[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

I know igloo is reading this and crying himself to sleep every night!

FUCK YOU IGLOO!

Igloo can't read. Igloo can't think. His brain is controlled by the likes of nazi reich wing nutters named David Horowitz.

Or he may have ran out of insults then jumped off a skyscraper.

[US Marines slaughtered women, children]

I dare you to call US Army Major General Eldon Bargewell a traitor because if you do, you are condoning mass murder.

US Marines wantonly killed unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, and then tried to cover up the slayings in the insurgent stronghold of Haditha, military investigations have found.

An administrative inquiry overseen by army Major General Eldon Bargewell found that several marines fatally shot up to 24 Iraqis and that other marines either failed to stop them or filed misleading or blatantly false reports.

The Bargewell report concludes that a dozen marines acted improperly after a roadside bomb blast killed a fellow marine, Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

Looking for insurgents, the marines entered several homes and began firing their weapons, according to the report.

After the roadside bomb killed Terrazas, the marines conducted a sweep of the area. But instead of following the Geneva Convention rules about identifying combatants, the marines killed Iraqis in homes and five sitting in a vehicle.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail....5021&con_type=1

[Hey MrMahs...]

*crickets*

[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

coming from a supporter of organized slavery. how does it feel to know that you support a failed ideology that has killed over 100 million people and subjugates people and free will?

I don't support organized slavery unlike you who supports a fascist government who allows US corporations to manufacture goods in countries where slavery is legal but you don't have any problem with that as long as it's the good ol' USA doing it, do you?

[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

This coming from a jingoistic flag waving anti american bush bot.

this coming from a fucking flag waving communist.

Translation:

I hate my country, therefore I embrace republican fascism.

You know, the above valid data concerning horowitz is comparable to the nazis of the 30s but you don't care because you, hate freedom and you hate your country. Time to get back on the boat, yeah? YEAH!

I bet you're an illegal immigrant anyhow. You don't belong in America. Get the fuck out.

And no, I won't shut up. What are you gonna do about it?

Fucking dumb spic with a stolen computer.

[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

MOre proof how the "Bush Corp" and the far right, cheerleadered by David Horowitz and other morons like him and the asshats who bottom feed from their bile hate america.

[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

Thanks for Nothing

An Open Letter to David Horowitz

Mr. Horowitz,

I find your stories of leftist “persecution†of conservatives to be a joke. Why? Because I live in America, the real America, and I have gone to public school for 13 years, and I know where the bias lies.

You say you are for Academic Freedom, but where were you when I got called to the office and threatened with disciplinary action simply for arguing about the Iraq war with another student?

Yes, Mr. Horowitz, this actually happened my freshman year. I certainly didn’t hear you screaming in defense of my freedom.

Mr. Horowitz, where were you when I came out? When I got threatening notes calling me a “faggot,†and a teacher took me aside and gave me a social-Darwinist lecture about why “homosexuality is a weakness�

Where were you Mr. Horowitz, when my fourth grade teacher read us “The Chronicles of Narnia,†and followed each reading selection of it with a lecture about how the book preached values similar to the Bible, which we should follow?

Where were you when my first-grade teacher started school everyday by reading us selected Bible passages, along with pre-written sermons from a Sunday school book?

Where were you Mr. Horowitz, when my government teacher called four other students' parents, hoping to intimidate them into standing for the pledge of allegiance, even though they didn’t believe in God?

Where were you Mr. Horowitz in my Jr. High Social Studies class where we learned about how at Kent State in 1970, the students were to blame for getting shot and got what they deserved?

Where were you when Marine recruiters came into my senior Government class and preached about how the media was lying about Iraq, and why students should sign up to go fight over there?

Where were you when a preacher came to my school right before the 2000 election, and told a group of us who were getting out of study hall that Lieberman shouldn’t be allowed to run for vice-president because he was “a Jew who didn’t believe in our lord Jesus Christ�

Yeah, your rhetoric about how the educational system in America is run by a liberal conspiracy is on the same level with those who think Wall Street is run by a Jewish Conspiracy. That level is called hate-sponsored insanity.

If you were really in favor of academic freedom, you would be in the small towns across America getting religious indoctrination out of the classroom. You would be challenging the teachers who bully and harass anti-war students and call them “traitors.â€

You would be out trying to make sure kids knew the truth, and weren’t being told lies about how “condoms don’t work†and “homosexuality causes AIDS.â€

I look at the number of girls at my high school who have been knocked up thanks to mis-education about birth control and I know where the bias is, and I know who you are really serving.

Thanks for Nothing.

http://rwor.org/a/048/horowitz-correspondence.html

[Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind]

Close Encounters of the Horowitz Kind: Part 1

by Alan Goodman

There were some surprises in store for me when I heard David Horowitz speak recently at the University of Chicago. For one thing, I didn’t necessarily anticipate ending up being encouraged by a Republican student into an impromptu debate with Horowitz himself—which I’ll tell about later. But even beside that, there were surprises in store. I've been writing in Revolution about how Horowitz is a self-described “battering ram” for an agenda that would turn academia in the U.S. into a deathly reactionary, airless vacuum. I've been among those raising the alarm that Horowitz has powerful backing from the White House, a dangerous cadre of campus brownshirts dedicated to turning in professors who make an “off topic” comment in class. I’ve been exposing his racism and his efforts to forbid some well-established truths about this society and its history from being taught—or even discussed—on campus.

So, I know some things about Horowitz. But it was an eye opener to see him “live,” and to observe (and interact with) the response he got at an “elite” university. Surveying the audience—something like 300 people, almost all UC students—was interesting in its own right. The guy in front of me wore a shirt saying “But does it work in THEORY?” Not exactly a hotbed of good ol' boy pragmatism! Next to me, a row of five or six students had all opened the current issue of Revolution to the first installment of the series, “The Basis, The Goals, and The Methods of the Communist Revolution,” by Bob Avakian. And they filled the twenty-minute wait for Horowitz by reading through it. I learned during and after the event that at least most of them were far from radicals. Quite a few other students were reading the article on Horowitz in the last issue of Revolution (and at least one drew on the articles to confront Horowitz during the Q & A that followed his talk).

But Bob Avakian wouldn’t be the only one talking about communism that night. I actually wasn't quite prepared for how much anticommunism figures into Horowitz's spiel. Horowitz began his one-hour talk with an updated version of the “I Was A Commie Dupe” ’50s movie confessional. It starts with a young David Horowitz, idealist, activist, Marxist, and supporter of the civil rights movement, who thought that Black people were oppressed. Ah...those values don't sound so terrible...at first! But as we follow the “reefer madness”-like story, it ends with Horowitz's bookkeeper, who he says he had assigned to assist a Black Panther program, being murdered. “I knew that the Black Panther Party had murdered her,” Horowitz asserted to his audience.

Do you find it intolerable, or at least very disturbing, that Black people are living in oppressive conditions in this country? Well, once upon a time, David Horowitz did too—and then “they” killed his bookkeeper. “Everything I believe about social justice,” Horowitz summed up, “about oppressed people in inner cities, everything I said...about the Panthers, that the police were fascists and were attacking them...was a lie.” No, instead the Panthers were a “murderous gang.” You don’t believe it? Well, “I was there,” claims David Horowitz.

A few things have to be said here. First, no criminal charges were ever brought against anyone associated with the Black Panther Party for the death of the woman Horowitz refers to. Second, the Black Panther Party—in the face of incredible repression and with tremendous personal sacrifice—put revolution on the agenda in this country for millions of people. Several dozen members of the BPP were killed—including, in the very city where Horowitz was speaking, Fred Hampton. Hampton, as Horowitz ignores, had been drugged by a police informant and then slain in his bed by police while he slept. And many more were framed up for long terms in prison, with some—like Geronimo Pratt—only released decades later when active government frame-ups were brought to light. Third, the Panthers, for various reasons, could not sustain their revolutionary direction; by the time this incident took place they had long since given up on revolution and were involved in opening shoe factories, and their strategy for change had gone from revolutionary to relying on and working within the system. To impute anything they did or did not do in this period to revolutionary ideology is conscious distortion.

