Neocon Intelligence has to be the ultimate oxymoron.

Posted by: DM | Apr 24 2007 12:24 utc | 3

Fascism in 10 Easy Steps from Naomi Wolfe in today’s Guardian UK.

It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere – while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: “dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster.”
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are “at war” in a “long war” – a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president – without US citizens realising it yet – the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
hey, b- is bigamy legal in Germany? –since this is the “moon,” maybe, like the unification church, we could become a religious organization and engage in group marriage. isnt’ same-sex marriage legal there? — if so, then beq and her S.O. could be your hub and wife, for instance. dang it. if I had only gotten married one year earlier, I could have had EU citizenship.
if my kids have an EU parent, can they “grandfather” me, I wonder?
or we could incorporate and get jobs…catlady could be our musical branch, annie, beq and anna missed the art league (is b real in the u.s.?) … uncle could be our minister of propaganda… I’ll be asst to the asst. coffee maker or something… just a thought… :/

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 24 2007 14:49 utc | 5

Of course Frederik Kagan will never admit the obvious: Iraqi sovereignty means US out!
Meanwhile the phrase “turning the corner” has a curious aroma of failure. It seems odd for people who focus-group their every word.
In Vietnam the US “turned the corner” so many times it was a complete aerobic workout!

Posted by: Gaianne | Apr 24 2007 16:18 utc | 7

insufficient energy ha been expenderd.
sheesh.
but, it’s an argument benefitting them, leaving “liberals” to prove negatives.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 24 2007 16:33 utc | 9

you turn lots of corners when wondering around lost in a maze…..
I am planning on a Kos diary on the Naomi Wolfe piece above. Got to keep speaking out while we can……
also, any ideas for a DFA meeting? they want to stay active doing something, but feel letters to Dole and Burr and bush is pointless. We are in NC.

Posted by: Susan – NC | Apr 24 2007 17:10 utc | 11

Turning the corner, i.e. spinning, in Ramadi:
Neocon Max Boot in today’s LA Times: An Iraq success story

The experience of Ramadi — which has gone from being one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq to one of the safest — provides a glimmer of hope.
…

Current BBC News: Truck bombing kills 15 in Ramadi

At least 15 people have been killed and 25 wounded in a suicide bomb attack on the outskirts of Ramadi, in central Iraq, police say.
…
The attack comes a day after three separate car bombings killed 29 people, mostly police officers, in the city.
…

Boots again:

given enough time and resources, the “clear, hold and build” strategy that worked in Ramadi — and that has worked in Tall Afar, Qaim and other cities — could succeed in Baghdad too. Unless, of course, antiwar politicians back home succeed in pulling the plug, in which case defeat is guaranteed.

Boots has turned lots of corners in Ramadi …

Posted by: b | Apr 24 2007 19:39 utc | 13

excellent post b. really, i appreciate your talents and have borrowed heavily from this post.

Posted by: annie | Apr 24 2007 20:15 utc | 15

The passport application bit is so true. I’ve just been through it for a member of my family and it was an utter nightmare. People had driven 7 hours to the agency only to find themselves forced to wait 5-6 hours in line, standing, with no seats available. The difference in this process between now and even 2 or 3 years ago was shocking. Rather ironically and quite symbolically, the photo display of government icons (local and national leaders, symbols, etc) that had adorned the entire wall behind the waiting line was literally falling off onto the ground.
But not only that. I’ve suddenly started noticing it in all kinds of weird places. I was told entering a D.C. restaurant that I had to show an ID by order of the bureau of alcohol and something or other… IN ORDER TO ENTER THE RESTAURANT where alcohol was served — I had to identify myself. Mind you I am no spring chicken and it is clear that I am of drinking age… The same thing happened in some other totally unexpected circumstance — had to show an ID. It really feels as if we are suddenly being checked at all kinds of points at which we were not previously, and for no rational reason. Except if it is to lay the groundwork for more to come, or to just get us in the mindset of accepting increased control.

Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 24 2007 23:15 utc | 17

noirette:
Ok. You don’t like Naomi Klein.
Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. Makes no real difference.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

These are all fait accompli, from my perspective.

3. Develop a thug caste
5. Harass citizens’ groups

The cops and ancillary groups… usually three lettered INS, ICE, FBI, etc… are increasingly tough and seem much less inhibited by laws on the books protecting civil rights.

