I normally would not reproduce an entire article, but this from Don Hazen at AlterNet is very much worth a close read, I think.

The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen

By Don Hazen, AlterNet, Wednesday 21 November 2007, via t r u t h o u t

   If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf’s newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.

   Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In “The End of America,” she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. “Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today,” she writes.

   If we want an open society, she warns, we must pay attention and we must fight to protect democracy.

   I met with Wolf to discuss what she learned while researching this book, how the American public has received her warnings, and what we can do to squelch the fascist narratives we are fed in this country each day.

   Don Hazen: Let’s take up a big question first – your fears about the upcoming U.S. presidential election and what the historical blue print about fascist takeovers shows in terms of elections.

  Naomi Wolf: We would be naive given the historical patterns to have hope that there’s going to be a transparent, accountable election in 2008. There are various ways the blueprint indicates how events are much more likely to play out. Historically, the months leading up to the national election are likely to be unstable.

   What classically happens is either there will be a period of provocation, and we have a history of this in the United States – agitators who are dressed as or act like activist voter registration workers, anti-war marchers … but who engage in actual violence, torch property, assault police officers. And that scares people. People are much less likely to vote for change when they’re scared, and it gives them the excuse to crack down.

   In addition, I’m concerned about the 2007 Defense Authorization Act, which makes it much easier for the president to declare martial law.

I ate the apple from the tree. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. I’m probably going to hell. 😉

“Where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush……………..?”

[Crossposted from OOIBC]

The entire debate about NOT funding the occupation of Iraq and George W. Bush’s Iraq and Mid-East Debacle revolves around one piece of propaganda that has been sold to the public in one of the most heinous aggregations of misperceptions, disinformation, and outright lies ever foisted on a public that cares for the lives of the American troops sent into Iraq, i.e. lies, spread by republicans and democrats and trolls.

The Bush Administration, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress alike, repeat almost daily that they will not defund the troops, with both sides vying for public support with the same bullshit.

It’s the biggest load of crap there is.

The Democratic Leadership apparently is afraid of not funding the Iraq occupation either because they are afraid of being attacked by Bush and the GOP for not funding the troops, or because they want to continue the occupation.

They know it is a lie when Bush says it.

Yet they turn right around and tell people (repeating the lie) that advocating not funding the occupation is advocating not funding the troops.

Emergency supplemental funding for a war or for an occupation is not for the troops. It never has been for the troops. It will never be for the troops.

NOT passing emergency supplemental funding does not hurt the troops. It never has hurt the troops. It will never hurt the troops.

Not passing emergency supplemental funding is simply NOT FUNDING the occupation. That is all it is.

[Crossposted from OOIBC]

The entire debate about NOT funding the occupation of Iraq and George W. Bush’s Iraq and Mid-East Debacle revolves around one piece of propaganda that has been sold to the public in one of the most heinous aggregations of misperceptions, disinformation, and outright lies ever foisted on a public that cares for the lives of the American troops sent into Iraq, i.e. lies, spread by republicans and democrats and trolls.

The Bush Administration, and Republicans and Democrats in Congress alike, repeat almost daily that they will not defund the troops, with both sides vying for public support with the same bullshit.

It’s the biggest load of crap there is.

The Democratic Leadership apparently is afraid of not funding the Iraq occupation either because they are afraid of being attacked by Bush and the GOP for not funding the troops, or because they want to continue the occupation.

They know it is a lie when Bush says it.

Yet they turn right around and tell people (repeating the lie) that advocating not funding the occupation is advocating not funding the troops.

Emergency supplemental funding for a war or for an occupation is not for the troops. It never has been for the troops. It will never be for the troops.

NOT passing emergency supplemental funding does not hurt the troops. It never has hurt the troops. It will never hurt the troops.

Not passing emergency supplemental funding is simply NOT FUNDING the occupation. That is all it is.

I was sent this article by a commenter on October 29, 2007 and re-published it on my own blog.

After reading some of the comments in the past day or so to Armando’s post at Talkleft CNN: Torture As The Punchline, I am re-posting the article here because I think it is an important enough subject, and I think that the experiences of Rev. Fred Morris are things that need to be known, and the responsive actions of Foreign Service officer Richard Brown are valuable educationally.