But as I surveyed the room while Horowitz told this story, the atmosphere reminded me of experiences as a kid at camp, when the counselors would scare the shit out of us with stories of young campers who wandered off into the woods to be eaten alive by some monster, ghost, or dead former-camper. Over two million people in jail, a majority of them Black or Latino or other oppressed nationalities? The epidemic of police murder and brutality, with the stories of Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, or Rodney King concentrating the experience of millions? The whole shameful history of slavery and Jim Crow and the terrible inequality and oppression that exists today, as exemplified in what happened after Katrina? “Don't go there! Stop thinking about that! Black thugs will kill you,” says counselor Dave. To say that Horowitz had a subtext is almost giving him too much credit—it was a very blatant attempt to get his audience to identify with Horowitz’s younger, white liberal self and to walk them into a very ugly, very racist place. And this became even more clear later.

From Racism to Anticommunism in a Single Bound

But first Horowitz went somewhere else. His experience of momentarily aligning himself with the Black Panther Party, he told us, was part of a much greater horror: “All my leftist writers and prophets were telling me that there was going to be a revolution in the world and on the other side of that rainbow was going to be what? ‘A future of social justice. Equality. No more poverty. No reason for war, because people would have gotten rid of private property, which of course is the root of all evil.’ That's why I devoted my services to a street gang.”

And, where does that all lead? “The utopias of the left, the illusion which every leftist who is a faculty member of this university put their energy behind, ended up in absolute catastrophe. One hundred and twenty million people slaughtered since 1917 in the name of social justice. Billions made poor, poor behind anyone's imagination, artificially poor.”

Let me turn around here, and address readers who do have some sense of what Horowitz is about. To you, there is a challenge to confront, one that was driven home to me by both Horowitz's opening tirade, and the widespread confusion this seemed to create in what is, after all, a very well-educated audience. There is a critical need for a scientific atmosphere of investigation and debate about the actual experience of the world communist revolution on college campuses, and on opinion-making, influential campuses in particular. You can't evade that. Fundamentally, you can't evade it because it is an experience that represents the highest achievements of humanity so far, by far, and if you flush it down the toilet, you give up all that. That’s the main thing. But in addition, unless the hegemony of lies, distortions, and a ruling out of scientific inquiry into this experience is challenged, very broadly, Horowitz and those he represents will pound this into people's heads, and in the process, by “logical extension,” rule any questioning of or opposition to the status quo out of order.

The Set the Record Straight project is sponsoring Raymond Lotta's speaking tour “Socialism is Much Better Than Capitalism, and Communism Will Be a Far Better World.” Revolution has been serializing that talk, and it is interesting that the very excerpt in the issue students were reading as they waited for Horowitz's act to start addresses the lie of the “100 million deaths” issue, exposing that if the same methods and standards were applied to deaths in capitalist countries, and countries dominated by imperialism, then the “democratic capitalist experiment” in India alone killed more people since 1947 than all the deaths anti-communists (falsely) claim were caused by communism.

But Horowitz had a “scared straight” type impact with the anti-communist horror stories. During the Q & A period, at least a couple of students who wanted to challenge Horowitz felt compelled to preface their objections to his talk by disassociating themselves from communists and their alleged misdeeds.

Channeling George Wallace

Once Horowitz had linked any concern for the oppression of Black people to an inevitable murder of innocents, he spent a substantial portion of his talk attacking Black people.

Particularly ugly was his attack on the progressive Black intellectual Cornel West. Here he combined the old Dixiecrat race-baiter George Wallace's attacks on “pointy headed intellectuals” and Black people. Of West, Horowitz sneered, “There isn't an idea in that head. And yet he charges like $35,000 a speech.” That stupid comment was met with a disturbing amount of laughter, as well as visible anger on the faces of the small number of Black people in the room. There was less applause, and some murmurs of disagreement when Horowitz called West “lazy,” and awkward silence when Horowitz called West an “overpaid, underworked fool.”

I have to say that my blood boiled. It shouldn’t need to be said—but evidently it does—that Cornel West is remarkable for the breadth of his scholarship and his thinking, his concerns for justice, and his continual attempts to link up with masses of people who are locked out of the world of ideas by this system. No ideas? I don’t have to agree with everything Cornel West writes to find him provocative, engaging, and challenging. To be called someone with “no ideas” by a demagogue like Horowitz, who specializes in hackneyed and recycled McCarthyism, would almost be a compliment—if it were not the fact that Cornel West has been under attack from numerous quarters in recent years in an attempt to deprive him of his platform, and if it were not for the fact that Horowitz is not some iconoclast but a very highly connected and well-supported ideological hitman of the rulers of this country. On top of that, to descend into the most ugly racist stereotyping, to pander to and stir up whatever resentment might exist in his mostly white audience, was even more ugly. It is frankly only a step or two, if that, to the demagogue in the movie “Rosewood,” who whips up a lynch-mob against a Black man because the man has “taken on airs” and owns a piano!

Just as there is an intolerable amount of ignorance about what communism is about, there is also a tremendous amount of ignorance—even on an elite campus like UC, and in a crowd like this—of the reality of national oppression and white supremacy. Horowitz told the story of the lynching of Emmett Till, only to contrast it with a fabricated account of how Kobe Bryant was supposedly treated as a hero for being charged with raping a white woman (a Latino student later challenged and refuted this in the Q & A). Horowitz claimed that “In America, in the 21st century, a Black man accused of rape, or a big Black man accused of rape by a little white woman will get his day in court, and innocent until proven guilty.” And, on the other hand, Horowitz claimed that white Duke students charged with raping a Black woman got “hung in the media.” “You have a better chance,” Horowitz claimed, “if you're accused as a Black person, in certain settings, than you do if you're white.”

To take just a very brief reality check, the following from the Rush Limbaugh show is typical of the way the victim and the Duke Lacrosse team have been treated in the media:

LIMBAUGH: “[Al Sharpton is] trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team—

CALLER: Yeah.

LIMBAUGH:—uh, supposedly, you know, raped, some, uh, ho’s.

One could find similar examples, including going back to the hysteria created around the case of the “Central Park jogger” in New York in 1989. A white woman was brutally raped, and a group of Black and Latino teenagers, ranging in age from 14 to 16 years old, were seized by police, interrogated (in some cases without lawyers or parents present), and tricked and coerced into videotaping false “confessions.” Intense racist hysteria against Black and Latino youth was whipped up and Donald Trump spent nearly $100,000 on full-page ads calling for the youth to be executed! Though there was no physical evidence and the youths' “confessions” did not match known details of the case, they were convicted and one youth served nearly 13 years in prison. Not until 2002 did the truth come to light when another man confessed to the rape—it turns out he had raped another woman in similar fashion only two days before. There was good evidence that the police themselves knew about this, had refused to investigate it, and instead proceeded with their frameup. The state was finally forced to expunge the youth's records.

But there is method to the madness. On the other hand, Horowitz wants to utterly distort the history of communism and lump it together with any progressive impulses at all, in order to rule out of order any dreams of a better future. All in the service of shutting down critical thought on the campuses. Nothing less than the truth can answer this—and we have to fully master and muster that truth.

In part 2 of this article, I’ll talk about what happened when I began to bring out some of the truth to his followers—and ended up confronting Horowitz himself.

Horowitz got over to a great degree with both the anti-communist lies and the racist stereotypes, distortions, and outright lies about Black people. There was a tense and sharp divide in the audience between how the small number of Black and Latino students reacted to his racist rants, and the way most of the other students reacted.

Very few in the audience seemed to agree with him on the war in Iraq, his sexist attacks on feminism, or his claims that he is under siege and denied the right to express himself. But the racism and anti-communism that he ran was and is poisonous in its effect and besides, people don’t have to agree with everything Horowitz runs in order for him to set the terms of debate.

The Shtick... and THE STICK

Beyond the way he played on and whipped up anti-communist mythology and racist stereotypes, most students I spoke with after the event were not aware that Horowitz is not just full of shit—his agenda is about silencing critical thinking and dissent. Nor was there much, if any, awareness of his connections to Bush, Karl Rove, and the top officials of the Republican Party. Students I talked to had no idea that Horowitz's tract “The Art of Political Warfare,” was assigned reading for 2,000 key players in the last Bush election campaign and to top Republican congressmen. They didn't know that he and his followers are demanding dissenting professors get fired and prosecuted. And Horowitz didn't bring any of that up in his talk.