7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press

Fascism according to Mussolini’s definition is a partnership between business and government. Certainly the collapse of investigative journalism, of any sort of real journalism, in the msm is just business doing its part. I have no doubt that key individuals are pressured economically by big business as well.

9. Dissent equals treason

Do I see a real bright spot here? Or am I imagining that this one doesn’t wash anymore? That fewer and fewer people are afraid to express their revulsion at what America has become under Neocon rule?

10. Suspend the rule of law

So far its been the passage of patently unconstitutional law… the PATRIOT Act, the MCA… rather than the suspension of particular laws by decree. But it’s happening.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 25 2007 2:30 utc | 19

The Counterpunch series by Greg Moses was originally published in The Texas Civil Rights Review. There’s ongoing reportage there of Suzi Hazaha’s internment and of the whole, sickening mess of the for-profit, good-ole-boy, concentration camp network in the Great State of Texas.
(posting broken up in an attempt to get past typepad censors)
Globalized Gulag
Palestinian Immigrant Jailings in Texas
World Responds to Palestinian Family’s Jailing Despite Media Blackout

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 25 2007 2:57 utc | 21

The Counterpunch series by Greg Moses was originally published in The Texas Civil Rights Review. There’s ongoing reportage there of Suzi Hazaha’s internment and of the whole, sickening mess of the for-profit, good-ole-boy, concentration camp network in the Great State of Texas.
(posting broken up in an attempt to get past typepad censors)
The Terror of Suzi Hazahza
Showdown Over Texas Immigrant Prisons
Suzie Hazahza in Haskell Hell

