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Terrence Paupp, Jim Hightower, Charles Mercieca and John Pilger: Publications about the American Democracy and Fascism in the Book: Global Peace Science (GPS) by 174 coauthors from 34 countries, 616 pp., 2016 http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf Terrence Paupp, Death of Democracy in America, p. 276-277 Terrence Paupp, The Murder of American Democracy by Corporate Fascists, p.362-364 Jim Hightower, Super PACs and Secret Money Destroying America’s Democracy, p. 278-279 Charles Mercieca, Death of Democracy and Freedom in America, p. 279-280 John Pilger, Why the Rise of Fascism is again the Issue, p. 364-366 GPS Chapter 8 6. Death of Democracy in America. Terrence Paupp (p. 276-277) Democracy in the United States is completely dead. The American people are living under the tyranny of an oligarchy that is run between the financial sector on Wall Street and its bought-and-paid-for minions in Washington, D.C. With the exception of a few elected officials, the main concern of senators and congressmen is not the welfare of the people but the business interests of US big corporations, generally headed by the weapons industry and the military industrial complex. This explains why nobody dares to be openly critical of wars regardless of the extent of their disastrous consequences.
Criminals Escaping Prosecution. Very sadly, the people everywhere have been raped. If anyone of us were to steal a loaf of bread one has to do time in jail, while the Goldman Sachs thieves have stolen our homes, as an uncontrolled and unreformed banker class has continued foreclosures, and do risky derivatives. As a result, the entire US economy continues to sink into a greater Depression, taking the European Union down with it. Those government officials who speak of the importance for the United States to be and to remain a strong nation are not referring to the people as a whole.
Rather, they have in mind the rich and gigantic corporations that ruthlessly control the entire country, as well as the political apparatus in Washington – along with many states. The American people do not seem to exist – except to be taxed as wage-slaves – for all practical purposes. In Citizens United, the US Supreme Court decided that money is speech, that there should be no limitations placed on the exercise of that speech, which reveals the hidden powers of the very wealthy. Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court stated that corporations should be viewed as people.
This encouraged corporations and lobbyists to continue to contribute campaign money to both Democratic presidential candidate Obama and Republican presidential candidate Romney to "cover their bets." This explains why, for the first time in my life, I decided not to vote during this 2012 year. It is really a worthless exercise under these conditions. Until the Obama administration actively works to prosecute and jail these felons and white-collar criminals, what is the use of it all? It just does not make sense any longer. This is not a matter of life and death. It is a matter of death either way. The so called "laws" we live under are worthless or selectively enforced.
Romney hides his hundreds of millions in off-shore accounts – all around the world. His money is tax free, just at a time when it is needed to invest in jobs and higher wages for working poor and working middle class people. Where is the money? This important question needs an answer now not at some time in the distant future. Where are the investigative journalists of the "Fourth Estate" in all of this? Most of them have been fired while others are fully afraid to ask and find out. The money which average Americans desperately need is now found locked up in the coffers of thieves who are the financiers that took our TARP bailout money and gave it to their banking cronies.
Holding Authorities Accountable. In other words, we are all slaves of the bankers. Further, ever since World War II ended in 1945, the United States has been involved in numerous wars, almost single-handedly. In violation of the war-making powers enumerated in the US Constitution, the US Presidents (except for JFK), have trumped up lies to invade Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, and other nations. The US Congress has largely abdicated its constitutional duties, thereby caving in to a skewed definition of the "Commander-in-Chief" language of the US Constitution – thereby subverting their oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States.
All hail the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as they go out into the world to torture people in violation of international law and the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution. once again, the military-industrial complex wins and the cause of peace and the rule of law suffer while it is diminished and violated. The objective of such wars was virtually always the same, to exploit the resources of other nations. For the rich and the big corporations in particular, this meant that a transnational capitalist class (TCC) has set out to control the wealth of the entire world – to the best of their ability.
The Federal Reserve, Central Bankers, and the Rockefellers should all be damned to Hell – after doing jail time in prison. But, like Jaime Diamond at JP Morgan Chase, they can "loose" $3-billion dollars in a week and claim that they are "too big to fail! Yes, they are too big to fail! That is because Washington, D.C. and the Executive Branch have deemed them as "too big to jail.” In this regard, the Department of Justice should be re-named as the Department of Injustice, "with liberty and justice for some." More details about the death of democracy in the United States look my books [22; 23; 24; 25].