As dozens of students milled around after the Q & A ended, I was able to share some of the things I learned reviewing his book [see Revolution #42, April 9, 2006]. No student I talked to, including several of the campus Republicans, had read his latest book, The Professors (and I called out for anyone who had to speak up). They didn't know that he wants people who disagree with him fired, and that his followers have called for prosecuting professors under California's law against “communist indoctrination.”

As discussion developed in the lobby after the event, many students—including some of the campus Republicans—were quite disturbed by what they learned from what has appeared in Revolution about the essential repressive edge of Horowitz's campaign. He's not trying, mainly, to argue with his opponents; he wants them fired and jailed. As I pointed to things in Horowitz's book that prove this, one of the campus Republicans asked me to “raise what you are saying to David.” So off we went.

Horowitz was chatting with a group of students, accompanied by a couple of bodyguards. I introduced myself and explained I was very familiar with his book, and I told him that his own followers didn't know that he calls for firing teachers who disagree with him.

“Why don't you and your followers,” I asked, “debate and argue with people you don't agree with instead of demanding they get fired? If there is anything to what you are saying about how Black people owe a debt for being enslaved, which there is not, then why won't you argue that out. Why do you demand that people who disagree with you be fired and prosecuted?”

“You didn't read my book!” Horowitz cut me off. I said yes, I read the introductory “disclaimer” that you don't care about a professor's politics. And I read what you wrote about how you just want professors to keep politics outside of the classroom. But those are lies. I said: “You attack most of the professors in the book for things they say outside of class, and you have overtly called for firing Ward Churchill and the Colorado high school teacher who was taped by a snitch inspired by your so-called Students for Academic Freedom.”

I pointed out that Horowitz called for firing this high school teacher, among other places, during an appearance with Pat Robertson on the 700 Club. I told the students there that Horowitz had said that Robertson was doing important work for the same cause as him.

“If Robertson is doing important work for your cause,” I said to him, “what does it tell us about your cause? Robertson's Christian fascist university does not allow gay students, gay visitors, or any discussion of homosexuality (in any kind of rational way) on campus, and when a group of gay rights activists symbolically stepped onto school property, the school had them arrested. Is this your model,” I asked, “of free speech and academic freedom? And then you call for the firing of a Colorado high school teacher who engaged his class in discussion of capitalism, the causes of the Iraq war, and comparisons of Bush and Hitler.”

This teacher—according to the tape provided by a snitch student and played on a Colorado radio station—repeatedly provides an opportunity for a student with Horowitz's views to argue his case in class. And this teacher tells his students, “I'm not in any way implying that you should agree with me...but what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth.” What does it tell you when Horowitz says that Pat Robertson is doing “important work” for academic freedom (!), and then demands this teacher be fired? People listening had never heard any of this. “Horowitz wants professors fired? Isn't he for free speech?”

Horowitz defended calling for the firing of the Colorado high school teacher (on Robertson's 700 Club show, Horowitz called the teacher's classroom discussion “child abuse”). Horowitz lied about what the teacher said in class. One of the UC students commented that it would seem hard to believe this teacher was a tyrant when 150 students walked out of school in protest when he was suspended.

Horowitz sensed that the association with Robertson was not playing well here at all, and that even his own people were somewhat freaked out that he called for firing this Colorado high school teacher. Horowitz said he doesn't agree with Pat Robertson on gays. I said, “That may be true, but so what? Did you go on his show and call for the firing of this Colorado teacher or not? And did you applaud Robertson's work as contributing to your cause? How is that anything but upholding a model of draconian repressive censorship, and opposing free speech that questions authority and encourages student discussion? Did you join Robertson in inciting his audience saying things like the professors attacked in your book are killers, beat children, are ‘sexual deviants’ and terrorists?”

Horowitz claimed that one professor in his book advocated sex with children. I said, “You know as well as I do that what Robertson means is that these teachers are openly gay, or they explore homosexuality in a way that does not start from Christian fundamentalism, and that is what Robertson was inciting his audience about. And that is just one example of what you would ban in classrooms.” This is a very uncomfortable area for Horowitz, and before we could explore other examples of his alignment with the Christian fascist agenda, his “bodyguards” placed themselves about six inches in front of my face, while Horowitz wheeled around and stormed out of the room.

After this exchange, the level of turmoil went to a whole other level. Even before my encounter with Horowitz, the campus Republicans had placed the issue of Revolution with the review of Horowitz's The Professors on their table, and it stayed there until they packed up. One guy, who described himself as a math geek, an evangelical Christian, and a conservative campus activist, wouldn't let go of me. He kept insisting he didn't agree with what he had learned Horowitz stood for. He thought students should be exposed to different ideas, and didn't feel threatened by political arguments in class. He was upset that by being an evangelical Christian Republican, he would be perceived as agreeing with Robertson. I told him that if he is concerned about that, he should draw a sharp line of demarcation between what he believed in, and Horowitz, Robertson, and Bush. He was in a great deal of angst when I finally said goodbye, and told me he would think about what we talked about and read Revolution.

Lessons

There is much to try to process from this live encounter with Horowitz, but a few things stand out in my mind. One is that if anyone thinks Horowitz is a marginalized liar, they're only half right. Three hundred students turned out to hear him at University of Chicago, and they weren't, overwhelmingly, there to expose and refute him.

Second, Horowitz's full repressive agenda, which is serious and dangerous, is something he feels he needs to keep in the closet in front of audiences like the one at University of Chicago. This is an Achilles heel for him when it is exposed.

Third, we have to take on Horowitz with substantial, hard-hitting arguments that expose what he is all about. We have to go after him with facts, using his own words to damn him, and drag out and expose his real agenda to his followers. Anything less than that won’t cut it and will even play into his hands.

I was impressed by the openness on this campus to engaging in big questions. This was evidenced by the students who challenged Horowitz, and by the interest in a communist newspaper, and exposure of Horowitz that does not just refute what he says, but exposes what he serves. It struck me how important it is that we do the work to get a positive dynamic going, where on the one hand the right to critical thinking on campus is fought for, and Horowitz is exposed and refuted and his campaign to suppress critical thinking is beaten back; and on the other hand, there needs to be—in concert with this—much more engagement in academia with what communist revolution and socialism are really about.

And finally, very central to Horowitz's mission are his racist attacks on Black people. A substantial part of his speech involved upholding the enslavement of Black people by this system, and denying and reversing the present-day reality of racism, white supremacy, and the oppression of Black people. I'll return to this, and its dangerous implications, in future articles and meanwhile I encourage reader correspondence on this component of the Horowitz agenda.

http://rwor.org/a/048/close-encounters-horowitz-2.html

[The “Border Crisis� And Revolution: Stepping Back on Some Strategic Dimensions]

The “Border Crisis†And Revolution: Stepping Back on Some Strategic Dimensions

This week George W. Bush gave a major speech on immigration. Two things must be said about this speech, right from the start:

One: While Bush may pose as a “moderate†on this issue, a study of his speech—and more than that, a real look at the bill he is pushing—shows a raft of very ominous and new repressive measures. Taken together these will amount to a radical change for the worse in the lives of millions, even tens of millions, of people.

Two: The struggle for immigrants’ rights must continue and intensify, reaching out more broadly and refusing to compromise on the fundamental rights of the immigrants. Especially in the face of the reactionary storm being whipped up against it in both the Congress and the airwaves, it is very important for this movement to renew its offensive and get the truth out there.

And with those two points, a third: there is a larger dimension at work in Bush’s proposal to further militarize an already-militarized border, this time with National Guard troops and a leap in electronic surveillance, and to force undocumented workers to carry government-issued, biometric ID cards. And that has to do with the real fear this government has of political upheaval, even revolutionary upheaval, that could “cross the border.â€

How Did We Get Here?

Mexico today is an extremely oppressed and extremely complex nation going through breakneck changes. The 1994 NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Act) enabled U.S. capital to even more deeply penetrate, and twist, the Mexican economy, and it accelerated the upheaval in Mexican society. NAFTA drove even more peasants from the land and into the shantytowns of the cities. There has been industrialization and de-industrialization, and the old “social compactâ€â€”in which the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) basically ran the country’s political institutions—has been racked by turmoil and change.

