Hit Men, Jackels... Has Our Turn Come?

I just finished reading Glen Yeadon's fantastic book, The Nazi Hydra In America I've been quoting at such great length for the last couple months. Towards the end is the story of the CIA assassination of Jaime Roldós, Ecuador's first democratically elected president in modern times. A few days ago we posted a story about Ecuador and the Galápagos Islands and immediately readers started asking me why we left out any mention of the assassination. Well, that's a travel blog; this is the political blog. And, to be honest, like most Americans, I just didn't know that the CIA had murdered the president of Ecuador in 1981. Our media doesn't exactly harp on that sort of thing.

Roldós was elected on a populist platform and pissed off the corporations that determine U.S. policies in Latin America by insisting that his countrymen be treated as human beings. He decreed a 40 hour workweek, doubled the minimum wage to $160/month and rallied other countries in the region to a policy embracing human rights, which, predictably, drove American conservatives into a frenzy of bloodlust. Roldós rejected an invitation to Reagan's inauguration (January, 1981) and 4 months later he had a plane crash. The CIA assassinated the President of Panama, Omar Torrijos, a few months later (another plane crash).

John Perkins, in his epic 2004 book, Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, explained that the CIA murdered both Torrijos and Roldós, but not just because of a human rights declaration. A CIA asset planted a bomb in a tape recorder in Roldós' plane because he was in the middle of reorganizing the country's oil policies, a big no-no in a very high stakes world where there's no fooling around tolerated.

From Yeadon we learned that in Latin America "legally elected governments leaning to the left or announcing reforms that threatened corporate America were branded as communist and soon overthrown by covert support of hard-right rebellions. Invariably the new regime was a brutal right-wing dictatorship that murdered thousands to suppress dissent. The United States soon recognized the new regime and offered support for its military and police, all in the name of combating communism and supporting freedom."

But that isn't all The U.S. offered. Remember, the leadership of the OSS and the CIA came almost entirely from Wall Street reactionaries and fascists, with connections to plutocrats and corporations that financed the rise of Hitler and the building of the Nazi war machine. It hasn't mattered who we elected president. The CIA, the national security state, had an agenda that was all about the bottom line of American corporations. Yeadon:

The record of CIA interventions leaves a bloody trail across the globe. The pattern is always the same: a popular government is legally elected and starts reforms that threaten the interests of multinational American corporations. Economic or military inducements are tried. If they fail, then the CIA begins covert methods to oust the government. These operations ended in a bloody coup in Chile and a brutal guerrilla war in the Contra revolution in Nicaragua, only two of many tactics used after all other means fail.

John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man describes how multinational American corporations and the World Bank act as extended arms of the CIA. Perkins, who was employed by the American consulting firm, MAIN, lays out a model of deliberate economic sabotage of countries, conducted by the CIA, the IMF and the World Bank. The first step is to coerce a country to sign a plan for economic development, which may include construction of a dam, airport, factory or other infrastructure. The plan is deliberately oversized in such way that there is no hope the country can never repay the loan.

The country is deliberately misled by overly optimistic forecasts of the success and need for such projects. A few corrupt local politicians and rich families receive some funds to grease the way for the project. Once the economic forecasts fall short, the country slides into default on the loan. The World Bank then forces the country to accept austerity measures, which require the government to privatize property at fire sale prices, or grant other economic concessions to American corporations.

So what happens when Austerity gets shoved down peoples' throats by the ruling elites. You remember the riots in Greece and England recently. You ain't seen nothing yet. Capitalism is falling apart and we can expect some very turbulent weather ahead-- and the U.S. isn't immune the way it was in 1848 when revolutions swept across Europe.

A key aspect of this sudden mass awareness is in response to high unemployment and the deeply unpopular measures that politicians are forcing upon working people, both byproducts of the Great Recession. Politicians are blaming "the markets" for demanding austerity measures, but "markets" are simply places where wealthy people invest their money. To guarantee a profitable return on their money these investors demand that labor laws be squashed and social programs be eliminated, all over the world.

Spain, for example, is one of many countries having austerity measures forced down their throats. Reuters reports:

"Analysts see the shaking up of the country's inflexible labor laws [laws that protect workers] and the easing of hiring and firing [so older, activist, or slower workers can be fired] as vital to restoring the country's competitiveness. The labor reforms are crucial. They will help to restore growth [profits] in the long term. Growth is the only way out of these adverse fiscal trends,' said Luigi Speranza, analyst at BNP Paribas." [May 27, 2010]

To summarize, creating new laws that enable Spanish corporations to work their workers harder will be better for profits.