Dr. Terrence Edward Paupp, Senior Research Fellow, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Washington DC; International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP), Vice-President of North America; Council Member of the International Advisory Council-The Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research; Expert in the fields of international law and human rights. GHA Vice-President. Address: San Pedro, California, USA; E-mail: tpaupp@aol.com, Web: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=254
7. Super PACs and Secret Money Destroying America’s Democracy
Jim Hightower (p. 278-279) Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America's most useful citizens, to sum up our country's present political plight in a succinct metaphor: "Our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. These kings are multibillionaire corporate moguls who by divine right – not of God, but (of the Supreme Court's) Citizens United decision – are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh."
Corporations Replace the People. Pricey, indeed. In its disgraceful, democracy-crushing judicial edict of January 2010, the Court took the big advantage that America's corporate elite already had in politics – and super-sized it. This is the first presidential election to be run under the rigged rules invented by the Court's five-man corporatist majority, and we can see the effects of this ruling.
For instance, we saw in this year's Republican nominating contests that a new, supremely authorized critter not only arose, but instantly became the dominant force in the game, allowing a handful of extremely wealthy players to shove their selfish agenda ahead of all other interests in the election process: super PACs (Corporations)! These are secretive money funnels that various political partisans have set up to take advantage of the court's implausible finding that the Constitution allows corporations and super-rich individuals to put unlimited sums of money into "independent" campaigns to elect or defeat whomever they choose. (I should note that the justices' ruling was a model of fairness: it also allows poor people to put unlimited amounts of their money into super PACs.) These new entities amassed and spent vastly more than the campaigns of the actual candidates. Nearly all of this super PAC cash was used to flood the airwaves with biblical levels of nauseatingly negative attack ads, further debasing our nation's democratic process. Thanks for that, Supremes. The Court's surreal rationale for allowing this special-interest distortion of elections was that super PACs would be entirely independent from the candidates they back. In his Citizens United opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy blithely wrote, "We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption." Wow if ignorance is bliss, he must be ecstatic! Atrocious Supreme Mistake. Of course, these justices knew what they were doing: enthroning the wealthiest Americans, not merely to reign supreme over the political process, but also to control government.
In a nation of 313 million people and an electorate of 217 million, fewer than a hundred super-wealthy individuals and corporations (a tiny fraction of a fraction of even the 1%) shaped the GOP presidential debate and nomination to their personal benefit.
While the conventional media dwelled on such sideshows as the snarling nastiness among some of the candidates and whether or not Romney could get any love from the GOP's hard-right, Bible-pounding, social-issues faction, the million-dollar-plus givers to the super PACs were having one-on-one conversations with each candidate "in quiet rooms" (as Mitt Romney so-genteelly put it). Super PACs are only Wave one of the financial tsunami sweeping over America's politics this year. Wave Two, also authorized by Citizens United, will be even larger, for it allows Fortune 500 giants to siphon as much money as they want directly out of their corporate vaults and pour it into campaigns – while keeping the sources of the money secret from voters.
These totally secret corporate political funds are laundered through outfits organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code as (WARNING: The following fact is so stupefying that it can cause temporary insanity in sensible people) nonprofit "social welfare organizations" engaged in charitable work! Never mind that the welfare of the plutocracy is the cause being served by this perverse philanthropy.
At present, the largest of these is Crossroads GPS, created by the noted political altruist and GOP hatchet man Karl Rove. It alone expects to raise $240 million from undisclosed corporate interests and spend nearly all of it on venomous attack ads to defeat Barack Obama this fall. You'd need more than a GPS to find all the sources of Crossroads' cash, but it's known that nearly 90 percent of the $77 million it raised in the last six months of 2011 came from a couple dozen donors chipping in from $1 million to $10 million each.
Promotion of Government Corruption. The unlimited special-interest money gush into American politics dethrones democratic rule, corrupts government, increases both wealth disparity and social injustice, and destroys essential public trust in our society's commitment to fairness.
Super PACs are but one of the pipelines allowing corporate money to drown America's historic ideal of egalitarian self-government. The secret (c)(4) corporate "charities," the corporate "bundlers" who collect billions for the candidates' campaigns, the myriad fundraising committees run by both political parties, the sham "foundations" that permit corporate favor-seekers to make tax-deductible donations to elected officials – these and all other channels of private purchase must be capped if America is ever to have a government of, by and for the people [26].
