by Lawrence Britt

Global Research, November 7, 2004

Free Inquiry Magazine – 2003-05-05

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism (“Fascism Anyone?,” Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine’s policy.

The 14 characteristics are:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6. Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

– To the original: ➡

– This came off the web site of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

– And a tip of the hat to the Leave America blog for making me aware of this piece.

– Ah, I don’t know what we really expected to find. Maybe Chinese workers standing around with the offending chemicals stacked in bags around their feet several weeks after the international firestorm broke? Yeah, right. Of course it was all cleaned up.

– I love this part especially:

David Acheson, FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection, said that despite appearances, U.S. investigators in China “have received good cooperation and support” from Chinese authorities.

And “consumers can feel reassured,” he said….

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American inspectors who arrived in China last week to investigate the two companies that exported tainted pet food ingredients found that the suspect facilities had been hastily closed down and cleaned up, federal officials said yesterday.

“There is nothing to be found. They are essentially shut down and not operating,” said Walter Batts, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration‘s office of international programs.

Word of the American team’s inability to conduct a firsthand inspection came as investigators in this country learned that as many as 198 U.S. fish farms and hatcheries may have received fish feed contaminated with the chemical melamine, which came from the same two Chinese companies.

Officials said they are trying to figure out how many of the hatcheries and farms received the chemically laced food and how many fish that were fed it may have been released — either into streams or lakes for sportsmen or onto grocery store shelves.

Despite the revelations, officials sought yesterday to put a positive face on the two-month-old scandal, which includes the inadvertent sale of millions of chickens that ate the tainted feed and the ongoing quarantine of tens of thousands of hogs.

David Acheson, FDA’s assistant commissioner for food protection, said that despite appearances, U.S. investigators in China “have received good cooperation and support” from Chinese authorities.

And “consumers can feel reassured,” he said, that according to a federal risk analysis, they face virtually no increased health risks from eating fish that may have been given contaminated feed.

More… ➡

A mysterious epidemic is killing pigs in southeastern China, but international and Hong Kong authorities said today that the Chinese government is providing little information about it, or about the contaminated wheat gluten that has caused deaths and illnesses in other animals.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus for the first four months after it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.

But officials in Hong Kong as well as at the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, both agencies of the United Nations, said today that they been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths, and been given limited details about wheat gluten contamination.

Because pigs can catch many of the same diseases as people, including bird flu, the two U.N. agencies maintain global networks to track and investigate unexplained patterns of pig deaths.

Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

More… ➡

– This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, recently, a friend of mine suggested the website bugmenot.com as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

WHAT?

I think only Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine and a couple of severely retarded or gullible people would remain unworried after this strange bit of business.

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Pakistan’s nuclear authority has said there is no cause for concern after it published press adverts for information on “lost” radioactive material.

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The adverts urged members of the public to inform officials if they found any “lost or stolen” radioactive material.

They were published in major Urdu-language newspapers in Pakistan.

A spokesman for the nuclear authority said that there was a “very remote chance” that nuclear materials imported 40-50 years ago were unaccounted for.

International concern over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear programme was expressed in 2004, when the country’s top nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, confessed to leaking secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Dr Khan was subsequently placed under virtual house arrest, and is now suffering from pancreatic cancer.

‘Cradle to the grave’

Officials on Wednesday were keen to reassure the outside world that the latest incident in no way has the makings of another nuclear scandal, and that no radioactive material had been stolen, lost or gone missing.

But officials say they need to heighten public awareness of nuclear issues to ensure that decades-old nuclear material is fully accounted for.

More… ➡

– Mmmmm. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling much more reassured now that they’ve explained themselves. Yah sure, ya betcha.

They take issue with how diplomats edited the latest warning on global warming and plan their own update.

BRUSSELS – Two distinctly different groups — data-driven scientists and nuanced offend-no-one diplomats — collided and then converged last week. At stake: a report on the future of the planet and the changes it faces with global warming.

An inside look at the last few hours of tense negotiations at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals how the diplomats won at the end thanks to persistence and deadlines. But scientists quietly note that they have the last say.

Diplomats from 115 countries and 52 scientists hashed out the most comprehensive and gloomiest warning yet about the possible effects of global warming, including increased flooding, hunger, drought, diseases and the extinction of species.