Greece faces a similar austerity plan, according to The Guardian UK:

"Tax increases, spending cuts and wage reductions and a sweeping privatisation programme have led to violent protests in Greece, with many arguing that the International Monetary Fund and European Union have demanded too high a price for their financial support." [August 2, 2011]

In the United States, these policies find expression in the attack against public-sector unions and the targeting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for cuts, while mass unemployment is allowed to act as a very efficient way to lower wages for all workers.

Politicians have made it clear that economic growth, especially corporate profits, will increase in response to these anti-worker policies. They are only partially right. Corporate profits in fact have been on the rise, but the austerity measures have been responsible for the depressed economies throughout Europe and the US. When workers' wages are lowered and social programs are decimated, working people and the poor are left with little money for any purchases other than the bare necessities. Without consumer demand for their products, corporations curtail operations even more. This global dynamic has been decades in the making, with the recession having finally forced the issue into the forefront.

The Reagan and Thatcher administrations were the first Western representatives during the post-World War II era of this now dominant trend, which aimed at pushing back the social programs and wages won by the labor movements. Their policies were in response to the lower corporate growth rates that began in the 1970s and continue to this day. Now, all of Europe is suffering because banks and corporations demand a more profit-friendly business environment: universal health care and education programs are in jeopardy, plus wages and other benefits are under attack.

For the wealthy and corporations this is a life-and-death struggle. The Great Recession has already bankrupted the banks and corporations who were not fit enough to survive under a crumbling market economy. The existing companies are thus forced to squeeze more work for less pay out of their workers, since labor is the most flexible cost of any business. Pushing labor costs down - and by extension cutting social programs - is thus the priority of the corporations and their paid-for politicians across the globe, since the global economy is tightly connected and they all play by the vicious rules of the market. In fact, the intensity with which the corporate elite is pursuing these policies is a reflection of their negative outlook for the global economy.

This constitutes a new era in global capitalism, one that mimics the market economy of past generations. The 2008 recession was not a temporary phenomenon, but the ushering in of a new period in which the corporate elite attempt to restructure social relations, meaning that past assumptions regarding wages and social programs must be destroyed, as a new, more profitable equilibrium is sought between the corporate elite and working people.

Implied in this nation-by-nation restructuring is a restriction of democracy, since these anti-worker policies negatively affect the vast majority of the population. The riots in London are an expression of this, as are the mass demonstrations throughout Europe as well as the Middle East. In the United States, democracy is circumvented via the so-called Super Congress, whose duty it is to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Austerity programs throughout Europe are being implemented against the wishes of the general working populations.

Also included in this attack on working people is the corporate elite's doubled efforts to divert the working-class anger toward fake populist movements-- like the Tea Party in the US-- or against minorities, such as Muslims and immigrants in the US.

This will require that working people stay focused on who exactly is attacking them, while focusing on measures that can serve as alternatives to what the corporate elite are forcefully implementing.

The most immediate and important demand of working people must be taxing the rich and corporations, since social programs need to be funded and expanded and a massive jobs program with a strong green component is desperately overdue. It's not by coincidence that taxing the rich is rarely used in austerity plans; and when, on rare occasions, the rich are taxed, it's at low levels with high publicity, so the angry public will think the illusion of "shared sacrifice" is a reality.

For example, in the US, President Obama is again calling to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich (after allowing them to continue less than a year ago). It is doubtful that the Bush tax cuts will be ended, but if they were, it would be insufficient. Working people must demand that taxes on the rich be raised to at least pre-Reagan levels (70 percent), while President Eisenhower levels would be best (90 percent). Over the decades, the tax burden has shifted dramatically, causing wealth to accumulate into the bank accounts of the top 1 percent of the population, the same people who are now demanding that social programs be destroyed so that their investments are secured and their corporate profits remain high.

Since illusions of an economic recovery have now been shattered, it's up to working people to demand that their labor unions and community groups unite to tax the rich and corporations in order to finance a massive jobs program. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO is organizing actions for the first week of October to demand jobs and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many within the labor movement are calling for massive demonstrations across the country for October 1. It will take these types of actions to unite working people to fight for a positive solution to the economic crisis.

