by Gregory Patin
Madison Independent Examiner
March 24, 2012
from
Examiner Website
Gregory Patin earned a B.A. in
political science from U.W. - Madison and a M.S. in management from
Colorado Technical University. He is currently a free lance writer
residing in Madison, WI who considers himself politically
independent. |
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying
the cross.”
Sinclair Lewis
It Can’t Happen Here. (1935)
In the spring of 2003, ex-corporate executive and political scientist
Lawrence W. Britt published an essay in Free Inquiry magazine entitled
“Fascism Anyone?”
In his work, Britt examined the traits of the two
governments that formed the original historical model for fascism, Nazi
Germany and Fascist Italy, and five other protofascist regimes that imitated
that model,
-
Franco’s Spain
-
Salazar’s Portugal
-
Papadopoulos’s Greece
-
Pinochet’s Chile
-
Suharto’s Indonesia
He identified 14 characteristics
that were common to all of them. These traits have since been widely
accepted as the 14 defining characteristics of fascism.
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Nearly three generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, all of
these regimes are no longer in power, but fascism’s principles can still be
found in many nations. History tends to repeat itself because many leaders
and nations fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions.
Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm in the world today.
In the U.S., leaders, teachers, media and citizens proudly claim that
America is a democratic society with certain freedoms and rights guaranteed
to all citizens by the constitution, bill of rights and rule of law.
But is
that really the case?
A close look at the 14 characteristics of fascism in
light of what has changed in America in the past few years may raise some
questions as to whether or not Americans truly live in a democratic society.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
From the prominent
displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to
show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of
citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious.
Catchy slogans, pride
in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this
nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that
often bordered on xenophobia.
Drive down any street in suburban or small-town America and witness the
amount of flags flying, flag stickers on mailboxes, ribbon stickers on
vehicles and patriotic tee shirts.
Then-Senator Obama was criticized during
his 2007 campaign for not wearing the ubiquitous flag lapel pin that many
politicians wear. Nearly everyone has heard catchy slogans such as “Freedom
isn’t Free,” “God Bless America” and “Support the Troops.”
Borderline
xenophobia is exemplified when french fries were renamed “freedom fries” in
D.C. cafeterias. The fear of “illegals” taking scarce jobs has been written
into legislation in states such as Arizona, where failure to carry
immigration documents is a crime. Your papers, please?
This characteristic may be the most innocuous one of the 14. Americans have
always had a strong sense of patriotic nationalism and there is nothing
inherently wrong with that.
But patriotic symbolism and nationalistic
legislation have been taken to a new level in the years since the first Gulf
war when the first yellow ribbons were placed on trees.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
The regimes themselves viewed
human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives
of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was
brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even
demonizing, those being targeted.
When abuse was egregious, the tactic was
to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
The use of extraordinary rendition, military tribunals instead of public
trials, the refusal to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, waterboarding and
other “enhanced interrogation techniques” are good examples of human rights
violations.
Many were done in secrecy until the information was leaked to
the press. Capturing people and imprisoning them without charges is
repeatedly called “extraordinary rendition” in the media, simulated drowning
is called “waterboarding,” refusing the right to a fair trial a “military
tribunal” and torture “enhanced interrogation.”
All are good examples of the
use of propaganda to make these practices palatable to the American people.
Disdain for human rights in the U.S. has never been more apparent than in
recent years. The rights of free speech and assembly obviously do not apply
to the over 6700 citizens that have been arrested and the many that have
been beaten and pepper-sprayed since the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement
began last September.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), signed into law by
President
Obama in December 2011, gives the government the power to
indefinitely detain, imprison, torture and murder anyone, anywhere if he or
she is considered a suspect of anything the US government wants to make up.
The detention, imprisonment, torture and murder can occur without the person
having been charged and without a trial.
These practices would probably have caused public outrage at any time in
U.S. history before the new millennium, but now are accepted by many
Americans as necessary tools in the “War on Terror,” (itself a slogan).
Ask
anyone present at recent OWS demonstrations how “free” they think Americans
are now.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
The most
significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scape-goating as
a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame
for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions.
