cit., 140-141.
23.For a concise treatment of the Fascist origins of FDR’s New Deal, see \"FDR and Clinton: Goose-stepping to the Beat of the Same Drum\" by William F. Jasper, The New American, April 5, 1993. Scholarly treatments of the same subject are found in Charlotte Twight, Our Emerging Fascist Economy (Arlington House, 1975); Leonard Piekoff, The Ominous Parallels (New York: Stein and Day, 1982); John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1944) and The Roosevelt Myth (New York, Devin-Adair, 1956)..
24.Westbrook Pegler, \"A Guide for Revolution,\" Los Angeles Examiner, September 13, 1954, 1-21..
25.Ibid.
26. Westbrook Pegler, \"U.S. Fascism Spawned in 1912,\" Los Angeles Examiner, August 26, 1954, 1-25.
Posted: Tue Jun 11, 2002 3:26 am Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
Aggression is the mark of imperialism, and First Strike policies limit diplomacy and negotiation, thus \"War is Peace\" come into standard thought processes.
[quote]Bush Plans New \'Strike First\' Policy
Mon Jun 10,11:44 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush in the first national security strategy he submits to Congress, will formalize his new \"strike first\" military policy against terrorists and rogue states that possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Monday that the document, required annually by law, will be ready for release to Congress and the public by early fall. It is to pull together other foreign relations and national security policies that Bush has articulated since Sept. 11, including new political- and economic-reform demands on countries that receive U.S. aid.
\"It\'s part of a charge that the National Security Council has to come up with a broad statement of strategy and policy,\" Fleischer said.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday old doctrines of security will not always apply in this new century.
\"During the Cold War we were able to manage the threats with arms control agreements and a policy of deterrence,\" Cheney said in a speech to the Democrat Union Conference, a coalition of conservative Christian Democratic center and right center political parties.
\"We have enemies with nothing to defend,\" Cheney said. \"A group like al-Qaida cannot be deterred or placated or reasoned with at a conference table. For that reason, this struggle will not end with a treaty or accommodation of terrorists.\"
Cheney said the struggle will end with the \"complete and utter destruction\" of terrorist networks.
He said \"grave threats are accumulating\" against the United States. \"Inaction will only bring them closer. We will not wait until it is too late.\"
Cheney said the United States is \"especially concerned by any possible linkup\" between certain governments and terror networks. He referred to Iraq particularly, saying that President Saddam Hussein has shown he\'s willing to use weapons of mass destruction
Bush articulated his \"strike first\" doctrine in a June 1 commencement address at West Point, where he told the military academy\'s graduates: \"The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. ... We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt its plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge.\"
Such a pre-emptive stance is a departure from the decades-old Cold War policies of containment and deterrence that were built around the theory that an enemy would not attack the United States because such an attack would mean a certain and devastating retaliatory strike.
One must wonder if the war is on two fronts, when the coast guard, FEMA, & the INS, are joined by the SECRET SERVICE and a new intelligence agency under one banner. The words gestapo (state secret police) and scheutzstaffel (protected rank) comes to mind.
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2002 4:03 am Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
I do find the swiftness of the recent shedding of civil liberties to be troublesome at the very least. But I refuse to become an alarmist(hell, that would give them MORE ammo). I\'ll continue to excercize my rights to their furthest extent and work towards a pullback of civil rights infringements by elected and appointed authorities. A good website to check out is [url]http://www.notinourname.net[/url] . Another good one (although it\'s a bit older) is [url]http://www.indefenseoffreedom.org/[/url].
_________________ We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.
-Titus Livius
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2002 6:08 am Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
[b]US cyber security may draft ISPs in spy game
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Online
Posted: 19/06/2002 at 04:32 GMT
An early draft of the White House\'s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace envisions the same kind of mandatory customer data collection and retention by U.S. Internet service providers as was recently enacted in Europe, according to sources who have reviewed portions of the plan.
In recent weeks, the administration has begun doling out bits and pieces of a draft of the strategy to technology industry members and advocacy groups. A federal data retention law is suggested briefly in a section drafted in part by the U.S. Justice Department.