I hope you watched, or will watch, the interview with John Perkins above. It will help explain why we're being sucked into an Austerity Regime here in America and Europe. Watch this one afterwards:

Two Visions Of The Future-- Us Against Them

Two very diverse visions of the future inspired my day in Bangkok yesterday. I wish the BBC video of the Hard Talk discussion with brilliant Thai philosopher Sulak Sivaraksa was available for sharing. He discussed the wrong turn modern society has taken in a tragic pursuit of materialism in the craving for happiness. Instead, I posted a clip of him (above) from 2004 at the Parliament of the World's Religions. I hope you'll get his 21st-century Buddhist perspective from it. [UPDATE: Found it! The 2 clips are posted below; you should watch them. As the BBC points out, "Thailand like many Asian countries, has focused on rising GDP and national income as a sign of success but is that focus misplaced? Sulak Sivaraksa thinks it is. He's a veteran social campaigner, Buddhist activist and writer who has been jailed in Thailand and briefly forced into exile."]

The second inspiration came from Glen Yeadon's book on fascism, Nazi Hydra in America. Their thoughts melded almost seamlessly as Yeadon discussed how in 1942, "The DuPonts, one of the country's 13 controlling families and notorious Nazi sympathizers, dressed fascism up with a smiley face and labeled it with the electioneering jingle of free enterprise... Many prominent Americans-- including the Dulles brothers, Prescott Bush, Averell Harriman, Henry Ford, and the Rockefellers-- deserved to be tried for treason and hanged at Nuremberg." None were punished. In fact... after the death of FDR, they and other native fascists and their movement were the actual victors of World War II, despite U.S. victories on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific.

It was the leaders of corporate America who willingly entered into the cartel agreements with I.G. Farben that hindered the early war effort. Likewise, it was the leaders of corporate America that funded many of the pro-fascist groups prevalent in the 1930s.

It was these same American corporations that built much of the Third Riech's war machine. GM and Ford built nearly 90 percent of all the three-ton vehicles and nearly 70 percent of all medium and heavy-duty trucks for the Reich. GM also built thousands of bombers for the Luftwaffe. When American forces liberated the Ford plants in Cologne and Berlin, they found destitute foreign workers confined behind barbed wire. Records show that nearly half the labor force of Ford's Cologne plant was slave labor. Shamelessly after the war, both GM and Ford demanded reparations for damages from Allied bombing to their plants. In 1967, GM received $33 million for damages sustained to its Russelsheim plant.

However, unlike the corporations, those forced into slave labor for Ford have yet to be compensated. The issue will be left to die quietly as the victims of slave labor pass away-- as most are now in their 80s. The corporations will continue to hide behind the false claim that they lacked control over their investments in Germany. Such claims are frauds. Almost all American corporations went to great lengths to remain in control of their facilities in Germany. Both Edsel Ford and Robert Sorenson, a high-ranking official at Dearborn, served as directors of Ford Werke A.G. throughout the war years. Furthermore, Edsel Ford sent direct orders to France that Ford was to build trucks for the Nazis once war broke out.

The same is true of almost all other American corporations that had investments in Germany. Many took extraordinary means to remain in control, oftentimes through shell corporations in Switzerland. These same corporations sought the help of the Dulles brothers in concealing their treacherous dealings from our own government. With the first step toward remaining in control or in concealing their dealings with the Nazis, these corporations became traitors to their country, war criminals and morally responsible for the resulting Holocaust and the deaths of thousands of GIs.

...Although the Allied forces were victorious on the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific, tragically, the war against fascism was lost on the home front. In the 1946 election, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress. True to their pro-big business agenda and their past support of fascists over 200 anti-union bills would flood Congress. The rehabilitated Fred Hartley, who had supported Japan and Germany up until the moment Pearl Harbor was bombed, would co-author the anti-union Taft-Hartley act. The fascist group Christian America would successfully lobby several Southern and Midwestern states to pass anti-union right to work laws. One could argue that such measures were not full-blown fascism but that is the danger of creeping fascism. Such steps as the anti-union measures were only the first steps on a slippery slope towards fascism. However, anytime the government enacts a law placing the rights of corporations or the elite ahead of the people it is an act of fascism or more properly another step towards fascism.