The
methods of choice - relentless propaganda and disinformation - were usually
effective.
Often the regimes would incite ‘spontaneous’ acts against the
target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic
and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other
religions, secularists, homosexuals, and ‘terrorists.’ Active opponents of
these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with
accordingly.
The most readily identifiable scapegoats for Americans now are Muslims.
Saddam Hussein was the ultimate scapegoat. It was easy for
the
Bush
administration to rally the American people behind the invasion and
occupation of Iraq by suggesting Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaida, which
Bush later denied, and by repeatedly stating that Iraq had WMDs, which were
never found.
There is a difference, however, between fascism today and the right-wing
ideology that it embodied under Hitler and Mussolini. Modern fascism uses
the left-right dialectic to maintain control over a divided populace.
American politicians, citizens and media on both sides of the political
spectrum continually use scapegoats to shift blame for failures and
misdirect anger: liberals, conservatives, socialists, capitalists,
bible-thumpers, atheists, blacks, welfare queens, tree-huggers, etc., etc.
The list of labels used in name-calling and blaming goes on and on.
Meanwhile, few if any real solutions are offered for problems such as
unemployment, inflation, corruption on Wall Street and government spending.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
Ruling elites always
identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that
supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated
to the military, even when domestic needs were acute.
The military was seen
as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert
national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and
prestige of the ruling elite.
The U.S.
government spends more on defense than anything else and more than
the next 14 largest defense-spending nations combined.
When the need for
budget cuts are debated, politicians usually take aim at “entitlement”
programs and social programs, while expressing concern that,
“military
spending cuts are a risk to our national security.”
The U.S. government has allocated $851 billion for defense spending in
fiscal year 2013.
Defense spending accounts for more than two-thirds of all
discretionary spending and accounts for about 22.4% of all federal spending
- more than the allotments for Medicare or Social Security. Military
manufacturing increased by 123% between 2000 and 2009 while the rest of the
manufacturing sector decreased.
While Americans pay for the military to invade and occupy sovereign nations,
millions of Americans lack access to affordable healthcare.
The U.S. is the
only country in the “developed” world that does not have a tax-payer funded
healthcare system. Infrastructure is literally crumbling. Students in other
industrial nations are outperforming U.S. students in math, science and
reading.
Yet all other departments, including Health and Human Services
($71.7 billion), the Department of Education ($69.8 billion), and Housing
and Urban Development ($35.3 billion), must operate with the remaining $410
billion of discretionary spending.
5. Rampant sexism
Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the
national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women
as second-class citizens.
They were adamantly anti-abortion and also
homophobic.
These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that
enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending
the regime cover for its abuses.
For years it has been common knowledge that women in the U.S. earn less than
their male counterparts in identical positions.
Rampant sexism and misogyny,
however, has recently received more media attention than ever. Planned
Parenthood was labeled an “abortion provider” and defunded by congress in
February, despite the fact that only 3% of its patient care expenditures go
towards abortion services.
After a female Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, testified in a
Democratic congressional hearing regarding whether or not private health
care insurance companies should be federally mandated to cover female
contraceptives, Rush Limbaugh infamously called her a “prostitute” and a
“slut” on national public airwaves.
Fluke was earlier denied the right to
speak at a larger congressional hearing on the same topic by Rep. Darrell Issa. Ironically, many insurance plans cover erectile dysfunction treatments
for men.
Roe v. Wade has yet to be overturned and abortion is still legal, but
“Draconian” anti-abortion legislation has chipped away at it due to pressure
from fundamentalist Christian and other religious organizations. In 2007 the
Supreme Court upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003, which bans a
medical procedure technically known as “intact dilation and extraction.”
In states such as Virginia, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, legislation that
forces women to have a trans-vaginal ultrasound performed before being able
to legally obtain an abortion was recently passed.
While there is a push to
overturn the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that defines marriage as
“between a man and a woman,” the Respect for Marriage Act of 2011 that would
do is under intense scrutiny and has not yet passed.
Currently, 41 states do
not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
6. A controlled mass media
Under some of the regimes, the mass media were
under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the
party line.
Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media
orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to
resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats.
The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the
power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public
unaware of the regimes’ excesses.
Back in 1983, approximately 50
corporations controlled the vast majority of
all news media in the United States. By 2004, ownership of the news media
had been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media
corporations.
Today, these six corporate behemoths,
...control 90% of what we watch, hear and read every single day.
These gigantic media corporations do not exist to objectively tell the truth
to the American people. Rather, the primary purpose of their existence is to
make money. One cannot reasonably expect these corporations to provide
information to the American people that would threaten their relationships
with their biggest advertisers in industries such as finance, health
insurance, banking, pharmaceuticals or defense.
Furthermore, many of these corporations have direct ties to other
industries. NBC’s parent corporation, for example, is GE, which not only is
one of the largest defense contractors, but also paid no taxes in 2010.
That
undoubtedly explains the omission of the no tax story from NBC news outlets.
7. Obsession with national security
Inevitably, a national security
apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an
instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints.
Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting ‘national
security,’ and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or
even treasonous.
Air travelers in the U.S. selected for additional screening by the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the name of national
security are given two choices:
Some suggest a better way to describe the choices would be
“radiation” or “sexual assault.”
The obsession with national security since
9/11 has led the U.S. government to spend $8 billion annually on TSA airport
security measures, yet no “terrorists” have ever been caught and no “terror
plots” have ever been foiled by the TSA.
Americans have accepted such things as a color-coded threat index, secret
warrantless wire-tapping, highway checkpoints and video surveillance in
public areas as the new way of life since 9/11. The current administration
has taken the obsession with national security to a new level with the
National Defense Resources Preparedness executive order (EO) issued by
President Obama on March 16.
This EO allows the government to confiscate
private property without due process under the direction of Janet Napolitano
and the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a “potential threat
to the security of the United States.”
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
Unlike communist regimes, the
fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their
opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the
predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as
militant defenders of that religion.
The fact that the ruling elite’s
behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally
swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites
were defenders of the faith and opponents of the ‘godless.’ A perception was
manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on
religion.
There are many examples of America being considered a Christian nation, “one
nation under God.”
Conservative darling Ann Coulter published a book
entitled, Godless Liberals: The Church of Liberalism. Republicans refer to
themselves as the “family values” party. Both parties embrace Christian
'values' with their rhetoric, while behaving otherwise with sex scandals and
passing legislation enabling Wall Street greed such as the Commodity Futures
Modernization Act of 2000.
Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech
endorsing an “absolute” separation between church and state made him want to
“throw up.”
Legislators are caving in to pressure from religious groups on
issues such as abortion and same sex marriage.
In 1996 a school prayer amendment to the constitution was proposed by House
Republicans.
George W. Bush referred to the war on terrorism as a “crusade”
in a speech in 2001.
The separation of church and state implied in the
constitution with the statement that,
"Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."
has been slowly eroding away.
May God bless America.
9. Power of corporations protected
Although the personal life of ordinary
citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to
operate in relative freedom was not compromised.
The ruling elite saw the
corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in
developed states), but also as an additional means of social control.
Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to
ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of
‘have-not’ citizens.
The 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections
Commission, in effect, gave corporations the same rights as people by saying
that federal restrictions on corporate spending in elections constituted a
violation of free speech.
Never mind that 80% of Americans opposed the
ruling. Corporations are now free to spend unlimited amounts of money to
influence elections and buy politicians.
Wall Street banks crashed the economy in 2008, yet were bailed out with
public funds through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). According to
the Financial Times, the corporate tax rate in the U.S. reached a ten-year
low in 2011.
While corporate profits reached an all-time high since the end
of World War II in the third quarter of 2011, real workers wages fell by
about 2%. In the last three years, 78 corporations had at least one year
where they paid no federal income tax at all, while 30 corporations paid not
a dime over the entire three years.
Huge corporations such as Lockheed Martin permeate all aspects of American
life by performing functions for more than two dozen government agencies
from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to the
Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Lockheed
Martin is involved in surveillance and information processing for,
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
Since organized labor was seen
as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the
ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made
powerless.
The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright
contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.