The comprehensive strategy is being assembled by the President\'s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, headed by cyber security czar Richard Clarke, and is intended as a collaborative road map for further action by government agencies, private industry, and Congress.
While not binding, proposals that find their way into the final version of the National Strategy would likely have added weight in Congress, and could lead to legislation.
A controversial directive passed by the European Parliament last month allows the 15 European Union member countries to force ISPs to collect and keep detailed logs of each customer\'s traffic, so that law enforcement agencies could access it later.
Data to be gathered under the European plan includes the headers (from, to, cc and subject lines) of every e-mail each customer sends or receives, and every user\'s complete Web browsing history. The period of time that the data will have to be retained is up to each member country; specific legislative proposals range from 12 months to seven years, according to Cedric Laurant, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which opposed the directive.
\"Somebody could see their past for the last seven years be completely open,\" says Laurant, speaking of the European directive. \"It violates freedom of speech and the basic principle of the presumption of innocence.\"
The draft of the U.S. plan does not specify how much data ISPs would be forced to collect, or how long they would have to store it. The White House did not return phone calls on the strategy, which is scheduled for release in September[/b]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25781.html
Qoutes from Steven Spielberg
[quote]That [What happens in the movie The Minority Report] may seem like farfetched science fiction, but Spielberg is not so certain. He\'s worried that America\'s war on terrorism has set in motion new high-tech methods to try to find criminals before they can carry out their crimes.
\"They have a computer program that they\'re developing that\'s going to try to predict human behavior and be able to spot terrorism in airports,\" the filmmaker says.
\"What they\'re looking for is anomalies in behavior. It\'s sort of a mean average of how people behave when they\'re simply walking down the street and they\'re going to compare that to people whose behavior is more erratic,\" he says.
And that makes the Oscar-winning director distinctly uneasy.
\"What really disturbs me — a nerd who does have a weird walk — is that I imagine that suddenly a van pulls up and hauls me into an interrogation, you know, for being original … or for being different.\" [/quote]
[quote]\"George Orwell\'s prophecy really comes true, not in the 20th century but in the 21st,\" Spielberg says. \"Big Brother is watching us now and what little privacy we have will completely evaporate in 20 or 30 years, because technology will be able to see through walls, through rooftops, into the very privacy of our personal lives, into the sanctuary of our families.\" [/quote]
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2002 12:51 pm Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
Free Speech has it\'s consequences, disent is unwelcome by those in charge, problems may result from both peers and the law in a Police State.
[quote]Anti-Bush protesters ejected from Ohio State commencement
By Kate Randall
19 June 2002
Graduates at the June 14 commencement ceremony held by Ohio State University (OSU) were threatened with arrest if they made any protest against the keynote speaker, George W. Bush.
In opening remarks at the university’s football stadium in Columbus, Ohio, OSU Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Richard Hollingsworth warned, “Disruption, including obstructing the view or hearing of others, will not be tolerated.” The graduates and their guests, numbering about 60,000, were informed that anyone protesting or heckling the speakers could be subject to arrest and expulsion from the stadium. They were told that staff members, police and Secret Service officers would be watching the stands for any signs of protest.
As Bush walked to the podium, about 10 people, including four graduates, stood up and turned their backs to the president. An undetermined number of them were escorted out of the stadium by police officers. None currently face charges.
One protester gave the following account of what happened in comments posted on the Internet web site turnyourbackonbush.com:
“Before he [Bush] even got to the stage, we did our about-face. I looked over my shoulder to see how many graduates were doing the same. However, everybody was standing at that point, and in pure black robes, it was impossible to see who was facing what direction. Furthermore, over that same shoulder, I saw one of Columbus’ Finest heading our way. We never got to see how many students participated. We were being led out of Ohio Stadium.
“To the officer’s credit, he realized there was a three-year-old in my arms and was not at all hostile. I asked him if I was under arrest, and he did not answer me. When we reached the exit, I asked the SS [Secret Service] man why we had been ejected, and he told me we were being charged with disturbing the peace. If we chose to leave, the charges would be dropped immediately. With our daughter in mind, we chose not to fight it...