Fascism is an inherent problem of any economy based on capitalism. It's insidious as corporations grow and become more powerful, more and more laws are passed favoring large corporations and the rights of the people are damned. Fascism has never appeared first in its full-blown totalitarian state. It took Hitler six years to consolidate his power into a fully fascist state. Fascism always assumes power in gradual steps. It destroys our rights one at a time until suddenly it blossoms into full-blown fascism, a totalitarian society controlled by the corporate elite.

If you follow this blog at all, you've probably noticed that I keep harping on this general story and on Yeadon's work. It's that last paragraph, and that last sentence: "Fascism has never appeared first in its full-blown totalitarian state." What Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin, what John Kasich is doing in Ohio, what Rick Scott is doing in Florida, what Rick Snyder is doing in Michigan, what Chris Christie is doing in New Jersey... all states where Nazi war criminals were resettled (illegally) in great numbers after WWII, is heading directly towards the fascist state their financiers have always wanted.

It's serious; I hope you're paying attention. And it's why we need strong, smart fighters in government, rather than compromised, compromising hacks with good campaign slogans.

UPDATE: The Sulak Sivaraksa Hard Talk videos:

Interest In America In Mladic's Trial Is Much Less Than It Should Be

Mladic & DuPont-- at least one fascist will face trial

Most Americans don't know who Ratko Mladic is, where Srebrenica, Serbia, Bosnia or even the Hague are, or why a war crimes tribunal is important-- and important to us here in the U.S.A. Mladic was the chief of staff of the Serb Bosnian army in the early '90's. In 1995 he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's biggest mass murder case since the Nazi defeat. He'd been "hiding," basically in plain sight, for 16 years. The only reason he was "found" was because the EU refused to consider admitting Serbia until they turned him over. He is still a hero to right-wingers in Serbia who are bitter and fuming he was turned in.

I woke up at 1:30 AM Friday to watch the first proceedings live from the Hague on TV. I've always been a firm believer that when criminals from among the ruling elite get away with their crimes-- as happens 99.9% of the time-- the tragedy is epic and bound to be compounded over time. They rarely slink off to lick their wounds and count their lucky stars. And no country is worse in that department than our own. [Glenn Greenwald writes about this tendency of America's elites to see themselves above the law over at Salon this morning.]

Thursday we saw how most Americans rue the fact that Wall Street's top executives are getting off scot-free for the criminal activities that brought on the economic devastation for millions of families. We're not looking backwards... we're moving on. It's an American mantra, carefully inculcated by the ruling elites and the mass media they own. Many people were angry that recent American politicians guilty of outrageous crimes, from Kissinger to Bush and Cheney, were never brought up on any kinds of charges. But that's as traditional in America as mom and rhubarb pie. Let's turn to my current favorite book, The Nazi Hydra in America by Glen Yeadon for a brief look at how America let all the big name Nazi traitors-- even the ones who tried to overthrow FDR in a coup-- get away without even facing a trial, let alone a firing squad. Most of these families have continued pushing an extreme right-wing fascist agenda, even today. Many of the same families who financed the rise of Hitler and Mussolini-- some of who were called out by Senator Harry Truman as outright traitors for trading with Germany and sabotaging U.S. war efforts-- have provided the money for the teabagger astroturf movement and have backed fascist governors, particularly in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan, each of which was a hotbed of pro-Nazi activity in the 1930s. Today we have the Koch's funding their own homegrown fascist movements here in America. As Yeadon reminds us, "As of yet, no one has exposed, in a comprehensive manner, the connections between the 1930's fascists and today's American right wing. Many of the events of the decade have been quietly swept under the rug, such as the plot against Roosevelt. The press downplayed the assassination attempt at the time and even today, most people are still unaware of it... The Nazis found willing accompanists in the media, the halls of Congress, as well as corporate boardrooms."

There are numerous parallels between the fascist groups of the 1930s and the far right groups of today, they are as striking as they are disturbing, and should stand as a vanguard, warning of the hidden agenda of right wing elements in this country. Among the many common elements between yesterday's fascists and today's far right groups are the intense hatred of minorities and unions, isolationism, destructive division, nationalism and religion.