Now it’s important to understand and never forget, especially when there’s so much talk about “defending ‘our’ borders†(both from open reactionaries and even some people who should know better), that this domination by the U.S. stretches all the way back to the U.S. military invasion of Mexico in 1846, and its robbery of half of Mexico’s territory. And note as well that the U.S. felt no hesitation about sending troops again to cross the border, this time in 1916, in an attempt to crush the Mexican Revolution.

This whole history and structure of exploitation and domination, combined with the intensified ravaging of Mexico today—along with U.S. capital’s drive to maximize exploitation of workers within the U.S.—has driven the big increase in undocumented workers from Mexico in the past decade. The money these workers send home plays a very important economic and social role in Mexico now—right now, it is the second largest source of foreign revenue in Mexico, right after oil. And the ways in which these workers are outlawed and suppressed within the U.S. makes them essential to the U.S. economy. They are “skinned twice†by the U.S. capitalists—and then skinned yet a third time when they are blamed for society’s many ills.

The U.S. ruling class needs to maintain this section of the proletariat in extremely exploited conditions, and they also fear even greater instability in Mexico if this situation were upset. At the same time, as they themselves say, “the system is brokeâ€â€”the way that things are set up now is unleashing too many forces that the imperialists feel can threaten them, and so they are moving to make very radical and severely repressive changes in the whole setup.

The “Shadows†. . . and The Fascist “Solutionâ€

Bush in his speech talked about how “illegal immigrants live in the shadows of our society. Many used forged documents to get jobs. . . They are part of American life, but they are beyond the reach and protection of American law.â€

Over the past 25 years the state in the U.S. has qualitatively heightened its control over people; with Bush, this has taken a further leap, with the wiretap scandals being just the latest outrage. This is designed to both deal with dissent and protest that does not rise to the level of revolution, but it is also being done with the possibility of bigger things in mind. Among other things, these people remember the ‘60s. . . and if you think that they do not see the potential for upheaval, including revolutionary upheaval, that not only reaches but goes far beyond that era . . . and if you think that they are not readying this whole apparatus to do a very rapid and very thorough repressive clampdown should a situation arise in which they think they need it . . . then you may lack both imagination and realism.

Now the fact that 10 to 20 million people must live outside the law, lacking in any basic rights and liable to be arrested and deported at any moment, gives the capitalists huge power over the undocumented workers. This is why they are forced to “live in the shadows,†as Bush put it. But there is also a way in which this comes into conflict with the imperialists’ strategic aim for a qualitatively greater level of repression in society as a whole.

What does it mean, in light of that aim, for there to exist, right within the borders of the U.S., a population of 10 to 20 million people who have mastered the capabilities involved in “living outside the law†as a fact of daily life? How does that affect what the imperialists perceive to be their strategic need to straitjacket the population as a whole? And yet they can’t just kick everyone out overnight—even Tom Tancredo, as much as he may agitate for it, knows that such a move could cause massive social and political upheaval and possibly rebellion, both within the U.S. and Mexico too.

So the imperialists wonder: would it be better for them, at this point, to “regulate†the immigrants in a different way—finding a way to bring them “out of the shadows†legally, while still keeping them in a highly vulnerable and exploited position as “guest workers� (See box “The Brutal Reality of ‘Guest Worker’ Programs†in this issue.)

Think about Bush’s call for “a new identification card for every legal foreign worker,†using “biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamperproof.†First off, no one should be forced to put up with that level of invasive control from this state. The people who run this society have proven over and over again that they will use anything open to them to spy on people and worse, and they will definitely use this to hound and more tightly control immigrants. When you add in the fact that many immigrants come to the U.S. with some important direct experience with and political understanding of what this empire does all over the world, and when you further add in the ways in which the recent upsurge has shown their potential to influence the political terrain very broadly, you can see even more clearly why these new, highly repressive measures are being pushed.

Not only that, there is no doubt that everyone with brown skin will suddenly be asked to prove their legality, and that only this new “biometric†card will do for them. On top of that, these fascists have unleashed a hysteria where there are now laws being passed where, for instance, anyone who rents to “an illegal†can be fined. So we will soon have a situation in which anyone who “looks like a Mexican†or “looks like a foreigner†will find themselves in a new version of South Africa: forced to “show their papers†whenever they want to do anything. And so yet another section of people becomes “presumed guilty.â€

And think about this, too: how will such an ID card for “guest workers†even be useable unless all workers, documented or not, have such a card—for otherwise, couldn’t people just forge documents claiming that they were citizens? And once you need such a card for a job, how long before—in the name of “security†or even “convenienceâ€â€”such cards become mandatory for everyone? How long before we’re living the movies Gattaca, Minority Report, or Enemy of the State? (http://rwor.org/a/v23/1130-39/1132/ids_gattaca.htm) If people resist these moves, they could boomerang.

And note also that Bush is calling for a huge expansion of “detention facilities†for undocumented workers—so-called “facilities†in which the conditions are often even worse than in the prisons of this country. These detention centers will be used for people who have already been categorized as criminals without trials, “aliens†not deserving of the most basic rights. And this will be brought to you courtesy of the same people who gave you Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo—not to mention the ugly, illegal repression that has been going on against Arab immigrants since 9/11.

Finally, Bush is calling for MORE repression on the border—National Guard, more INS agents, etc. So let’s remember here too that this will translate into more deaths of people attempting to cross the border in even more remote and dangerous places. Since 1994 over 400 people a year have died trying to cross; that is an outrage and a crime, which will now grow worse if Bush and his “coalition of Democrats and ‘pro-business’ Republicans†get their “moderate†bill passed.

These proposals of Bush are not “moderate†at all; they are vicious attacks on immigrants and very ominous steps in the further fascization of U.S. society. At the same time, they are full of potential risk for Bush and the class he represents. Already this move has created even greater anger against the U.S. in Mexico, as well as other countries. The Sensenbrenner bill politically awakened the masses of immigrants in an unprecedented way, and where this all will end up is far from settled. There are problems that this is causing in the border regions of the Southwest, where the peoples and economies on both sides are very intertwined; these new measures will tear all that apart. And there is the question of what all these changes will do to the families of people who are here, where half the family is “legal†and half is not.

On the other hand, there are all these “America über alles†types who have been unleashed who don’t want to settle for anything short of what would amount to ethnic cleansing; their ruling class masters can’t, and don’t necessarily want to, just put these people back into the bottle. So you have people like Tancredo or Sensenbrenner threatening to “break ranks†with Bush; part of that is a show designed to placate these people and “give Bush room†to make the “final compromise†even more extremely repressive, but part of it reflects the real difficulties in pulling this off and real conflicts over how to do it. In short, there are many different ways in which this could backfire right in the faces of the imperialists. And that is why they are having problems actually pulling themselves together on this.

Polarization . . .

It’s important to get this point... The needs of the U.S. imperialists for immigrant labor on the one hand, and the ways in which the presence of millions of immigrants undermines the uniformity and “cohesiveness†of American culture, politics and thinking, forms a sharp contradiction for the U.S. rulers; and their very efforts to deal with this, as we showed above, can give rise to further centrifugal forces.

It’s not for nothing that Bush demanded in his speech that people speak English and “respect the flag†as a symbol of “shared ideals,†and that the Senate followed up by passing a law declaring English the “national languageâ€; and it’s not for nothing that both the open enemies, as well as some of the friends (both well-meaning and false) of the immigrants make an issue out of people flying flags other than the U.S. imperialist rag. The U.S. rulers have real concern over holding this country together, on a reactionary basis, and they are using this crisis to push a very ugly xenophobia (that is, hatred of foreigners).

They are using immigrants as scapegoats for all the insecurities and problems and fears of the future that their system has forced on the majority of people in this country. And at the same time, they are trying to make the immigrants feel alone and isolated. “Blame them for your lives,†the rulers tell the native-born, pointing to the immigrants. “They’ll never help you,†these same rulers say to the immigrants, pointing to the native-born. This is a very ugly game, one that has historically led to death camps, and it has to be understood for what it is and opposed.

...And Repolarization for Revolution

Left to itself, this polarization will not end up anywhere good. We need to RE-polarize what now exists, and repolarize it for revolution. But this repolarization is not a one-size-fits-all thing; it has a lot of dimensions to it.