My own opinion of torture is that it is an utterly indefensible and unquestionable evil, and my own opinion of people who excuse or support or condone torture or attempt to obfuscate and confuse definitions of torture is that they are beyond debating with. Torture is morally, ethically, and legally wrong, and it is a travesty that it is now being “debated” in mainstream media as if to condone it is “just another opinion as valid as any other”.

To those people I ask “What would the child you once were think of the adult you have become?”. Perhaps they should ask themselves that question.

Please read Rev. Fred Morris' article.

………………………………………………………………….

“As we are now facing the horrifying spectacle of our president, vice president, Secretaries of State and Defense and Attorney General all making torture a “legitimate” weapon in our arsenal against international terrorism, I ask, Where is Richard Brown when we really need him?”

In 1963, Fred Morris became a missionary of the United Methodist Church to Brazil, where he spent eleven years. As the result of his journalistic activities and his close association with Archbishop Câmara, who was the leading opponent of the Brazilian military, who had overthrown the democratically-elected government in 1964, he was kidnapped by the Brazilian army in 1974 and spent 17 days in their torture chambers in Recife before being expelled by presidential decree as a person “prejudicial to national interests.” On his return to the United States, Time published a two-page first-person account of his experiences entitled     Torture, Brazilian Style (Nov. 18, 1974). He subsequently appeared on the  Today Show  and more than 25 other TV talk shows in the U.S. and Canada. He testified before the U.S. Congress and lobbied for human rights in Latin America in Washington for nearly two years, and published another story in  Harper's  (October, 1975  'In the presence of mine enemies')

“Where is Richard Brown when we really need him?”
By Rev. Fred Morris

10/26/07 “ICH” — — The story of a young Foreign Service officer who risked his budding career to defend a principle and the honor of the United States

Intro: In the fall of 1974, I was being tortured by members of the Brazilian army in Recife, Brazil, led by officers who bragged about having been trained at the School of the Americas (then in Panama). When I was kidnapped from my home in Recife, (Time, November 18, 1974 and Harpers's, October, 1975) on September 30, 1974, I did not expect to survive. Since the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected president of Brazil, João Goulart, in April of 1964, hundreds of Brazilians had been “disappeared” by the military security forces in their ongoing war against “international Communism” and its alleged collaborators within Brazil.

It looks like Iraq veteran Alex, who wrote The Real Deal as his response to Rush Limbaugh calling veterans opposed to the war “phony soldiers”, has a pretty good shot at winning the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Military Blog.

The Real Deal:

When I was a kid I watched Rush with my dad every morning when he was still on TV and always found him pretty funny and clever. Over the years I didn’t have a very concrete opinion about him, I just knew him as the kooky conservative radio host who defended Bush at every turn (and hey, so did I). What did Rush and I have to lose when the war in Iraq started in 2003? I didn’t have any family in the military, and all my friends were too young to even enlist. Why not go kick the sh*t out of a country, as long as someone else was doing it?

This was the last time Rush and I would agree on the war, so here’s my opinion of you, Rush: you’re as smart, selfless and courageous as I was as a 17 year old high school senior.

You make a good point that people who joined the military during the war knew they were going and shouldn’t be against it. As I’ve seen since I joined in 2004, everyone in the military is gung ho to a certain extent, at least in the beginning of their career. I was part of a large group of new guys who got to a unit that just got back from a year long deployment. After our hazing sessions became less and less frequent in the following months, we listened to the stories all of them were telling, of vicious firefights and rescue missions. We all wanted to do our part, we all wanted to get some too. We were going to see what it was like to take a life. Too bad Rush missed his chance to do so, or maybe he’d be singing a different tune.
…
As a phony civilian hoping to be a phony soldier, I tried to enlist in the military after I graduated high school in 2003.
…
Speaking of phony soldiers, I wanted to show Rush a few that I know: {click link above for all of Alex’s pictures}

This is Chevy in Baghdad. Brian Chevalier was going to reenlist but decided against it before he was killed on March 14 during our first mission in Baqubah. His phony life was celebrated in a phony memorial where everyone who knew him cried phony tears. A phony American flag draped over his phony coffin when his body came home. It was presented to his phony mother and phony daughter.

I would be in awe if I ever met a real life soldier, and not a phony one like Bill, Matt or Brian Chevalier. Thank you, Rush Limbaugh, for telling me the difference. I hope your ass is ok.