“On this day, June 14, 2002, I came to the realization that we no longer live in a free society. This is rapidly heading the same way Nazi Germany headed. Questioning our leaders is no longer the most outrageous crime you can be charged with. Not paying attention to them is.”
Protesters outside the stadium also faced harassment. About 100 students, faculty and others demonstrated at the gates to the venue, carrying signs and chanting slogans against the Bush administration’s war in Afghanistan and its support for Israeli terror in the occupied territories. The demonstrators were threatened with arrest if they did not disperse, and were moved to a location away from the stadium.
Security was extremely tight at the event. Graduates and their guests were instructed to arrive at the stadium as early as 6 a.m., where they stood in long lines before passing through metal detectors and having their personal effects searched.
Ohio State administrators were bent on providing Bush with an unopposed platform for his policies, introducing him as a “tireless worker in the field of education” and “a man who unified this country after the terrible events of 9/11.”
The suppression of protests and the expulsion of those who peacefully exercised their free speech rights reflect the real character of the Bush administration, which since September 11 has launched an unprecedented attack on basic democratic rights, against both the immigrant population and US citizens. The actions of the OSU authorities are, moreover, indicative of the shameless acquiescence of the academic establishment to the government’s policies of militarism and repression.
The government and university administrators were particularly concerned about preventing any embarrassment for Bush at Ohio State, where top Clinton administration officials were politically exposed and humiliated four years earlier. On February 18, 1998, an “International Town Meeting” organized at OSU turned into a political debacle for the government.
The White House, in conjunction with the cable news channel CNN, staged the event as a publicity stunt to demonstrate popular support for an impending air war against Iraq. Even though the authorities had screened the audience to weed out opposition, the administration’s three spokespersons—Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen and National Security Advisor Samuel Berger—faced open dissent and pointed questioning about US military policy. Clinton’s top aides were unable to answer questions exposing the glaring contradictions in the government’s war propaganda, and could do little more than repeat canned phrases and pre-packaged denunciations of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Television footage from the town meeting was so damaging to Clinton, excerpts of the event were broadcast on Iraqi television.
Bush’s handlers and the OSU administration were intent on preventing a similar political debacle for the current occupant of the White House. Repression began at the university the week before, on June 9, at another graduation ceremony. Outgoing university President William Kirwan is pressing charges against four guests of a graduating Masters student who were arrested for “persistent disorderly conduct” and “obstruction of official business” because they turned their backs on commencement speaker J.C. Watts, a Republican congressman from Oklahoma. The four acted to show support for a protest by the Afrikan Student Union against the speaker.
The man and three women were arrested without warning, handcuffed and taken to the OSU police facility. Four hours later they were taken to the County Correctional Facility, where they were charged. They were not released until late that evening.
Ohio State student organizations and faculty have spoken out against the arrests and expulsions and Bush’s appearance at the university. Joseph Levine, a philosophy professor and faculty advisor on the OSU Committee for Justice in Palestine, told the WSWS, “The president is pushing an agenda, one that is antithetical to the goals of higher education. His agenda includes a redistribution of resources toward the wealthy, while the function of public higher education is in large part to level the playing field and enable redistribution in a more egalitarian direction.
“His so-called ‘security’ policies aim to restrict free speech and independent thinking, whereas the goal of the university is to enhance them as much as possible. His aggressive posture toward the world is a danger to world peace, whereas the university is a place to learn how to live in peace with others. In every way this president stands for everything the university should be against, so it seems especially inappropriate that he should have been chosen as the commencement speaker.”
Yoshie Furuhashi, a lecturer in the English department, commented: “The Ohio State University administration, by issuing threats of arrests and expulsions at the rehearsal and on the day of the commencement, gave a lie to the idea of the university as a place of free inquiry. The corporatization of higher education has made OSU, as well as other institutions, follow the example of businesses that put profit before people and the US government that puts law and order above liberty and democracy.”[/quote]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/ohio-j19.shtml
Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2002 3:41 pm Post subject: Genesis of the Fascist State Of America
\"Would you like to see [Americana] rule again, my friend. All you have to do is follow the worms.\"-Pink Floyd \'Waiting for the worms\' 1979
Fascism is not just a \"govt. conspiracy\" it is a movement by the people, unfortunately it tends to be \"Be Patriotic and keep your mouth shut or else...\" and is usually used in combination with economic woes and social fears.