Only the little seditionist and traitors have been rounded up by the FBI. The real Nazi Fifth Column in America remains immune. And yet there is evidence that those in both countries who place profits above patriotism-- and fascism is based entirely on profits although all of its propaganda speaks of patriotism-- have conspired to make America part of the Nazi Big Business system. Thurman Arnold, assistant district attorney of the United States, his assistant, Norman Littell, and several congressional investigations, have produced incontrovertible evidence that some of our biggest monopolies entered into secret agreements with the Nazi cartels and divided the world among them. Most notorious of all was Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly which is largely responsible for America not having sufficient aluminum with which to build airplanes before and after Pearl Harbor, while Germany had an unlimited supply. Of the Aluminum Corporation sabotage, and that of other leading companies, the press said very little, but several books have now been written out of the official record.

It is this unbridled corporatism that is the very heart of fascism. ... Here we have the heart of the problem of the next century: corporate power. Corporations have acquired too much power. They have become so powerful they can openly flaunt our labor laws, our environmental laws and even sell materials for weapons of mass destruction without fear. The problem has become so widespread, and corporations have become so powerful, that society now serves the corporations rather than corporations serving society.

In short, as we progress into the new century, the right wing issues at the forefront of today's political scene are nothing more than recycled pro-fascist issues of the 30s. It is an agenda of corporate rule. The GATS treaty currently being negotiated and the now-dead Multi-Lateral Investment Agreement, are nothing more than attempts to go global with fascist corporatism.

...There is no better place to begin studying the fascism of the 1930s than to start with the one element that was common to all of these fascist groups, and at the heart of their ideology. Fortunately, such an element exists simply it was the visceral hatred of Roosevelt and liberalism by the native fascist. ... There is no better event to begin with than the attempted coup d'état against Roosevelt financed by Irénée du Pont along with the Morgans and a few other wealthy industrialists of the time. Others involved with the plot were Robert Clark, heir to the Singer Sewing machine corporation, Grayson Murphy, Director of Goodyear, and the Pew family of Sun Oil. During the war, all three of these corporations were involved in aiding of the Nazi empire. Singer's plant located on the east side of the Elba was used to manufacture machine guns. Today, Singer has given up the sewing machine business and is now engaged in defense contracting.

Central to the plot were two groups: the American Legion and the Liberty League. The American Legion was formed and financed by the Morgans and Murphy in 1919 to be used primary to break strikes. Several high-ranking officials from the American Legion were associated with the plot: William Doyle, a former state commander of the American Legion and Gerald MacGuire, a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion.

Irénée, the power behind the du Pont throne at the time, held a controlling interest in General Motors. He was an avid fascist and supporter of Hitler, tracking Hitler's career closely from the 1920s. On September 7, 1926, du Pont gave a speech before the American Chemical Society, in which he advocated the creation of a race of supermen. Injecting special drugs into them during childhood would create these supermen. Not every child would receive such injections; du Pont insisted that only those of pure blood would get the injections.

Throughout the 1930s, the du Ponts invested heavily in Hitler's Germany through their corporate empire. General Motors under the control of the du Pont family had invested thirty million dollars alone into I.G. Farben. Wendell Swint, du Pont's foreign relation's director knew that I.G. and Krupp had arranged to contribute one half of a percent of its payroll to the Nazi party. Swint testified before the 1934 Munitions Hearings that du Pont was fully aware that it was financing the Nazis through the Opal division of General Motors. Even more telling is the amount of financial backing the du Ponts provided pro-Hitler groups in the United States. Starting in 1933, du Pont provided financing for the American Liberty Lobby, Clark's Crusaders (who claimed 1,200,000 members) and the Liberty League.

The press, largely owned by the plotters and other pro-fascist elements, covered the whole thing up (including the NY Times). The Democrats didn't move in for the kill for a variety of reasons, one of which is that FDR had the same kind of "Blue Dog" problem we do today. Yeadon points out that "At least two prominent Democrats who had been presidential candidates had been involved: John Davis, who now was a lawyer for the Morgans, and Al Smith, now a crony of the du Ponts." They made it easier for the plotters and the Republicans, who were actively collaborating with Hitler, to walk away unscathed. Collaborating? You bet. "With its pro-business agenda, and the fascist views of the leaders of corporate America, the Republican Party soon became laden with fascists... [A]s early as 1934, the Republican Party was collaborating with Nazis and pro-fascist groups at a high level... Just as the backers of Hitler's were rich industrialists, so were the backers of fascism in the United States. Corporate America willingly entered into cartel agreements, which, in effect, granted them a monopoly. A second aspect of fascism that appealed to big business was its extreme anti-unionism. Professor Gaetano Salvemini of Harvard was quoted in the undergraduate daily, that a new fascism threatened America, the fascism of corporate business enterprise in this country. He also believed that 100% of American big business was in sympathy with fascism. At the very least support, for fascism was widespread among industrialists in this country, as the following quote from the New York Times from the Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd shows:

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. On (the ship) a fellow passenger, who is a prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies.