Jim Hightower, National radio commentator, writer and public speaker. Address: Austin, Texas, USA. Web: http://www.jimhightower.com/
8. Death of Democracy and Freedom in America. Charles Mercieca (p. 279-280) The well-known French writer Voltaire was asked once the following question: Most of the things you say are obviously not true; why do you keep on saying them? He did not hesitate to say: I simply want to prove my point; I want to show that when you say something which is not true repeatedly people begin to believe it. If you were to spend some time in the USA you are bound to hear people, especially the news media, often talking of democracy and freedom in America.
Mere Historical Elements. Going back in history, there was a time when democracy and freedom in America formed an integral part of the nation’s structure and philosophy. These two items are now merely history. Over the past 65 years, since World War II was over in 1945, these two elements began to disintegrate and wither away, at times faster than anticipated. Democracy is derived from the Greek words demos (people) + kratia (government). In a genuine democracy the people are free to elect the government of their choice. For quite a time now this is no longer the case in the United States.
To be elected to any governmental office, people must in the first place know that you exist in order to vote for you. They must know a lot about you as much as possible. Hence, to reach the people the nation’s news media must play a big role. All of this is merely theory. The news media will carry their message to the rest of the nation only if you were to pay a big price, otherwise you are literally dumped into oblivion. This means, unless you are really rich with millions of dollars to pay, the chances of being even considered for election are zero.
Even so, big corporations may select their own political figures and proceed then to finance their campaign with countless millions of dollars. Such elected government officials will then put top priority on boosting the products of such corporations, in particular weapons and military machinery. This explains why the two major political parties, Republicans and Democrats, in their electoral campaigns never dare to criticize the bloated military budget. on the contrary, they promise more spending while cutting down money from the vital needs of the American people.
To turn an insult into injury, when the average US politicians visit governments of other nations, they tend to offer weapons and military machinery of any kind. They hardly ever offer anything that is related to their health care, nutrition, education, and housing facilities. They hardly ever dream of fostering democracy in such nations. In fact, they would rather deal with dictatorial governments as to pass all transactions needed fast and smooth with just the approval of one individual or a group of individuals. In democracy this would require a longer period to get ultimate consensus since there would be more individuals involved.
Peaceful People by Nature. In numerous surveys taken over the years, the American people as a whole do not want their government to wage wars against other nations. They opt for peace, for solving problems through diplomacy and healthy dialogues. Listening to the people and respecting what they advocate and wish would reveal democracy at work. But how can we see democracy being practiced in the USA when it eventually does not exist? People have the freedom to choose their own future, their own destiny. This would be the case when and if democracy is fully in operation.
The problem with the USA today lies in the fact that while in theory the government of this nation speaks of democracy and freedom, in practice there is neither one nor the other. If you were to visit all the schools of the nation, you will discover that virtually all of such schools teach that the USA is a nation of democracy and freedom. They say this virtually every day as to justify Voltaire’s contention that if we say something which is not true repeatedly people begin to believe in it. Of course, these are not uneducated people. They are people from every walk of life and profession. At times you hear some clergy reminding their congregations in churches that they must be thankful to God that they live in a country, which is characterized by democracy and freedom! Of course, this does not mean that they are intentionally lying to deceive the people. It reveals that what they have been hearing since their early childhood created in them the kind of mind-set that would now take for granted these two elements. The war policies of the USA on a global scale have only one purpose, namely to control the entire world through machismo and fear.
Let us keep in mind the words that John Paul II uttered in Mexico during the eighties when he said: “Genuine peace will come to the world only after two of the greatest evils of the 20th century are gone; these are communism and capitalism because both achieve their objectives through the exploitation of people.” Communism has already collapsed. The best way for us now to see world peace in operation is to pray God to hasten the collapse of capitalism. This would hopefully lead to the revival of democracy and freedom in America, which all people there deserve.
I am negatively impressed by the members of our Congress. Instead of taking drastic steps to remedy this political abuse, they continue to cooperate with this arrogant news media mafia who are doing a disservice to the nation and the world at large. Also, we cannot view the corporations as people and let them use their wealth and money to select two individuals for the 300 million Americans and simply tell them: "You must select one of these two that we the corporations chose for you." People are aware how we make a mockery of democracy. This explains why people have no more confidence in us.