The movement to destroy labor unions and eliminate collective bargaining is
something Wisconsinites have become very familiar with since Scott Walker
became governor.
That movement is taking place nationwide. Legislation
similar to Walker’s budget bill was passed in Indiana and Ohio, although in
Ohio it was later overturned.
In a speech on August 9, 1960, JFK said,
"Those who would destroy or further
limit the rights of organized labor - those who would cripple collective
bargaining or prevent organization of the unorganized - do a disservice to
the cause of democracy.”
Frank Askin, a professor of law and director of the
Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark, states that,
“the ultimate aim of the right-wing strategy is to allow employers to make a
mockery of workers’ right to organize, established by the National Labor
Relations Act during the New Deal era.”
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
Intellectuals and
the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were
anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered
subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal.
Universities were
tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated.
Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced,
or crushed.
To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national
interest or they had no right to exist.
A 46-page report compiled by over 60 scientists in 2004 accused the Bush
administration of censoring scientific reports for political purposes.
The
report accused the administration of "suppressing, distorting, or
manipulating the work done by scientists at federal agencies" on
environmental, agricultural, health and energy issues.
Disdain for science is also evident in the push to give teaching creationism
the same weight as teaching evolution in schools. In 2005, policymakers in
19 states were weighing proposals that question the science of evolution.
Universities such as UW-Madison are pressured by state legislatures to
remove faculty members with undesirable points of view, such as Kevin
Barrett in 2006.
Funding for NPR, PBS and education is now under attack.
Anyone calling for a new investigation of
the events on 9/11 is labeled a
“conspiracy theorist” and immediately disregarded, despite the fact that,
-
over 220 senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement, and
government officials
-
over 1,500 engineers and architects
-
over 250 pilots
and aviation professionals
-
over 400 professors
-
over 300 survivors and
family members
-
over 200 artists, entertainers, and media professionals
-
over 400 medical professionals,
...have done so.
Science is embraced when it is used for purposes such as weapons or
surveillance technology development, but rejected when it is used to develop
alternative energy sources, study the effects of carbon emissions on the
planet or question the government’s version of events.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
Most of these regimes maintained
Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The
police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to
rampant abuse.
“Normal” and political crime were often merged into
trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents
of the regime.
Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often
promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.
Under the guise of the wars on terror and on drugs, U.S. police forces are
almost completely militarized and are allowed to violate the Constitutional
rights of the citizenry at will.
The U.S. has by far the highest
incarceration rate in the world. There are now more Americans in jail - more
than 6 million - than there were in Stalin's Gulag.
Military weaponry and
gear was on full display as police from Los Angeles to New York cracked down
on OWS protests. Since September some 6,700 Americans protesting against
economic inequality and corporate greed have been arrested.
Many were beaten or pepper-sprayed (see below video):
Three provisions of
the PATRIOT Act of 2002 were reauthorized by President
Obama in 2010, giving law enforcement an expanded ability to gain access to
personal financial, travel and communications records and to conduct secret
searches.
The Federal Restricted Building and Grounds Improvement Act (HR
347) makes protesting in areas where the US President, or anyone protected
by the Secret Service may be visiting, a felony punishable with hefty fines
and up to 10 years in jail.
In a recent Republican Presidential debate,
Americans even cheered for the 234 executions in Texas under Governor
Rick
Perry.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
Those in business circles and close to
the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves.
This
corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts
and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of
government favoritism.
Members of the power elite were in a position to
obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing
national resources.
With the national security apparatus under control and
the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well
understood by the general population.
Cronies in U.S. government positions commonly award non-competitive
contracts to former employers, who in turn, thanks to the Citizens United
ruling, can now kick limitless amounts of money back into elections.
The
lack of competition and oversight leads to corruption.
No-bid, sole source, cost-plus contracts in Iraq were awarded to Halliburton
and its subsidiaries while then-Vice-President
Cheney, a former board
member, held stock options in the corporation.
According to a military
census, in 2006 there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq performing
security and other logistical functions.
