BUSH'S USA: RIPE FOR FASCISM

On a day when Bush's USA became even more isolated from world opinion by refusing to back a global plan to fight poverty (endorsed by 110 countries), Maureen Farrell warns that conditions in America are now tragically ripe for Fascism:

"Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism? Check. Avid Militarism? Check. Disdain for the importance of human rights? Triple check."

Farrell recalls comments made by US Vice President Wilson in 1944, when the battle against Nazi Fascism was at its fiercest, comparing such comments with the Bush administration's lies about WMDs, Saddam and terrorism, and the FOX network's deliberately partisan reporting techniques:

"American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information," [Wallace] wrote.

Decades later, during the first Gulf War, the media dutifully regurgitated propaganda while those in power did, in fact, "use the news to deceive the public." But the public remained so fully gullible that by the time the Bush Cartel's "Operation Iraqi Freedom" hit TV screens, the "deliberate poisoners of public information" didn't even have to break a sweat to fool us twice."

Farrell says Americans have been warned repeatedly of this danger:

"...dynasty founders Samuel Prescott Bush and George H. Walker were both "present at the emergence of what became the U.S. military-industrial complex," in which the Bush family has been enmeshed ever since...

Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links.

Read the full story here: When Fascism Comes to America, by Maureen Farrell.

This is the great untold story of the past 20 years. It's definitely not just an easily dismissed "conspiracy theory". The USA has been veering dangerously towards Fascism ever since George Bush Snr. was appointed head of the CIA, then Vice President and then President, despite repeated warnings about the powerful business interests supporting him and a general consensus that he was a totally unelectable candidate.

The sudden rise of privatised media like FOX News, who take blatantly partisan political stances, is a great cause of concern. As Andrew Sullivan recently wrote in the Sunday Times:

"Something truly remarkable happened this past July and August: cable news eclipsed the mainstream networks in coverage of the political conventions. On the final night of the Bush coronation, Fox News won more viewers than any other network - 7 million compared to second place NBC's 5.9 million - and more than CBS and ABC combined. And Fox is available in far fewer households than the regular networks. This simply hasn't happened before. And there was a partisan tilt to the viewing as well. The more liberal CNN cleaned up during the Democrats' confab; right-leaning Fox News surged in viewers for the Republicans' infomercial. The old model in which allegedly objective network journalists wielded enormous influence over the media coverage of politics has been exploded. American television is now much less like the BBC and more like the British print press - its biases more open, its competition more fierce, its ideological diversity more acknowledged. "

Sullivan argues that this kind of partisanship is OK because nowadays people can pick the partisan media they like - be it cable TV, blogs or newspapers - and be aware of the political filtering of the news they are watching. The problem is that most people reading or watching the news are not aware of the underlying bias, and probably do not have the time or energy or interest to work it out. That creates a huge social problem, and US Fascists are set to exploit it better than anyone else.

In related news, a US Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12 to 4 to appoint Bush's choice of CIA Director, Porter Goss, despite widespread objections that he was too partisan for the job and had a dangerously sullied history. Four Democrats voted for the nomination: Dianne Feinstein of California, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. John Edwards of North Carolina, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, made no recommendation.