There is the continued need to help set the right demands and dividing lines in the movement for immigrants’ rights, struggling against those lines and programs which would lead the masses’ demands for freedom into a dead end—showing people with substantial arguments where the different positions will lead. There is the need to go among those people, both in the middle classes and in the working class, among all nationalities, who are holding back from or even opposing this movement, and speak to their questions and what is hanging them up and even driving them into backward stands, and win them over through debate and struggle. And while we are doing all that, we have to be bringing the full communist solution, and the real potential for revolution, out very broadly—in society overall and also within this movement itself.

Which gets us, finally, to our last point. The current crisis shows the potential for something way heavier to emerge. A few years back Caspar Weinberger—the Secretary of Defense under Reagan, a man who stood out even among imperialists for his vicious cold-bloodedness—wrote a novel set in 2003 that included a future U.S. military invasion of Mexico. Part of what precipitates the U.S. invasion in the novel is a massive influx of Mexican immigrants over the border. This gives a little bit of a window into the kinds of calculations being made by the imperialists, as well as what they want to begin getting the public to think about and accept.

Could that happen? Are they really considering this? Well, ask yourself this: what would it mean in today’s situation if a truly revolutionary movement, one that challenged the foundations of the existing imperialist relations with the U.S., were to emerge in Mexico? Or, what would it mean if even a figure like Hugo Chavez—i.e., someone who is not revolutionary and not trying to rupture with imperialism overall, but who would nonetheless seek to change some of the ways in which Mexico fits into the imperialist system in a way that conflicted with U.S. plans and objectives—what if someone like that took the reins, and there was big political ferment in Mexico? What would it mean, in this situation, for the U.S. to do what it has attempted to do with its coups, both successful and not, in places like Venezuela and Haiti? In fact, that is exactly the scenario envisioned in Weinberger’s book that leads to a U.S. invasion.

But again, there are many different things that can happen. Better forces, targeting imperialism itself and going for real liberation, could be in the mix of something or even in the lead. The point is that when you have the kind of social instability and crisis we have today as a backdrop, with the ruling class here moving to radically affect the ways that tens of millions of people both north and south of the border have survived, it becomes a political tinderbox. In that context, seemingly random events could become political flashpoints, and something that started out as one thing could develop into an uprising aimed against imperialist domination in Mexico.

For some years now, Bob Avakian has pointed to the potential links between revolutionary struggle in Mexico (and Central America) and the United States, and has argued that revolutionaries should be working toward genuinely revolutionary struggles in both places mutually influencing each other, with revolutionary struggles on both sides of the border giving political support to one another. [see, for example, “Bob Avakian: Two Talks on Preparations and Possibilities,†Revolution, Summer/Fall 1988; see also A Horrible End, or An End To the Horror?, 1984, pp. 64-65.]

In that light, it is quite possible to envision a scenario in which, on a qualitatively greater level than today, the development of the social situation and of revolutionary struggle in Mexico would interpenetrate with and have repercussions on the development of social contradictions and social struggles in the U.S. This could have a tremendous impact, this can influence native—born people in positive ways towards a more internationalist view. It would hold the potential for further igniting and positively interacting with rebellion, and with more conscious and organized revolutionary struggle, in the U.S. itself. And certainly, the imperialists, with their greatly heightened repression, are reacting in part to this possibility, as well as the more immediate concerns we’ve outlined.

Class-conscious proletarians and people of any strata who want justice would welcome an upsurge from south of the border, and would build massive political resistance against any attempts to suppress it or to intervene on any basis. And they would welcome, and lead others to welcome, the influence of that upheaval and turmoil finding political expression within the U.S. Within that, immigrants could very likely play a pivotal role, one that could express itself in many different forms—which is yet another reason why the U.S. ruling class now is intent on isolating and demonizing immigrants.

All that—again, including Caspar Weinberger’s novelistic scenario—has to be kept in mind when you think about Bush’s proposal to station the National Guard on the border. Clearly, there is a real element of attempting to “gain control†of the border here. But there is this larger dimension at work as well.

The whole contradiction around immigrants, along with other intense contradictions these imperialists face, could, as things develop, become part of a larger opening in society which could pose a possibility of making a revolution. But wrenching a revolutionary opening out of this whole calculus, even as it applies to the particular “faultline†of struggle around immigrants, would hardly be easy and certainly not automatic. The rulers are whipping up a fascist movement against immigrants, they are using this crisis to force further repressive measures into place, and they are in fact further militarizing the border—and they are doing all this on two tracks, so to speak, both dealing with the crisis of today as well as preparing for a bigger crisis tomorrow.

We have to confront this fully—both the weaknesses that are driving them to take these radical measures and the ways in which this can exacerbate some of their problems; as well as the ways in which they aim to and could strengthen their hand by doing this, if they succeed. Only through more deeply understanding this in all its motion and complexity—and on that basis mobilizing people to resist this, in different ways and dimensions—can we work in such a way so as to hasten the possibility of a possible opening for revolution...and develop the capability to seize on it should it occur.

That means hard work and hard struggle and risks. But when you think about what is bound up in just this one outrage of imperialism—the way that people are driven from their homes to be exploited and oppressed in foreign lands, and then hounded and humiliated and persecuted, the way that lives are torn apart and even destroyed—when you think of that...

And when you think of how the world really doesn’t have to be this way, and what kind of world people could bring into being, rising above the dog-eat-dog with a whole new way of living, cherishing diversity and building unity, when you think of what possibly could be won...

And when you think about the possibilities for revolution that are pregnant within these very contradictions, if we relate to this with a truly communist stand and method...

When you think of all that, then...isn’t it worth it to give everything you have to make it happen?

http://rwor.org/a/048/border-crisis-revolution.html

[Our President in Action]

[Fuck South Dakota]

IF YOU LIVED IN DAKOTA YOU'D BE PRO-LIFE TOO..... Whats the population there??????????????? might be in a negative.. no?

Do you know me personally? How would you know what I support and not support. For the record, I am pro choice and to point out, only 25% percent of South Dakotans are against abortions.

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060312/NEWS/603120303/1001

Try clicking on the supporting links in the above "rant" next time. It will surprise you.

[A DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS!MONDAY MAY 1st]

America was put together by immigrants you morons.

[Hey MrMahs...]

I dare you to call this decorated US Marine Colonel a traitor.

Lawmaker says Marines killed Iraqis 'in cold blood'

Citing ongoing investigation, Marines mum

From Jamie McIntyre

CNN

Friday, May 19, 2006 Posted: 0232 GMT (1032 HKT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A decorated Marine colonel turned anti-war congressman said Wednesday that Marines killed at least 30 innocent Iraqi civilians "in cold blood" in Haditha in November, suggesting the attack is twice as bad as originally reported.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, told reporters Wednesday that he got his information from U.S. commanders, who said the investigation will show that the Marines deliberately killed the civilians.

The U.S. Marine Corps has declined to comment on the report, which initially stated that 15 were killed.

"There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood," Murtha said. (Watch Murtha level accusations against the Marines -- 1:58)

Murtha, who was decorated for his service in Vietnam, said the death toll may be more than twice as high as originally reported.

"They actually went into the houses and killed women and children," the congressman said.

Citing an ongoing investigation, the Marine Corps said, "Any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process."

The Iraqi civilians were killed while troops from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were looking for insurgents who planted a roadside bomb that killed a member of their unit.

At first, the Marines said the civilians were killed by a roadside bomb. Later, they suggested the victims may have been caught in a firefight.

An Iraqi human rights group, Hammurabi Human Rights Association, caught the scene on video, which was obtained by Time magazine. A criminal investigation ensued.

Time Warner is the parent company of Time magazine and CNN.

Last month, the battalion commander and two company commanders were relieved of their commands and reassigned to staff jobs at Camp Pendleton in California.

Sources close to the investigation said it is too soon to say whether anyone will face criminal charges, but key aspects of the original Marine account have not checked out.

Murtha supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but last November, he distanced himself from the Bush administration and called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops because of what he called "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/18/murtha.marines/

[George W. Bush: An American Hitler]

Whats the matter? Can't get a gambling casino on the reservation?

hey asshole, have you ever lived in a communist country?

Hey shit for brains, have you ever lived in a nazi society? Get out of your teepee and look at your back yard.

DId it ruffle your head-dress?

Oh, do some squat thrusts on a totem pole.