Private contractors are used more now than ever as more and more public
functions are being privatized. A Baton Rouge company, Innovative Energy
Management (IEM), lacking evacuation experience was paid $500,000
by FEMA to
handle the emergency preparation and evacuation of New Orleans during
Hurricane Katrina.
IEM was a large contributor to President Bush's campaigns
and the Republican National Committee. The Bush-appointed head of FEMA at
the time was Michael Brown, an old friend of Bush’s with no experience in
disaster management.
Cronyism and corruption continues with the Obama administration and has
exploded in the financial sector.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,
former New York Federal Reserve chairman, has close ties to former Goldman
Sachs CEO Henry Paulson and to Lawrence Summers.
Geithner authored the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 giving banks free reign over
derivative trading in energy futures, leading to a spike in gasoline prices.
Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the
biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches
delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money.
This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase
and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers. Summers is also a leading advocate
of banking deregulation.
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic
affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the
bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration in 2009.
This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him within weeks of his
joining the Obama administration. Citigroup has thus far been the
beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government
guarantees of its bad debts.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9
million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup,
Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
The list of
Wall Street cronies in government - David Axelrod, Louis Caldera, David
Stevens, Neal Wolin, is seemingly endless. While the TARP bailout was signed
into law by the Bush administration, the administration of funds was done at
the hands of all of the above.
The result of these reckless policies are plain as day - a new ruling class
with $13 trillion of public IOUs added to the national debt.
Much of this
was paid out in salaries and bonuses and to “make themselves whole” by
paying on their bad risks in default. American taxpayers, on the other hand,
got rising unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, a steady rise in home
foreclosures, inflation and increased levels of economic stress.
Bush-Obama
policies have benefited those who wield real power in the capitalist world -
the financial oligarchs and militarists who prospered from the bailouts and
"War on Terror" military spending.
14. Fraudulent elections
Elections in the form of plebiscites or public
opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were
held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired
result.
Common methods included maintaining control of the election
machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying
or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary
beholden to the power elite.
It is difficult to choose where to begin:
Bush v. Gore in 2000, Voter ID
laws, the swift-boating of John Kerry, the birther movement, portraying
Obama as “secret Muslim”, “un-American”, “anti-business”, “socialist”.
"Our
highest priority is to make Obama a one-term President", redistricting,
denying minorities and college students the right to vote, easily-hacked
electronic voting machines, no viable third party candidates, super PACs.
It
takes no more than a casual observer to know that the U.S. election process
is fraudulent.
The end result is a choice between two candidates vetted by
the banks and corporations with little or no differences in policies.
The 2000 Presidential election may go down in U.S. history as the point of
no return to not only fair elections, but also to a representative form of
government. It came down to votes in Florida. The race was ultimately
decided by the Supreme Court in favor of Bush even though Gore won the
popular vote by over 500,000 votes. Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a
Bush supporter, oversaw the certification process.
On November 22, the
anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Republican protestors pounded on the
doors and windows of the building where Miami's Dade county officials were
counting the ballots.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigated allegations of voting fraud
in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. The Commission found that
approximately 54 percent of the 180,000 "spoiled ballots" in Florida were
cast by African-Americans, who make up about 11 percent of Florida voters,
and are largely registered as Democrats.
Currently in the U.S., there are many allegations of fraud in the Republican
caucuses by Ron Paul supporters.
In distinguishing democratic governments from the commonly known fascist
dictatorships in history, the primary difference that comes to mind for many
is that in democracies leaders are fairly elected by the people to represent
the people. Many former supporters of Al Gore or supporters of Ron Paul may
say that is not the case in America.
Because many concepts in social science, including political science, are
subjective in nature, it is impossible to say with certainty that the U.S.
has crossed the line from freedom to fascism. A close look at the direction
America is heading today with the 14 characteristics of fascism in mind,
however, should at least raise some alarm bells.
A true democracy requires a rule of law to uphold freedoms, a constitution
to protect liberties, honest elections to choose truly representative
leaders, and most importantly, a well-informed public constantly on guard
against evils.
History has shown what can happen when these things break
down.