Certain American industrialist had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.

Propagandists for the fascist groups try to dismiss the fascist scare. We should be aware of the symptoms. When industrialists ignore laws designed for social and economic progress they will seek recourse to a fascist state when the institutions of our government compel them to comply with the provisions."

The collaboration between the Republican Party and the Nazis was an ongoing effort throughout the 1930s. However, it would not reach epidemic proportions until the 1940 election. With the European continent already embroiled in war, and President Roosevelt espousing pro-British views, the Nazis were desperate to keep the United States out of the war. In a bizarre plot full of intrigue involving Texas oilman William Rhodes Davis, labor leader John L. Lewis, and Mexico, Nazis provided extensive funding to the Republican Party for the 1940 election... [A] major proportion ranging from 15% to over 33% of the Republican campaign funds in 1940 came directly from the Nazis. Considering the fact the major industrialists were active supporters of the Nazis and large donors to the Republican Party, well over 50% of the Republican campaign funding in 1940 came either directly from Nazis in Berlin or those within the United States. ... With the Battle of the Bulge raging in Europe the Republican candidate, Dewey lashed out against Roosevelt, that his call for unconditional surrender was prolonging the war and costing American lives.

...Wall Street and corporate America built Hitler's war machine. Once war was ominous and the Roosevelt administration started to build up American defense corporate America went on strike. Many of the deals arranged between corporate America and the Nazis, border on the line of treason.

...During WWI, the auto industry came close to committing treason. Throughout 1917, the auto companies refused to cut production by 25% in the second half of the year, thereby denying the defense industry much needed production space and a substantial amount of iron and coal that would have been better used for defense production. In the 1941, General Motors announced it would produce no new models until 1943. General Motors promptly broke that pledge and produced new models in 1942.

On March 26, 1942, Senator Truman accused Standard Oil of treason. Standard had delivered the new tetraethyl lead gas additive to both Germany and Japan. Standard was the major supplier of oil to both the Nazis and Japan. In his appearance before the Senate committee, Farish, the president of Standard, was asked if Standard had delivered the oil to Japan that made the attack on Pearl Harbor possible. He answered that Standard Oil was an international company. Standard’s buffed its image with an advertising campaign that promoted the virtues of Standard products, and was helped along by the willingness of the major papers.

Unless you never watch any TV at all, you haven't missed the flood of ads from Big Energy buffing their public images with lies about how great they are. They run all day and all night. We'll save the specifics for another post of how Germany under Hitler bought dozens of Republican congressmen and senators. Just let me leave you with one more little vignette about crime and punishment. No one was ever punished for any of this, although General Electric, which cooperated with the Nazis in holding back U.S. airplane manufacturing and other war production, did face a trial. They were even found guilty in January of 1947.

Under indictment were GE Vice President Zay Jeffries, President W.G. Robbins of the Carboloy Co., and Walter M. Stearns, former GE trade manager and Gustav Krupp. Krupp was not present as he was  being held in Germany for war crimes. Ironically during the trial Jeffries accused union leaders as having "un-American objectives" and denounced high wages.

Throughout the trial General Electric's lawyers fought bitterly against the introduction of captured Nazi documents. In one such document Walter Stearns was quoted as telling the Germans that while GE intended to fix prices, "this must never be expressed in the contract itself or in any correspondence which might come into the files of GE." Other documents quoted Jefferies threatening the president of a competitor: "We’ll either buy you out or break you." The jury found that General Electric, its subsidiaries, and company officials were guilty on five counts of criminal conspiracy. Ironically, no further charges-- such as sedition or hindering the war effort were leveled against the conspirators. Despite pleads from the Department of Justice for heavy sentences; Judge John C. Knox handed down only minor fines. Stearns and Jeffries were fined $2,500 each and Robbins $1,000. GE and Carboloy were fined $20,000 each and International General Electric only $10,000.