You can vote for Alex here. Help him win the award. He deserves it.  His blog is Army of Dude.

clammyc asked this morning in his essay Selling out values for political expediency is disastrous:

…we progressives constantly find ourselves banging our heads against the wall or just shaking our heads as we read, see or hear about yet another situation where our core values are being sold out for reasons that I can’t fathom.
…
Why is this?  Is it out of fear?  Is it out of complacency?  Is it out of not wanting to rock the boat in order to potentially win big next year?  Either way, the answer isn’t a good one.  Right now,  we are at a crossroads as the general public still trusts Democrats more on nearly every issue, yet we have always been good at being ahead of the curve.

What happens if a few things that I mention above backfire?

Magnifico noted yesterday in A Tale of Two Iraqs:

If Americans prove incapable of even admitting we have a problem, let alone working on solutions, in the coming months, then America might be in need of an intervention.

It appears that that intervention is happening, and has been in the works for some time.

The world has had enough of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and of those who enable them.

Time to pay attention, Nancy. Now you are free to concentrate on avoiding an electoral debacle in 2008, by ending the occupation of Iraq.

Usually if I run across a story or an article on current events that particularly catches my attention I’ll quote from it and comment with my interpretation.

Back in February though, I found one of those rare gems I occasionally stumble over while looking for something else, like walking through a forest and cresting a hill or suddenly stepping into a clearing and spotting something that grabs your attention before you realize it was there.

So, this time, with no interpretation of my own or comment other than to say it says what it says better than I ever could, I’m just reproducing an entire article.

Please give Rosa your entire attention:

Thanks for the inspiration OPOL. And you, Nightprowlkitty.

Nightprowlkitty said:

I will focus my attention from now on to those who are able to do the right thing, from whatever walk of life they travel, powerful or with no power at all.  I am resolved.  I am not outraged and I am not ashamed.

OPOL said:

Torture is an abomination, dropping bombs on babies is an outrage, people deserve healthcare and good treatment, and lying to the people is no way to run a democracy.  All of these things are true.

One does not compromise with Straussians, neocons, chickenhawks or clueless bastards. People who still support George W. Bush, torture and war profiteering at this late stage of human history are beyond reason or persuasion.  There is no point whatsoever in worrying about how such people see things, what they might say, or how they might characterize our actions or arguments.  These people should not be appeased or wooed, they should be marginalized and driven back under the rocks from which they have slithered.

How did we get here? Why is there so much strife in the Middle East? Why are there so many deadly competing cultural, national, political and economic interests there? What is the history behind it all? How can we understand it all without spending years and years becoming becoming scholars of Comparative Religion or Historians?

There is no easy way, but the following two 90 second animated Flash maps, courtesy of Maps Of War, can help to give us a good nutshell summary of answers to questions that have perplexed and caused untold misery and death for centuries.

From Bear Republic Action Group. This is what is being done in Iraq in your name, while Republicans continue to support George W. Bush and the Democratic controlled Congress refuses to stop funding and put an end to George W. Bush’s occupation of that country:

Warning: This video is ugly, savage and without a doubt not for the kids or the squeamish….But it is what George W. Bush and his ‘Rubber Stamp Republican Party’ are doing in the full light of day. Send a link to this to anyone you know who thinks the ‘Surge’ is working or that, in fact, the people ‘running’ this brutal, illegal occupation have any fucking idea what they are doing. And I do mean any idea at all.

[Cross-Posted at Edgeing]

On September 13, 2007 George W. Bush told the world how wonderfully his “surge” is working to deliver heaven on earth to Iraqis:

Eight months ago, we adopted a new strategy to meet that objective, including a surge in U.S. forces that reached full strength in June. This week, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before Congress about how that strategy is progressing. In their testimony, these men made clear that our challenge in Iraq is formidable. Yet they concluded that conditions in Iraq are improving, that we are seizing the initiative from the enemy, and that the troop surge is working.

The premise of our strategy is that securing the Iraqi population is the foundation for all other progress. For Iraqis to bridge sectarian divides, they need to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods. For lasting reconciliation to take root, Iraqis must feel confident that they do not need sectarian gangs for security. The goal of the surge is to provide that security and to help prepare Iraqi forces to maintain it. As I will explain tonight, our success in meeting these objectives now allows us to begin bringing some of our troops home.

George W. Bush has at least two fans who still take anything he has to say as resembling reality. Himself, and General David H. Petraeus. Not many more.

George W. Bush has had his say. Now it’s time for a little real reality.