The 23-page summary certainly didn’t sound diplomatic. But it was too much so, scientists said.

In the past, scientists at these meetings felt that their warnings were conveyed, albeit slightly edited down. But several of them left Friday with the sense that they had lost control of their document. At one point, NASA’s Cynthia Rosenzweig filed a formal protest and left the building, only to return, make peace and talk in positive tones. Others talked about abandoning the process altogether.

“There was no split in the science — they were all mad,” said John Coequyt, who observed the closed-door negotiations for the environmental group Greenpeace.

The report doesn’t commit countries to action, like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, but those involved agree that the science is accurate and that global warming is changing the planet and projected to get much worse.

Still, scientists have their fallback: a second summary that consists of 79 densely written, heavily footnoted pages.

The “technical summary,” which will eventually be released to the public but was obtained by the Associated Press, will not be edited by diplomats. The technical summary, Rosenzweig said, contains “the real facts.”

Some of its highlights, not included in the 23-page already-released summary:

• “More than one sixth of the world population live in glacier- or snowmelt-fed river basins and will be affected by decrease of water volume.” And depending on how much fossil fuels are burned in the future, “262-983 million people are likely to move into the water stressed-category” by 2050.

• Global warming could increase the number of hungry in the world in 2080 by anywhere between 140 million and 1 billion, depending on how much greenhouse gas is emitted over the next few decades.

• “Overall a 2- to 3-fold increase of population to be flooded is expected by 2080.”

• Malaria, diarrhea diseases, dengue fever, tick-borne diseases, heat-related deaths will all rise with global warming.

• In eastern North America, depending on fossil fuel emissions, smog will increase and there would be a 4.5 percent increase in smog-related deaths.

– Thx to the Climate Progress Blog for the link I traced to this story

– To the StarTribune article, itself: ➡

– If you are a red pill sort of a person, then you should read this to see what happens to a country and its decisions when they slip into being primarily driven by profit. When the decisions are driven by greed with little or no regard for honesty, ethics, fairplay or honor. And, in this case, the people misused, are so easy to ignore. But just think – these are our countrymen doing these things – living the American dream of profit when ever and where ever they can. You may not agree that they are doing these things in your name but the truth is if you know that this is going on and you continue to say nothing, then they are doing it with the complicity of your silence.

– So think about the red pill / blue pill issue before you read on. If you bite an apple from the tree-of-knowledge, then you become responsible for what you know.

Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

– from The Matrix, 1999

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Close to Slavery
Guestworker Programs in the United States

In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a “legal and orderly path for foreign workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis.” Doing so, the president said, would mean “they won’t have to try to sneak in.” Such a program has been central to Bush’s past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new “guest” workers to the United States.

What Bush did not say was that the United States already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should carefully examine how it operates.

Under the current system, called the H-2 program, employers brought about 121,000 guestworkers into the United States in 2005 — approximately 32,000 for agricultural work and another 89,000 for jobs in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other non-agricultural industries.

These workers, though, are not treated like “guests.” Rather, they are systematically exploited and abused. Unlike U.S. citizens, guestworkers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who “import” them. If guestworkers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation.

Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won’t take up their cause.

Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:

• routinely cheated out of wages;
• forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
• held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
• forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
• denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: “This guestworker program’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”

Congressman Rangel’s conclusion is not mere hyperbole — and not the first time such a comparison has been made. Former Department of Labor official Lee G. Williams described the old “bracero” program — the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the United States during and after World War II — as a system of “legalized slavery.” In practice, there is little difference between the bracero program and the current H-2 guestworker program.

The H-2 guestworker system also can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. But unlike European indentured servants of old, today’s guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens. When their work visas expire, they must leave the United States. They are, in effect, the disposable workers of the U.S. economy.

This report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the country. The abuses described here are too common to blame on a few “bad apple” employers. They are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards or the protections of the free market.

The H-2 guestworker program is inherently abusive and should not be expanded in the name of immigration reform. If the current program is allowed to continue at all, it should be completely overhauled. Recommendations for doing so appear at the end of this report.

– the complete report may be downloaded from the Southern Poverty Law Center as a PDF file here: ➡