Ready For Another Goldman Sachs Wrist Slap?

J.P. Morgan was never tried for treason... so no one remembers what he did-- and people still do it

I've been reading Glen Yeadon's book, Nazi Hydra in America and everyday I come across more and more iconic American names complicit in the rise of fascism, certainly in Italy, Spain and Germany but also in attempts to bring fascism to America in the 1920s and '30s-- right up to and including an attempted coup d'etat against President Roosevelt by Wall Street and Big Business titans with names like duPont, Rockefeller, Bush, Mellon and Morgan.

Yeadon quotes Newsweek here:

The fresh look at wartime culpability may extend to other American icons. In 1940 one of the nation's most prestigious law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, joined together with the Wallenberg family of Sweden--famed for producing Raoul, a Holocaust martyr who saved Jews in Budapest--to represent Nazi German interests, says Abe Weissbrodt, a former Treasury Department lawyer who prosecuted the case in 1946. The scam? Sullivan & Cromwell drafted a voting trust agreement making the Wallenbergs' Enskilda Bank a dummy owner of the U.S. subsidiary of Bosch, a German engine-parts maker, so the Nazis could retain control. The papers were drawn up by John Foster Dulles, a Germanophile who later became secretary of State and whose name today graces Washington's international airport. (The scheme worked during the war, but in 1948 Bosch was finally auctioned to a U.S. buyer.) The record is compelling in terms of warranting questions about Dulles's motives and his own allegiances," says historian Masurovsky. "One might say about him what Treasury said about Chase and J.P. Morgan, that they had allegiance to their own corporate interests and not to their country."

None of the worst culprits were ever punished. In fact, they or their progeny went on to attain the highest levels in our society, mostly still working towards fascism. Never punished... it just keeps me awake at night. We never seem to punish the rich and powerful no matter how heinous their crimes against society. So it was with an "I'm believe it when I see it" attitude that I took in Wednesday's announcement by Carl Levin (D-MI) that one of the decades-long institutional grand criminals of American life, Goldman Sachs might be in for a rough time. I'm not sure if Senator Levin is being duplicitous or naive... we'll see. Tom Braithwaite covered it for the Financial Times.

Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate investigative subcommittee, said there was “real hope” law enforcement authorities would act on his panel’s report accusing Goldman Sachs of misleading investors and Congress.

The Senate report criticised rating agencies, regulators and other banks. But Goldman has drawn particular focus. Eric Holder, attorney-general, said this month the justice department was looking at the report “that deals with Goldman."

The possibility of more legal and regulatory issues at the bank has weighed on its stock in recent weeks. Dick Bove, analyst at Rochdale Securities, wrote last week that “pressure on the justice department to bring a criminal lawsuit against Goldman [appeared to be] building to a high pitch."

Mr Levin added to that in an interview with the Financial Times on the Senate report, which examined Wall Street practices in the run-up to the crisis. The senator was confident officials were taking it seriously. “There’s real hope here that there’s going to be a good scrub by a number of law enforcement entities, so I am not pessimistic about this.”

The senator said Goldman’s payment of $550m to settle fraud allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the marketing of one structured debt product did not preclude other allegations. He said Goldman executives misled his committee but suggested they might have stopped short of lies with “wiggle words."

Matt Taibbi has been prone to use stronger terms than "wiggle words" in describing the banksters in his powerful, muckraking Rolling Stone series. This week he held open the possibility that the hammer could possibly be coming down-- and he's neither duplicitous nor naive. His hope: New York state's crusading and brilliant new Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman (who we first met here at DWT early in 2008 when he was a state senator in upper Manhattan. Taibbi posits that Schneiderman's investigation "looks like it might be the first for-real attempt at a prosecution of the systemic corruption that led to the financial crisis," targeting the banks’ mortgage securitization process during the bubble years and focuses on Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs.

This investigation has the potential to be a Mother of All Nightmares situation for the banks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the decision to go after the securitization process is a total prosecutorial bullseye. This is the ugly heart of the wide-scale fraud scheme of the bubble era. Again, the business model during this time was a giant bait-and-switch scam. Sleazy lenders like Countrywide and New Century first created huge masses of bad loans, committing every conceivable kind of fraud to get people into loans (from doctoring income statements with white-out to phonying FICO scores to engineering fake appraisals). They then moved the bad loans quickly to the big banks, which pooled them and chopped them up (this is the “securitization” process), sprinkled hocus-pocus math on them, and them sold them to suckers around the world as AAA-rated securities.