Charles Mercieca, Ph.D., President, International Association of Educators for World Peace, Dedicated to United Nations Goals of Peace Education, Environmental Protection, Human Rights & Disarmament; Professor Emeritus, Alabama A&M University; GHA Vice-President. Address: Huntsville, Alabama, USA. Web: www.iaewp.org, http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=129; E-mail: mercieca@knology.net
GPS Chapter 9 35. The Murder of American Democracy by Corporate Fascists
Terrence Paupp (p. 362-364) Yet Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), French politician, author of the historical-political treatise "Democracy in America" (2 volumes, 1835, 1840), expressed concern about the possibility of degeneration of the American republic into "democratic despotism" [54]. on this point, Professor Wolin has commented upon this warning: “if democracy failed to cultivate participatory forms that engaged politically the energies of the ordinary citizen, political populism would be displaced by a cultural populism of sameness, resentment, and mindless patriotism, and by an anti-political form he labeled ‘democratic despotism’.” Its development, especially in the Bush-2 presidency led to what I am calling “Corporate Fascism [55, 71–74].” This is what has not just undermined, but has effectively murdered democracy in the USA [55; 56].
Under President Barack Obama, it is now evident that democracy has not done much better than it did under Bush-2. For example: (1) illegal NSA spying – as revealed by Edward Snowden – has eviscerated privacy rights and threatened political dissenters who are committed to civil disobedience against an intrusive state; (2) the CIA has remained “above the law” with regard to its illegal torture of people around the global village; (3) the Wall Street bankers (criminals) who illegally stole over $14-Trillion of wealth from the American people have not been placed in jail and are still free to create the next global financial crisis; (4) wealth disparity and inequality continue to grow even as wages stagnate while the incomes of the CEO corporate-fascists surge into the billions; (5) foreign tax shelters under the US Tax Code are responsible for stealing trillions of dollars from the US Treasury that could be used for schools, health care, better wages, and a new commitment to worker’s rights and growing union membership as a counterbalancing force against the “power elite” of the US capitalist oligarchy.
In short, while the US condemns the human rights record of other nations, its own human rights records is among the worst in the world. Further, the US elite shows its contempt for democracy and that fact is evident in the unwillingness of both major political parties to serve the people. Instead, Washington and Wall Street are locked in an unholy alliance that serves the rich “One Percent.” The rest of the nation is told to engage in “shared sacrifice” – which is a code phrase for taking on austerity measures.
On the domestic front, the excesses of the McCarthy years would reappear in Nixon’s Watergate scandal and through George W. Bush’s USA Patriot Act. The threat of a developing American police state could be glimpsed in disguised references to martial law in times of “emergency,” echoing the Latin American version of a state of siege. The growth of America’s prison-industrial-complex exposed not only the inequities of a class divided society, but the degree to which the law of corrections had been corrupted by the Reagan revolution’s emphasis upon economic “privatization” and its own ideologically driven version of what constitutes “law and order.” Both the growth and ideology of the prison-industrial complex remained intact under the rule of both the Republican and Democratic parties. This racist mentality has resurfaced with a vengeance in the Obama years as black youth are routinely murdered by racist police and racist “white” elements that have no respect for human life, democracy, or the dignity of the person.
The names of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown are just two of the names that have come to national attention in the Obama years as young black men are killed off right and left. Yet, there has been no structural change, no real effort to legally protect the human rights of the victims and their families. Instead, mindless laws such as “stand your ground” and the unwritten rules about how police have a right to “shot first and ask questions later” continue to be the modus operandi of the day. In this environment, there is no “hope” of which Obama spoke and campaigned on as he ran for president. Rather, there is the silence of the grave for the victims and the continuing structural injustice of those who enjoy their privileged positions in the hierarchy of “Corporate Fascism.”
On the international front, the anarchical character of international relations would be exposed in the US sponsored and supported overthrow of the Chile’s democratically elected Allende regime and its replacement with the right-wing terror of General Pinochet’s military junta. America’s alliances with Europe would strain and crumble as an unchecked second Bush presidency ignored the UN in its decision to undertake unilateral action against Iraq. The United States Congress would continually abdicate its constitutional role – in a system of checks and balances – to restrain presidential war-making. With the congressional surrender of its power to declare war, it opened the floodgates of international lawlessness by its de facto endorsement of the Bush Doctrine. It is this same lawlessness that has characterized the Obama presidency with the illegal use of drone strikes, the US-NATO overthrow of the Libyan government, and various interventions into Africa from the Sudan to the Congo.