[quote]US cartoonists under pressure to follow the patriotic line
By Andrew Buncombe, in Washington
23 June 2002
They are largely black and white (and read all over) but George Bush wants to colour them red, white and blue.
Nine months after the attacks of 11 September, leading American political cartoonists say they are under intense pressure to conform to a patriotic stereotype and not criticise the actions of Mr Bush and his \"war on terror\". Those who refuse to bend to such pressure face having their work rejected, being fired or even publicly humiliated by the President\'s press secretary.
Last month the veteran TV anchor Dan Rather sparked controversy when he said the patriotism engulfing the country had stopped the media asking difficult questions of America\'s leaders, and admitted he personally was guilty of such self-censorship. Now cartoonists, often the most biting political commentators of all, say they are feeling the same pressures.
Excessive patriotic zeal exerted by editors and publishers means that many \"progressive\" cartoonists are having their work dropped. Some, especially those who work for smaller newspapers or who are freelance, are engaging in self-censorship to ensure their work gets used.
\"There is immense pressure [from] readers and advertisers to toe the patriotic line as they define it,\" said Steve Benson, widely considered one of America\'s leading political cartoonists, who draws for The Arizona Republic and who syndicates his work. \"I have had editors who have pulled my syndicated cartoons because readers have marched to their offices and demanded retractions. I have had death threats, efforts to silence me, people who have compared me to traitors.\"
As in Britain, America has a long tradition of editorial page cartoonists who use their skills to analyse, question and often ridicule their political leaders in a manner usually far more scathing than that of most writers. Some have huge followings, and the leading cartoonists publish collections of their free-thinking work.
But in the aftermath of 11 September, such free thinking is under threat. Many cartoonists say that for the first few days after the attacks, their natural reaction was to produce work that expressed little more than shock, outrage and anger. But it soon became apparent that the emerging patriotism was developing a political agenda, with anyone who merely questioned the government or its agenda being deemed unpatriotic.
The issue of such pressure is being highlighted this weekend by an exhibition of political cartoons from more than 30 cartoonists, including six Pulitzer Prize winners, whose work questions the administration\'s behaviour in one way or the other. One of the organisers, Mike Konopacki, whose work is syndicated to a number of newspapers and magazines, said political cartoons had become \"dumber\" since 11 September. \"The emphasis is on humour rather than analysis.\"
Clay Bennett, a Pulitzer winner, said cartoonists had a duty of responsibility. He felt extremely strongly about the way the government\'s terror crackdown had reduced people\'s civil liberties. \"A police state is just around the corner,\" he said. \"If it\'s freedom the terrorists hate, than why are we doing away with freedom?\"
On one occasion, Ari Fleischer, the President\'s spokesman, criticised a comedian who had suggested it was US pilots rather than the hijackers who were cowards, for dropping bombs from the safety of 15,000ft. Mr Fleischer said: \"There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say.\"
Mr Fleischer also publicly criticised Mike Marland, who had drawn a cartoon for the Concord Patriot newspaper illustrating what he considered Mr Bush\'s attack on the social security system by showing the president flying a plane marked \"Bush budget\" into the twin towers marked \"Social\" and \"Security\".
Though the paper ran the cartoon, following a deluge of negative phone calls the editor-in-chief wrote a follow-up column saying the paper had been wrong to do so.
Mr Marland, who initially apologised and even destroyed the original, said: \"I am still bewildered by the reaction. As I said, call me stupid, call me naive, but I don\'t see it as [the] abomination that so many others do. I also experienced a lot of anger over the reaction to it, mostly along the lines of \'Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can\'t draw?\'.\" [/quote] http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=308068
Remember the warnings that Ray Bradbury gave when he wrote [u]Fahrenheit 451 and the Martina Chronicles story \"Usher II\"[/u]
, 152-153.