[George W. Bush: An American Hitler]

what do hitler and communism have to do with each other???

Nothing.

[George W. Bush: An American Hitler]

What an intelligent response.

Translates to:

Dictatorship is for me. I feel that when my boy violaties over 750 laws to fulfill my boy's warped and criminal agenda to find out who is against my boy is essential for america. Criminal acts done by my liar in chief i must defend to show how much I love privacy invasions, therefore this is the kind of america I love because...

Secondly moron, you disgrace your country when you defend the criminal acts of your nazi in chief.

The elements of a nazi:

"It's just a goddammed piece of paper" - Bush

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Bush+%22goddamned+piece+of+paper%22&btnG=Google+Search

Hitler disposed of the german constitution and replaced it with the enlightenment act which is in simulatiry of the patriot act, defiling and attacking the civil rights of americans the same way the enlightment act defiled the rights of germans.

Bush also violated over 750 laws claiming he has the power to any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. He also asserted he can he can "gnore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws?mode=PF

Here is the rundown on all the laws he has broken. I thought I post it all in entirety since neocon nazi fascist loving shitstains like you will most likely ignore this important and informative data, so I decided to ram it in your face knowing you won't click on the above link:

Bush challenges hundreds of laws

President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Military link

Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and ''to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military.

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's lawyers.

Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing ''security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements.

The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector ''shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration.

Oversight questioned

Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress.

Likewise, when Congress passed the law creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, it said oversight committees must be given information about vulnerabilities at chemical plants and the screening of checked bags at airports.

It also said Congress must be shown unaltered reports about problems with visa services prepared by a new immigration ombudsman. Bush asserted the right to withhold the information and alter the reports.

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ''whistle-blower" job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing.

When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- a facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from Nevada opposed.

When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.

Bush's statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.

''Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said.

Defying Supreme Court

Bush has also challenged statutes in which Congress gave certain executive branch officials the power to act independently of the president. The Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed the power of Congress to make such arrangements. For example, the court has upheld laws creating special prosecutors free of Justice Department oversight and insulating the board of the Federal Trade Commission from political interference.

Nonetheless, Bush has said in his signing statements that the Constitution lets him control any executive official, no matter what a statute passed by Congress might say.

In November 2002, for example, Congress, seeking to generate independent statistics about student performance, passed a law setting up an educational research institute to conduct studies and publish reports ''without the approval" of the Secretary of Education. Bush, however, decreed that the institute's director would be ''subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, as long as they do not include quotas. Most recently, in 2003, the court upheld a race-conscious university admissions program over the strong objections of Bush, who argued that such programs should be struck down as unconstitutional.

Yet despite the court's rulings, Bush has taken exception at least nine times to provisions that seek to ensure that minorities are represented among recipients of government jobs, contracts, and grants. Each time, he singled out the provisions, declaring that he would construe them ''in a manner consistent with" the Constitution's guarantee of ''equal protection" to all -- which some legal scholars say amounts to an argument that the affirmative-action provisions represent reverse discrimination against whites.

Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to ''overturn the existing structures of constitutional law."

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply ''disappear."

Common practice in '80s

Though Bush has gone further than any previous president, his actions are not unprecedented.

Since the early 19th century, American presidents have occasionally signed a large bill while declaring that they would not enforce a specific provision they believed was unconstitutional. On rare occasions, historians say, presidents also issued signing statements interpreting a law and explaining any concerns about it.

But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing statements could be used to increase the power of the president.

When interpreting an ambiguous law, courts often look at the statute's legislative history, debate and testimony, to see what Congress intended it to mean. Meese realized that recording what the president thought the law meant in a signing statement might increase a president's influence over future court rulings.

Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.

In the memo, Alito predicted that Congress would resent the president's attempt to grab some of its power by seizing ''the last word on questions of interpretation." He suggested that Reagan's legal team should ''concentrate on points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to conflict with those of Congress."

Reagan's successors continued this practice. George H.W. Bush challenged 232 statutes over four years in office, and Bill Clinton objected to 140 laws over his eight years, according to Kelley, the Miami University of Ohio professor.

Many of the challenges involved longstanding legal ambiguities and points of conflict between the president and Congress.

Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president -- including the current one -- has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in 1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things, but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a role.

Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving Congress a chance to override their decisions.

But the current President Bush has abandoned the veto entirely, as well as any semblance of the political caution that Alito counseled back in 1986. In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto.

''What we haven't seen until this administration is the sheer number of objections that are being raised on every bill passed through the White House," said Kelley, who has studied presidential signing statements through history. ''That is what is staggering. The numbers are well out of the norm from any previous administration."

Exaggerated fears?

Some administration defenders say that concerns about Bush's signing statements are overblown. Bush's signing statements, they say, should be seen as little more than political chest-thumping by administration lawyers who are dedicated to protecting presidential prerogatives.

Defenders say the fact that Bush is reserving the right to disobey the laws does not necessarily mean he has gone on to disobey them.

Indeed, in some cases, the administration has ended up following laws that Bush said he could bypass. For example, citing his power to ''withhold information" in September 2002, Bush declared that he could ignore a law requiring the State Department to list the number of overseas deaths of US citizens in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the department has still put the list on its website.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who until last year oversaw the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for the administration, said the statements do not change the law; they just let people know how the president is interpreting it.

''Nobody reads them," said Goldsmith. ''They have no significance. Nothing in the world changes by the publication of a signing statement. The statements merely serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law. Criticism of this practice is surprising, since the usual complaint is that the administration is too secretive in its legal interpretations."

But Cooper, the Portland State University professor who has studied Bush's first-term signing statements, said the documents are being read closely by one key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws.

Lower-level officials will follow the president's instructions even when his understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress, crafting policies that may endure long after Bush leaves office, Cooper said.

''Years down the road, people will not understand why the policy doesn't look like the legislation," he said.

And in many cases, critics contend, there is no way to know whether the administration is violating laws -- or merely preserving the right to do so.

Many of the laws Bush has challenged involve national security, where it is almost impossible to verify what the government is doing. And since the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, many people have expressed alarm about his sweeping claims of the authority to violate laws.

In January, after the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could disobey the torture ban, three Republicans who were the bill's principal sponsors in the Senate -- John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina -- all publicly rebuked the president.

''We believe the president understands Congress's intent in passing, by very large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees," McCain and Warner said in a joint statement. ''The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation."

Added Graham: ''I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the ability to set aside any . . . law of armed conflict that we have adopted or treaties that we have ratified."

And in March, when the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could ignore the oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, several Democrats lodged complaints.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of trying to ''cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow."

And Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding that Bush rescind his claim and abide by the law.

''Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight," they wrote. ''The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight. . . . Once the president signs a bill, he and all of us are bound by it."

Lack of court review

Such political fallout from Congress is likely to be the only check on Bush's claims, legal specialists said.

The courts have little chance of reviewing Bush's assertions, especially in the secret realm of national security matters.

''There can't be judicial review if nobody knows about it," said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who was a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. ''And if they avoid judicial review, they avoid having their constitutional theories rebuked."

Without court involvement, only Congress can check a president who goes too far. But Bush's fellow Republicans control both chambers, and they have shown limited interest in launching the kind of oversight that could damage their party.

''The president is daring Congress to act against his positions, and they're not taking action because they don't want to appear to be too critical of the president, given that their own fortunes are tied to his because they are all Republicans," said Jack Beermann, a Boston University law professor. ''Oversight gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled by the same party."

Said Golove, the New York University law professor: ''Bush has essentially said that 'We're the executive branch and we're going to carry this law out as we please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it.' "

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ''to exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

''This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Fein said. ''There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

url]http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws?mode=PF

Which translates to "Fuck the constitution of the USA"

See, to him the constitution is a "goddammed piece of paper". Proves how much he respects the very document put forth by our forefathers like he gives a sweet fuck because he thinks he's above the law and that he deserves special treatment because his name is Bush.

If that was Al Gore or John Kerry, you'd be all over them like flies on road kill for the same reason and you know it.

In conclusion, you don't give a shit about the constitution, therefore you are no patriot. You are a (what they call in England) a torrie.

Blow away. You are a moron. Case closed.