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Apr 25 2007 3:00 utc | 23

10 easy criticisms criticized. (and JFL- it’s Naomi Wolf, not Klein, fwiw)
1) If G Bush is closing down an open society (whad dat??), the democrats have done nothing to stop it
–and this has what to do with her historical analogies? this idea certainly rings true in the case of the weimar govt. And, just like that govt., the Bushies use the idea of an “existential” threat to the U.S. to accuse any who oppose them of aiding the enemy.
2) checks and balances requires ppl to stand up and provide the balance
–and, again, are you unaware of the millions who have gotten out in the streets in the U.S.? or those who have been surveilled, as Wolf notes, simply for being a peace movt? On the whole, your criticisms don’t really address what Wolf has to say, which is the historical pattern that exists across nations and times that are markers for dictatorships. whether you like what people are doing here has no bearing on what she’s saying…and in fact she’s saying that Americans are looking away as others are denied rights.
3) the horror shock of 9/11 is usually invoked by your war mongering types; bringing it up to show that the US people cringe under threats feeds that meme
-this is a preposterous statement. to show what someone else is doing aids them??? Wolf mentions the way taht Spain is handling the situation differently as an example of an alternative.
4) A parliamentary Republic that can’t take time to read the bills put to it is in deep doo doo, that has nothing to do with fascsim, but everything to do with power and submission to it
actually, the us is not a parliamentary govt. I assume you are aware of the time that the patriot act was passed. there was no way it was not already a fait accompli before the fact. and opponents, such as Daschle and Leahy, were sent anthrax (from a US strain) right at this time. this is classic psy ops. Conyers went on to admit that no one reads all bills because they are marbled with pork for congressional districts. additionally, Matt Tiabbi, among others, has written about the way in which legislation was passed under the republican controlled leg. branch. THEY WOULD HIDE from the Dems on their committees. THEY WOULD FUCKING HIDE.
5) if global islamist threat, terrorism, is a real danger (as she says), then something might be done about it? I mean it either is, or isn’t, and what the Spaniards think about it is immaterial.
really? what is the logic behind this statement? I fail to find any. the point is that the US is using the terror attacks/al q as a way to create fear in a population and thus justify unconstitutional acts. the dlc, fuckers that they are, cannot see what is happening right under their noses. when the shit goes down and then, inevitably fails, maybe the dlc’er will be treated like Nazi sympathizers after WWII…Carvell is already bald, tho, so maybe they’ll have to put hair on his head, rather than shave it (the punishment for fucking a nazi.)
do you really think that international diplomacy operates in a vacuum, that competing concerns and interest groups do not have a bearing upon what policy is made (c.f. John Bolton) or that it is realistic to have war without end rather than police methods and diplomacy?
honestly, please explain what you mean by this. it makes no sense.
6) The US imprisoned the Japanese. The French took notes and spied and sent the Jews off. And so on. As pointed out. Err..well what?
Err..well these people were both citizens of the countries where they live. their property was confiscated and, in the case of the Jews, they were murdered as though this was a business…assembly line genocide.
7) In Iraq, about 1 million killed, and 4 million displaced. AH! Detainee abuses! Locking people up and raping / torturing them is unspeakable, of course it is. Committing genocide – that will NOT be mentioned.
again, what the fuck are you talking about? this article is about ten common traits of fascism that are set up across cultures. she is addressing the encroaching fascism, just as in Meyer’s book, We thought we were free. or Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler…both about the early stages of fascism. Germany and France, among others, had just had the dirtiest war in history, using gas attacks and blowing off people’s faces and sending them back home to beg on the streets…if they were lucky enough not to be buried alive by a bomb.
which has nothing to do with the social changes that are a prelude to fascism.
8) thugs are everywhere, sure, for ex. in the local bank, on the street, etc. Thugs in America – Klein sees angry young Repub. men menacing poll workers! What about killing a million ppl?
again, noirette, do you understand the concept of writing an article? you have a topic and you create a topic sentence. from this you develop arguments that both support and deny your topic. if you stray from that topic, you then writing another article. in a short piece, you do not stray from the topic because you don’t have time to meander, New Yorker style, into the vagaries of orchid fertilization. You want an article about the killing…write it yourself. but how in the hell can you criticise someone for writing an article because it doesn’t address the issues you want to mention instead?
9) No Americans have been imprisoned, tortured, raped, starved, terminally abused, bombed, shot, following ‘no fly lists.’ they have been harassed, inconvenienced, maybe even held for 2-3 days. Completely stupid, disgusting, but not commensurate.
Jose Padilla. american citizen. most likely his mind is broken. a british journalist was in detention for days because she didn’t have the correct visa…that said journalist, not tourist, since journalists are required to have special visas now. a man whose wife lives in Colorado was picked up and held w/o charges and then deported because he was of middle eastern descent..this was at the first of the year. a canadian man was sent to Syria to be tortured…not american, but before now borders were open b/t the two nations.
and, again, you are making a comparison to the way Americans are treated compared to the way they are treating others. This has nothing, nothing at all to do with this article.
any point you would like to make is lost by the straw man you are batting at…well, duh, yes iraq is the big mess. but if you think that situation would be made better by a further descent into fascism, I’ve got a bunker to sell you in Berlin.
10) I give up. I’m off.
and if this happens to be a criticism of me for joking with b about leaving… LOL.
I’ve lived overseas before, noted my affinity for many things and people I’ve known who live in Europe, thought about moving off and on for years, long before Bush, and my alienation from the country the right wing would have this be has been unstinting. I suppose all those germans who left weren’t good enough for you either…how dare they not stay and suffer, once the apparatus was in place. how dare they not sacrifice their children.
I would suggest that you develop your arguments a bit better and address the actual content of an article. if you just want to criticize someone’s desire to leave, you don’t need to waste time on the straw man of…butbutbut Iraq.
but that’s just my opinion. ymmv

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 25 2007 3:17 utc | 25

More cognitive dissonance: Insults fly as Congress weighs Iraq compromise

On Thursday, the Senate also was expected to pass that bill, which provides an additional $100 billion this year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush’s promised veto could come as early as Monday.
But some Democrats, who stress they intend to provide all the money for the troops that Bush has requested, and $4 billion more, signaled they were open to a post-veto bill that provides the funds without timetables for withdrawing troops.
Such a bill would include “benchmarks” for measuring Iraq’s progress toward stabilizing a country that daily witnesses horrifying scenes of violence and killings.
“Yes. I would consider that and I think we will consider it,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (news, bio, voting record), a Maryland Democrat.
Hoyer’s counterpart, House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), an Ohio Republican, said such an approach would “help us measure the progress we’re making” in Iraq without signaling a “surrender” date to the enemy.
Dropping timetables for withdrawing troops would be a disappointment to liberal Democrats, who think their party won November’s elections because of public anger over Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, now in its fifth year.
If a war-funding bill Bush eventually signs into law contains no withdrawal, Democrats are expected to try again on other bills leading up to the 2008 presidential election.
Until Bush vetoes the money bill now pending in Congress, it appears there will be no let up in the bombast.
“Instead of fashioning a bill I could sign, Democratic leaders chose to further delay funding our troops, and they chose to make a political statement,” Bush said.