In the aftermath of the events of 9/11, the Bush administration embarked upon a lawless path to legitimize the US Global Empire’s destruction of national sovereignty under the rubric of preemptive war. The congress had removed the restraints of the War Powers Act, which had been intended to circumscribe the president’s power to place American troops abroad for more than 90 days without future congressional authorization. The congressional surrender of its constitutional obligations resulted in the resurrection of the Imperial Presidency, and with it the potential for war without end. In short, the congressional abdication of its responsibilities to restrain the executive resulted in adding new dimensions to the president’s foreign policy quiver of arrows. Obama has continued down this same path without significant congressional opposition.
The birth and evolution of “democratic despotism” in the USA. A resurgent imperial presidency would also account for the drift toward draconian solutions to domestic social problems that could no longer be addressed by weakened democratic institutions. By 2004, wealth inequality between social classes widened, millions more Americans fell below the poverty line. In the absence of federal intervention health care, costs zoomed out of control. At the same time, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population received a $1.4 trillion tax break from the Bush administration.
With the sabotage of congressional oversight, the surrender of the congressional war-making power, and the congressional corruption of the power of the purse, there is little incentive to abide by the letter or even the spirit of the law. Laws could be rewritten or introduced to accommodate the requirements of the command posts of the power elite. In other words, the buying of the congress has led to the constitutional disempowerment of the congress, as well as its ethical corruption in conjunction with a culture of lobbyists. The USA has become a nation that murdered its own democracy in order to allow for the formal rule of the “Divine Right of Capital.” This has produced “Corporate Fascism.” This is just one example of hundreds that can be cited to prove that in the last 50 years the world has witnessed the transformation of America by its plutocracy.
Some scholars have argued that the transformation of America, under the Bush-2 regime, is the legacy of Reaganism. Reagan and his foremost disciple George W. Bush effectively created a plutocracy where the United States is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but is ruled by the wealthiest individuals and corporate America. This is what I am calling “Corporate Fascism.” America’s last real president was John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated by a conspiracy that involved the managers and supporters of “Corporate Fascism” – Wall Street bankers and financiers, CIA agents, hawks in the Pentagon, mafia contract killers hired by the CIA to kill foreign leaders, and an alliance between Texas and New York oilmen. These conspirators and their children still reign as America’s new “power elite” and have created “Corporate Fascism” for their own greed and lust for power – irrespective of the fact that they have murdered American democracy and its true democratic leaders without a tint of remorse [56].
Dr. Terrence Edward Paupp, Senior Research Fellow, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Washington DC; Address: San Pedro, California, USA.
Web: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=254 E-mail: tpaupp@aol.com 36. Why the Rise of Fascism is again the Issue. John Pilger (p. 364-366) Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news. Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya.
In 2011, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties" against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. Uranium warheads were used; the cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. The Red Cross identified mass graves, and Unicef reported that "most [of the children killed] were under the age of ten". The public sodomising of the Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi with a "rebel" bayonet was greeted by the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, with the words: "We came, we saw, he died." His murder, like the destruction of his country, was justified with a familiar big lie; he was planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew… that if we waited one more day," said President Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world." This was the fabrication of Islamist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". Reported on March 14, 2011, the lie provided the first spark for Nato's inferno, described by David Cameron as a "humanitarian intervention".
Secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS, many of the "rebels" would become ISIS, whose latest video offering shows the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian workers seized in Sirte, the city destroyed on their behalf by Nato bombers. For Obama, David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Gaddafi's true crime was Libya's economic independence and his declared intention to stop selling Africa's greatest oil reserves in US dollars. The petrodollar is a pillar of American imperial power. Gaddafi audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would happen, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships". Following Nato's attack under cover of a Security Council resolution, Obama, wrote Garikai Chengu, "confiscated $30 billion from Libya's Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of an African Central Bank and the African gold backed dinar currency"…
Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following at the hands of America's modern fascism. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted, their people bombed and their economies stripped of all protection, their societies subjected to a crippling siege known as "sanctions". The British historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. In every case, a big lie was deployed…
The common thread in fascism, past and present, is mass murder. The American invasion of Vietnam had its "free fire zones", "body counts" and "collateral damage". In the province of Quang Ngai, where I reported from, many thousands of civilians ("gooks") were murdered by the US; yet only one massacre, at My Lai, is remembered. In Laos and Cambodia, the greatest aerial bombardment in history produced an epoch of terror marked today by the spectacle of joined-up bomb craters which, from the air, resemble monstrous necklaces. The bombing gave Cambodia its own ISIS, led by Pol Pot. Today, the world's greatest single campaign of terror entails the execution of entire families, guests at weddings, mourners at funerals. These are Obama's victims. According to the New York Times, Obama makes his selection from a CIA "kill list" presented to him every Tuesday in the White House Situation Room. He then decides, without a shred of legal justification, who will live and who will die. His execution weapon is the Hellfire missile carried by a pilotless aircraft known as a drone; these roast their victims and festoon the area with their remains. Each "hit" is registered on a faraway console screen as a "bugsplat"…
Uniting fascism old and new is the cult of superiority. "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being," said Obama, evoking declarations of national fetishism from the 1930s. As the historian Alfred W. McCoy has pointed out, it was the Hitler devotee, Carl Schmitt, who said, "The sovereign is he who decides the exception." This sums up Americanism, the world's dominant ideology. That it remains unrecognised as a predatory ideology is the achievement of an equally unrecognised brainwashing. Insidious, undeclared, presented wittily as enlightenment on the march, its conceit insinuates western culture. I grew up on a cinematic diet of American glory, almost all of it a distortion. I had no idea that it was the Red Army that had destroyed most of the Nazi war machine, at a cost of as many as 13 million soldiers. By contrast, US losses, including in the Pacific, were 400,000. Hollywood reversed this…
There are no heroic movies about America's embrace of fascism. During the Second World War, America (and Britain) went to war against Greeks who had fought heroically against Nazism and were resisting the rise of Greek fascism. In 1967, the CIA helped bring to power a fascist military junta in Athens – as it did in Brazil and most of Latin America. Germans and east Europeans who had colluded with Nazi aggression and crimes against humanity were given safe haven in the US; many were pampered and their talents rewarded. Wernher von Braun was the "father" of both the Nazi V-2 terror bomb and the US space programme.
In the 1990s, as former Soviet republics, eastern Europe and the Balkans became military outposts of Nato, the heirs to a Nazi movement in Ukraine were given their opportunity. Responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews, Poles and Russians during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian fascism was rehabilitated and its "new wave" hailed by the enforcer as "nationalists". This reached its apogee in 2014 when the Obama administration splashed out $5 billion on a coup against the elected government. The shock troops were neo-Nazis known as the Right Sector and Svoboda. Their leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok, who has called for a purge of the "Moscow-Jewish mafia" and "other scum", including gays, feminists and those on the political left. These fascists are now integrated into the Kiev coup government. The first deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Andriy Parubiy, a leader of the governing party, is co-founder of Svoboda. on February 14, Parubiy announced he was flying to Washington get "the USA to give us highly precise modern weaponry". If he succeeds, it will be seen as an act of war by Russia…
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: "The use made by Nazi conspirators of psychological warfare is well known. Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack… In the propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons." In the Guardian on February 2, Timothy Garton-Ash called, in effect, for a world war. "Putin must be stopped," said the headline. "And sometimes only guns can stop guns." He conceded that the threat of war might "nourish a Russian paranoia of encirclement"; but that was fine. He name-checked the military equipment needed for the job and advised his readers that "America has the best kit"…
Once again, there is serious purpose. The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev's new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas "investment". She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden's son is on the board of Ukraine's biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine's rich farming soil. Above all, they want Ukraine's mighty neighbour, Russia. They want to Balkanise or dismember Russia and exploit the greatest source of natural gas on earth. As the Arctic ice melts, they want control of the Arctic Ocean and its energy riches, and Russia's long Arctic land border. Their man in Moscow used to be Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, who handed his country's economy to the West. His successor, Putin, has re-established Russia as a sovereign nation; that is his crime.
The responsibility of the rest of us is clear. It is to identify and expose the reckless lies of warmongers and never to collude with them. It is to re-awaken the great popular movements that brought a fragile civilisation to modern imperial states. Most important, it is to prevent the conquest of ourselves: our minds, our humanity, our self respect. If we remain silent, victory over us is assured, and a holocaust beckons [57].
John Pilger, journalist, Sydney, Australia, Web: http://johnpilger.com
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