Sources
-
Council for Secular Humanism - Free Inquiry magazine
-
Free Inquiry - Fascism Anyone?New
York Times– The Politician and the Absent American Flag Pin
-
New York Times - Arizona Enacts
Stringent Law on Immigration
-
NDAA of 2012 (S. 1867) - text (pdf)
-
Alexander Higgins Blog
-
Activist Post
-
BBC
-
MSNBC
-
The Budget for Fiscal Year 2013 - Summary Tables
-
About.com - FY 2013 U.S. Budget Spending
Summary and Highlights
-
Reuters- U.S. lawmakers skeptical of
cuts in 2013 defense budget
-
PBS NewsHour Extra- Math, Science,
Reading Scores Show U.S. Schools Slipping Behind
-
New York Times– Durable Goods Shipments
(chart)
-
ABC News- House Votes to Strip Planned
Parenthood of Federal Funding
-
Washington Post– What Planned Parenthood
Actually Does (chart)
-
Washington Post - Rush Limbaugh’s
‘personal attack’ on Sandra Fluke?…
-
Huffington Post– Rush Limbaugh: Sandra
Fluke, Woman Denied Right to Speak…
-
New York Times– The Cost of Treating
Erectile Dysfunction
-
Firedoglake - Alabama Backs Down on
Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound, But…
-
Respect for Marriage Act of 2011
-
National Conference of State
Legislatures
-
Blacklistednews.com - Who Owns the
Media? The Six Monolithic Corporations…
-
Washington Post– On NBC, the Missing
Story…
-
TSA
-
The Economist– Economist Debates:
Airport Security…
-
Forbes– Ten Years of the TSA…
-
Executive Order: National Defense
Resources Preparedness
-
Poorrichard’s blog - Obama’s Latest
Executive Order:…
-
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of
2000
-
Washington Post– Santorum says he
‘almost threw up’ after reading JFK speech…
-
New York Times– Republicans in Congress
Renew Push for Vote on School Prayer…
-
The Christian Science Monitor– Europe
Cringes at Bush ‘crusade’…
-
ABC News- In Supreme Court Ruling on
Campaign Finance, the Public Dissents
-
The Financial Times - U.S. corporation
tax rates hit 10-year low
-
Huffington Post– Real Wages Fell in 2011
Amid Record Corporate Profits
-
Think Progress - 30 Major Corporations
Paid No Income Taxes…
-
Corporate Tax Payers and Corporate Tax
Dodgers 2008-2010 (pdf)
-
Mother Jones– Is Lockheed Martin
Shadowing you?
-
New Jersey Star-Ledger– Attack on
organized labor is nothing new
-
Washington Post– Battle on Teaching
Evolution Sharpens
-
Legislative Resolution relating to Kevin
Barrett (pdf)
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Common Dreams - Bush Administration
Accused of Suppressing, Distorting Science
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Patriots Question 9/11 - Responsible
Criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report
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Huffington Post– A Decade After 9/11,
Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized
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Huffington Post– 7 OECD Countries with
the Highest Incarceration Rates:…
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CNN– Zakaria: Incarceration Nation
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Alexander Higgins Blog - Outlaw Occupy:
Herd ‘EM Up…
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Main Justice - Obama Signs
Reauthorization of Three Patriot Act Provisions
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Alexander Higgins Blog - House Passes
‘Trespass Bill’ That Makes Protests Illegal
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Alternet - GOP Presidential Debate:…
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The Multinational Monitor– Cronyism,
Corruption and Calamity in Iraq
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Washington Post– Census Count 100,000
Contractors in Iraq
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Navy Recruiter - Crony Contracts and the
Bush Administration
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Examiner– The real reasons for high
gasoline prices
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Global Research - Obama’s Wall Street
Cabinet
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Antifascist Calling… - Cronyism,
Corruption and the ‘War on Terror’
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Black Box Voting
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The BRAD BLOG: Election Fraud
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US Constitution - The Election of 2000
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Global Research - Election Fraud in
America
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The Brad BLOG - The ‘Bradcast’ on KFPK:
GOP…Strikes Back at…Ron Paul
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The Daily Paul - Ron Paul Wants Us to
Pursue Election Fraud Investigations