PS:

Here's a present:

In his original article, "Fascism Anyone?", Laurence Britt (interview) compared the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet and identified 14 characteristics common to those fascist regimes. This page is a collection of news articles dating from the start of the Bush presidency divided into topics relating to each of the 14 points of fascism. Further analysis of American Fascism done by the POAC can be read here.

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

bushdoll.jpg (14012 bytes)shockand we.jpeg (28299 bytes)lets-roll-s.jpg (9418 bytes) and let's not forget the failed "Bring 'em on!"

New Majority Leader: Iraq War “May Be The Greatest Gift That We Give” Our Grandchildren

Headstones of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with the Pentagons war-marketing slogans

White House and the RNC are going to make a habit of using uniformed military personnel as props at Republican political rallies, despite the fact that it is a plain violation of military regulations banning politicization of the armed forces.

September 11 Freedom Walk

"You must glorify war in order to get the public to accept the fact that your going to send their sons and daughters to die." The inside story of the cozy relationship between big box office American war movies and the Pentagon 3-8

More...

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.

Bush threatens to veto $442b defense bill if Congress investigates detainee abuses.

Guantanamo Judge: “I don’t care about international law. I don’t want to hear the words ‘international law’ again. We are not concerned with international law.”

Rumsfeld to approve new guidelines that will formalize the administration's policy of imprisoning without the protections of the Geneva Conventions and enable the Pentagon to legally hold "ghost detainees,"

US 'preparing to detain terror suspects for life without trial'

U.S. oks evidence gained through torture

July 1, 2003: U.S. Suspends Military Aid to Nearly 50 Countries: because they have supported the International Criminal Court and failed to exempt Americans from possible prosecution.

US has at least 9000 prisoners in secret detention

More...

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.

godless.jpg (13332 bytes)howtotalk.jpg (30789 bytes)deliver.jpg (36064 bytes)savage.jpg (50848 bytes)reckless.jpg (54984 bytes)persecution.jpg (45324 bytes) Congressman: Muslims 'enemy amongst us'

SB 24, Ohio law to muzzle "liberals"

World history textbook used by seventh-graders at Scottsdale’s Mohave Middle School was pulled from classrooms mid-semester amid growing right criticism of the book’s unbiased portrayal of Islam

Rallies planned against 'Islamofacism': Event to 'unify all Americans behind common goal'

More...

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.

fy05.gif (16496 bytes) USvsWorld2004Top25.gif (12281 bytes)

If you haven't seen the Oreo flash animation yet, see it here

Bush’s Domestic Program Hit List

Bush slashes domestic programs, boosts defense. Arlen Spector calls it "scandalous"

onlyonfox-20050817-1.jpg (36748 bytes)

Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House

Pentagon to spend 75 billion for three new brigades

Three cable channels now feed news, information and entertainment about the armed services into millions of living rooms 24 hours a day, seven days a week: The Military Channel, the Military History Channel and the Pentagon Channel.

More...

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.

It's legal again, to fire gov't workers for being gay

Bush calls for Constitutional ban on same-sex marriages

Bush refuses to sign U.N proposal on women's "sexual" rights

W. David Hager chairman of the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee does not prescribe contraceptives for single women, does not do abortions, will not prescribe RU-486 and will not insert IUDs.

The State Department has awarded an explicitly anti-feminist U.S. group part of a US$10 million grant to train Iraqi women in political participation and democracy.

More...

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.

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

Report shows U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens and the story gets only 41 mentions in the media

Free Press details recent governmental propaganda efforts, from faux-correspondent Jeff Gannon to paid-off pundit Armstrong Williams, and from the demise of FOIA to video news releases passed off as news. also... See a Whitehouse fake news release here (opens realplayer)

FF_SC.jpg (27041 bytes) US seizes webservers from independent media sitesFF_SC1.jpg (25984 bytes)

Bush's war on information: US editors forbidden to publish certain foreign writers

More...

7.) Obsession with National Security: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses

elev.jpeg (11000 bytes) Bush Aides ADMIT 'stoking fear' for political gain: Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race. The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said.

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level.

Keith Olbermann: "The Nexus of Politics and Terror."CO10206091618-big.jpg (34188 bytes)

Cheney warns that if Kerry is elected, the USA will suffer a "devastating attack"

GOP convention in a nutshell (quicktime)

Rove: GOP to Use Terror As Campaign Issue in 2006

More...

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.

Jerry Falwell cleared of charges that he broke federal election law by urging followers to vote for Bush

NC congressman proposes law making it ok to preach politics from the pulpit

Texas Governor Mobilizes Evangelicals

Family research council: Justice Sunday

Thou shalt be like Bush: What makes this recently established, right-wing Christian college unique are the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links it has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment.

Park Service Continues to Push Creationist Theory at Grand Canyon and other nat'l parks

More...

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.

The K Street Project is a project by the Republican party to pressure Washington lobbying firms to hire Republicans in top positions, and to reward loyal GOP lobbyists with access to influential officials. It was launched in 1995, by Republican strategist Grover Norquist and House majority leader Tom DeLay.

American Conservative Magazine: One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag... and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it “before the Iraqis take over.”

There are 6 Congressional Committees investigating the Oil-for-Food (UN) scandal, yet not a single Republican Committee Chairman will call a hearing to investigate the whereabouts of 9 billion dollars missing in Iraq

Bush money network rooted in Florida, Texas: Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, the federal government has awarded more than $3 billion in contracts to the President's elite 2004 Texas fund-raisers, their businesses, and lobbying clients

More...

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.

Labor Department warns unions against using their money politically

President Bush Attacks Organized Labor: Bush attacked organized labor Saturday, issuing orders effectively reducing how much money unions can spend for political activities and opening up government contracts to non-union bidding.

March 2001: President Bush signed his name to four executive orders on organized labor last month, including one that cuts the money unions will have for political campaign spending.

Congress and the Department of Labor are trying to change the rules on overtime pay, eliminating the 40 hour work week, taking eligibility for overtime pay away from millions of workers, and replacing time and a half pay with comp days.

More...

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.

Bush's new economic plan cuts funding for arts, education

Artists from all over the world are being refused entry to the US on security grounds.

A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, on Wednesday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes

Freedom of Repression: New ruling will allow censorship of campus publications

More...

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

American Gestapo is here: "There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'"

America: secret jails, secret courts, secret arrests, and now secret laws

Snitch-or-Go-to-Jail bill will make pretty much anything short of reporting on everyone you see for doing just about anything a jailable offense. With minimum sentences, up to and including life without parole.

The problem with Gonzales is that he has been deeply involved in developing some of the most sweeping claims of near-dictatorial presidential power in our nation's history, allowing him to imprison and even (at least in theory) torture anyone in the world, at any time

Police officers don't have to give a reason at the time they arrest someone, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling that shields officers from false-arrest lawsuits.

More...

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.

Bush Cronyism: Foxes Guarding the henhouse

Making Sense of the Abramoff Scandal

If Bush's pick is confirmed, that will mean the five top appointees at Justice have zero prosecutorial experience among them.

Iran-Contra Felons Get Good Jobs from Bush

Big Iraq Reconstruction Contracts Went To Big Donors

Bush Wars -- Crooks Get Contracts : The main companies that were awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts in Iraq have paid more than $300 million in fines since 2000, to resolve allegations of fraud, bid rigging, delivery of faulty military equipment, and environmental damage.

US Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) lost track of $9 billion

"Contracting in the aftermath of the hurricanes has been marked by waste, corruption and cronyism"

More...

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.

Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings

Conyers hearing in which Clinton Curtis testifies that he was hired to create hackable voting machines (.wmv)

The Republican Party has quietly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide private defense lawyers for a former Bush campaign official charged with conspiring to keep Democrats from voting in New Hampshire.

The Conyers Report (.pdf)

No explanation for the machines in Mahoning County that recorded Kerry votes for Bush, the improper purging in Cuyahoga County, the lock down in Warren County, the 99% voter turnout in Miami County, the machine tampering in Hocking County

Less access than Kazakhstan. Fewer fail-safes than Venezuela. Not as simple Republic of Georgia. The 2004 Elections according to international observers.

This picture is what stopped the ballot recounts in Florida shortly after it seemed that legitimate President Gore had a lead. The "citizens" started what was later called "the preppy riot". Screaming, yelling, pounding on the walls, these "outraged citizens" intimidated the polling officials to halt the court mandated recount. A closer look reveals who they really were. They were bussed and flown in at Republican lawmakers expense. Some even flew in on Tom Delay's private plane.