I very seriously do not get how one distinguishes one group in Washington from the other. It’s like listening to Dallas Cowboys fans trash talking with New England Patriots fans. When all is said and done, they are both still playing the same fucking game.
From the above article: “Reid, a Nevada Democrat, responded, “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody that has 9 percent approval ratings.” Then he called Cheney “the administration’s chief attack dog.” I won’t disagree with the particular names being called in this instance, but does anyone else see some very, very basic flaw in the above? Does any of this make any sense anymore? Are pols in general even trying to manage perception or is piling up so much horseshit that one can’t see over it part of that process?
Screw it. Poor people will continue to bleed and fat, rich people will continue to say the same things at one another while it happens. I give up on this whole “civilization” nonsense. If saying “enough” is not civilized, I’m proud to be a barbarian.

Posted by: Monolycus | Apr 25 2007 4:13 utc | 27

DM- I was joking about the group marriage, but I’m not really joking about leaving if I get a job offer that would make this feasible. There is no where to go except where you are not paying taxes to support policies you detest.
Frankly, I’d love to move to Amsterdam, or maybe Utrecht and open a specialty book store (artists’ books, museum books, rare and out-of-print and cheap new/used stuff for tourists/students to read and resell.) I’ve checked out The Netherlands chamber of commerce site, but for something as small-scale as my thing..let’s just say I’m not the kind of globalization that matters.
And, yes, I would inhale. And after I had, I would go to the Rijksmuseum.
And if the dykes don’t hold, I’d move to higher ground.
JFL- most Americans think the idea that the Turdblossom brigade are fascists is ridiculous. they don’t see any problem. they enjoy the simulacra of democracy too much. the current situation is called democracy, and that’s good enough. that naming makes it what it is, not the actions of the govt.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 25 2007 5:40 utc | 29

@ fauxreal:
I’m late to the thread, but sounds like you’re developing new subcategories to the MAPWA (Moon of Alabama Pirate Wives Agreement) or whatever it was. I like….
There are better places to play middle-class educated bohemian than in the US these days. Otherwise, I figure I should invest in fingerless wool gloves (still gotta play the piano, or accordeon, without heat), get the soil built up to grow turnips, pull the (fictional) money out of my savings accounts and buy REAL estate (advice, Annie?) before it all goes away.
Wish us luck.

Posted by: catlady | Apr 25 2007 7:01 utc | 31

JFL- I’m saying that Americans think Bush is a problem and the war in Iraq is a problem, but they do not think we are looking at incipient fascism. People think the system still works. I hope they’re right, but I’ve thought we were descending into fascism since 2001…and it was in the works beforehand (the 2000 election…the PNAC doc…the “new pearl harbor”–tho what, who and how in that situation I don’t know.)
after a visit from the fbi “checking on a neighbor”…long story I’ve mentioned here before…there was an FBI “moment” here and a local law prof. was also questioned, along with United for Peace and Justice ppl… I did sort of wonder if I was on some no-fly list before I got on a plane. I’m glad they’re not wasting taxpayer money on me.
so, yes, I think many Americans do not like what is happening now, but they also think that the balance of power works, that our elected reps. will defend against fascism…it is interesting that right wingers like Bob Barr are just as concerned about what the Bushies are doing as is Dennis Kucinich (tho of course Barr is no longer serving in the leg…Reaganites are also using the F word.
Wolf mentions Joe Conason, who wrote one of the best exposes on the right wing take down of Clinton (Ann coulter was intimately involved in this, btw). Maybe his book, and Chris Hedges, and Paul Craig Roberts, and Kevin Phillips, etc. will make people wake up, but for now I don’t think the majority of americans accept that Bush is a fascist who has put christofascists in positions throughout the govt.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 25 2007 13:10 utc | 33

(advice, Annie?)
i’m sorry catlady i am in no condition to give advice at this point because my mind is so befuddled i can’t seem to take my own advice. ;(

Posted by: annie | Apr 25 2007 15:10 utc | 35

🙂
thanks! learn something new every day
never whistle while you’re pissing
i will have to try it, rebel that i am

Posted by: annie | Apr 25 2007 18:35 utc | 37

I was gonna suggest you ask U$ about NWWYP, but DoS beat me to it.

Posted by: catlady | Apr 25 2007 20:05 utc | 39

hahaha..@catlady, dos,annie,fauxreal…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 25 2007 21:34 utc | 41