More...

If Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power" what does that make the K Street project?

Related Articles:

"Now and Then"- Part 1 A 3 part series by W David Jenkins III on the similarities between America now and Germany post Reichstag fire

Click here to purchase this image on POAC merchandise

"Now and Then"- Part II: The Propaganda Machine

Now and Then- Part III

Hitler's Playbook: Bush and the Abuse of Power

It may sound crazy to some, but the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism.

Is America Becoming Fascist?

Eternal Fascism:

Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt

The Danger of American Fascism:

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

Sheila Samples: Freedom To Fascism -- A Bumpy Ride: Republicans don't seem to realize that they are no longer individual members of a coherent "party," but are merely part of a mean-spirited and dangerous movement that is threatening to sweep away democracy as we know it.

Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism

The Brownshirting of America: Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.

Fascism then. Fascism now? When people think of fascism, they imagine Rows of goose-stepping storm troopers and puffy-chested dictators. What they don't see is the economic and political process that leads to the nightmare.

What is Fascism? Some General Ideological Features

Hello. You are now living in a fascist empire

Neo-fascism in America : Too many people believe fascism is only about goose-stepping, jack-booted Nazis. Too many people believe that American democracy is so strong that fascists could never take control of America. If you are sympathetic to those views, I invite you to consider the possibility that you are mistaken.

It is in times of fascism rising that armies of ignorance are once more resuscitated from the bowels of a society bordering on the edge of mass psychosis. The America at the dawn of the twenty-first century is no exception...

Republican Party Brown Shirts: "The Wide-Awakes": The organization was known for virulent anti-Catholicism, secretive rituals, and a military-style organization complete with "officers" and units.

Harper's Magazine: We Now Live in a Fascist State

They Saw It Coming: The 19th-Century Libertarian Critique of Fascism

Victims of Creeping Fascism: We are witnessing nothing less astonishing than the demise of the American experiment. 12-20

The ten phases of a Bush scandal. 12-22

America is headed for a soft dictatorship by the end of Bush’s second term.

Download the informative trifold pamphlet of these 14 points in .pdf format here (right click, save target as)

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Really... how much do you like your dictator in chief?? Do you see the simularities now or are you going to ignore them, watch fox news and pretend all is rosy?

[HAHAHAHAH nice job Abu]

Peace

You hate peace.

[George W. Bush: An American Hitler]

Losers.

[This just in...]

Blender Boy?

yes. blender boy

What are you on dust?

I don't do drugs.

This just in....

what?

You're a faggit too...

Again, learn to spell. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=faggot And learn to read... http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-05-12T131704Z_01_N12361390_RTRUKOC_0_US-BUSH-POLL.xml

LOSER.

[George W. Bush: An American Hitler]

THE RANT

George W. Bush: An American Hitler

By DOUG THOMPSON

May 3, 2006, 06:42

In George W. Bush's petty, pathetic, partisan world, laws he doesn't agree with don't have to be obeyed, Congressional actions that differ from his political agenda can be ignored and the Constitution of the United States is just a "goddamned piece of paper."

Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe brought this point home Sunday when he revealed Bush has chosen to ignore more laws passed by Congress than any President in history, appending more than 750 laws with "signing statements" that say, in effect, that he doesn't give a damn what the law says because he will do whatever he pleases as a "wartime president" and "commander-in-chief."

Of course it doesn't matter to him that he became a "wartime president" because he lied out his ass to justify an illegal invasion on Iraq based on fake intelligence and a determined policy of ignoring facts that disproved his lies.

With every revelation, we learn more and more just what a dangerous despot Bush is, a madman with the power to wage war at will, destroy the Constitution on a whim and invoke is own perception of unchecked Presidential power by ignoring the system of checks and balances that used to be part of our system of government.

Sadly, nobody in Congress or the courts has the balls to stop this American Hitler. He rides roughshod over the laws of the land, safe in the assumption that his arrogance will leave opponents cowering in fear and an apathetic populace willing to wait until 2008 to rid itself of this festering boil on the body politic.

I'm not sure we can wait. With every passing day we see an elected official who acts more like a dictator than a President. Even worse, he is backed by a Congress driven by a lust for power and corrupted by a system where money and politics rules.

As Savage reports in The Boston Globe:

"President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research."

Bush proved he can successfully ignore the law of the land with his domestic spying program where he ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap phones of Americans.

"Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military," Savage writes. "Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts."

But knowing Bush is going too far and doing something about is where the rub lies. Congress is controlled by the same party of despots who support Bush's dictatorial actions and he has stacked the courts with judges willing to ignore the Constitution to support his seizure of power.

As Savage reports:

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Political scientist George Harleigh, who served in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations where Presidential power became major issues, says Bush's actions place the country on a dangerous course.

"Presidential authority, once assumed, is seldom relinquished. The Constitution prevailed when Richard Nixon ignored the laws that govern his actions," Harleigh says, "but this President neither obeys nor upholds his oath to support the Constitution. He sees the document as an obstacle to his power and has chosen to ignore it. If no one else is willing to uphold the Constitution then it becomes, as attorney general Alberto Gonzales has written, an 'outdated document' and places this Republic in grave peril."

Harleigh believes this nation faces more than a battle for which political party controls the White House and/or Congress.

"This is now a battle for the soul of America," he says. "The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush."

© Copyright 2005 Capitol Hill Blue

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_8534.shtml

[This just in...]

Been hitting the bottle again?

YOUR PIG SISTER DOES...

At least my "pig sister" doesn't blindly rally behind a moron with a 29% (and falling fast) job approval rating, blender boy.

[This just in...]

Destruction: I hope the commie bastard drinks a cup of AIDS.

AIDS can't live outside the body. http://www.avert.org/howcan.htm

A little research doesn't hurt.

Big Poppa Nails is still a faggit.

Learn to spell.

IM BACK BITCHES!

Who cares?

[Iglooooooooo]

Ah... Maybe he got arrested for kid touching.

[Monthly drug for alcoholism gets FDA approval]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 13 - The FDA has approved a monthly injectable formulation of Vivitrol (naltrexone for extended-release) for treatment of alcohol-dependent patients, the drug marketers, Alkermes and Cephalon, announced today.

The drug, intended for use by outpatients who are not actively drinking, should be used in combination with psychosocial support, the announcement said.

The companies said they will market the drug in 380 mg IM doses and expect the product to be available by June.

"Vivitrol is the first once-a-month medication for alcohol dependence that ensures patients get the benefit of medication over the entire month," said Richard Rosenthal, M.D., chairman, of psychiatry at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York, in the companies' statement.

Vivitrol binds opioid receptors in the brain and preclinical data suggest that binding results in blockade of neurotransmitters that promote alcohol dependence. That blockade is thought to be the mechanism by which Vivitrol reduces alcohol consumption in treated patients.

In a six-month phase III trial, patients treated with Vivitrol (380 mg) and psychosocial support demonstrated a reduction in days of heavy drinking compared with patients treated with placebo and psychosocial support.

In a subset of patients who were abstinent for a week before starting Vivitrol treatment, the drug was associated with continued abstinence in a significant number of patients (without relapse). Moreover, patients who were abstinent before receiving the initial injection of Vivitrol had a greater reduction in drinking days and heavy-drinking days.

Although Vivitrol was generally well tolerated, with the most common side effects being nausea, vomiting, headache, fatigue, and injection site rejections, high doses of naltrexone have been reported to cause hepatocellular injury.

The drug was contraindicated in patients with acute hepatitis or liver failure, and its "use in patients with active liver disease must be carefully considered in light of its hepatotoxic effects." But the company said that at recommended doses Vivitrol does not appear to be hepatoxic.

"Patients should be warned of the risk of hepatic injury and advised to seek medical attention if they experience symptoms of acute hepatitis," the companies said.

Vivitrol is contraindicated in patients receiving opioid analgesics. Likewise, it contraindicated in opioid-dependent patients and patients undergoing opioid withdrawal.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/ProductAlert/Prescriptions/tb/3095

[Dear Igloo]

Hey Igloo!!! Come out to play!!!

Actually, I get the feeling he's retreating.