The questions Schneiderman will seek to answer are these: did the banks securitize loans they knew were fraudulent, throwing the rotten mortgages into the stew before serving them to customers? Did they also commit insurance fraud by duping the bond insurers (known as “monoline” insurers) into thinking the mortgages were not as risky as they really were? And did they participate in the fraud scheme on a more basic level by lending huge amounts of money to the Countrywides of the world, knowing that they in turn would immediately use that money to create the bad loans? In other words, did the banks finance the fraud in addition to brokering it?

The reason this is such a potentially deadly investigation for the banks is that they seemed to be so close to getting away scot free. There is another investigation into the banks’ mortgage abuses by the states’ Attorneys General, led by Iowa AG Tom Miller, that was rumored to be headed toward a settlement, despite the fact that nothing like a complete investigation has been done. The expectation for some time has been that the banks would eventually have to pay a significant, but eminently survivable, settlement for abuses during the bubble era. Although the Miller probe was focused on practices like robo-signing and other such documentation abuses, it could theoretically have covered securitization as well.

But if the AGs were to sign off on a friendly global settlement for mortgage abuses prematurely, it would be like a DA offering a millionaire murderer a 2-year plea bargain before the cops even had a chance to interview all the eyewitnesses. It would be a blatantly political arrangement. Such a desire to get some kind of deal done and sweep the mortgage mess under the rug once and for all seems almost universal among high-ranking politicians, and particularly in the Obama administration, which has acted throughout like it wants more than anything to simply get all of this over with and put in the past.

Schneiderman’s investigation throws a monkey wrench into all of this. The banks cannot enter into a settlement with 49 states. They need all 50 at the table. But if Schneiderman breaks ranks and goes off on an end-run investigation that plunges right into the rotten core of the fraud era, then the whole pipe dream of an easy settlement vanishes in an instant. This is particularly true since Schneiderman is the most important AG, being from the state of New York, where most of the crime was probably committed.

The amount of money investors lost in this fraud scheme is probably gigantic. The ill-gotten money the banks made off that same fraud is probably similarly huge. And the damage to society, in the form of mass foreclosures and other losses, is incalculable. If the banks end up being found liable for all of these offenses, they could face truly crippling fines and penalties. This goes far beyond the question of whether one bank like Goldman defrauded a client or two or lied to investigators. This probe could be asking whether the banks’ entire revenue model during the crisis years was based on fraud.

Taibbi says Schneiderman is serious. He always has been in the past. I might caution that the banksters have paid politicians-- on both sides of the aisle-- direct bribes of $1,515,876,043 since 1990 (protection money) and have also been active in lobbying politicians as well. Take a look and how they have corrupted our entire political system:

All those billions are perfectly legal efforts by the finance sector to influence legislators

It's Not About Austerity-- It's About Democracy vs Fascism (Again)

First we hear from Arianna Huffington

America will be even easier prey.

Yesterday we looked at a quote from Glen Yeadon's book on fascism, Nazi Hydra in America. Since then, I haven't been able to get it out of my head, especially with all the turmoil in Greece being played up on TV here in Asia in a way I'm sure is much bigger than it is in the U.S. First the passage that's been haunting me:

Although the Allied forces were victorious on the battlefields of Europe and the South Pacific, tragically, the war against fascism was lost on the home front. In the 1946 election, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress. True to their pro-big business agenda and their past support of fascists over 200 anti-union bills would flood Congress. The rehabilitated Fred Hartley, who had supported Japan and Germany up until the moment Pearl Harbor was bombed, would co-author the anti-union Taft-Hartley act. The fascist group Christian America would successfully lobby several Southern and Midwestern states to pass anti-union right to work laws. One could argue that such measures were not full-blown fascism but that is the danger of creeping fascism. Such steps as the anti-union measures were only the first steps on a slippery slope towards fascism. However, anytime the government enacts a law placing the rights of corporations or the elite ahead of the people it is an act of fascism or more properly another step towards fascism.

Fascism is an inherent problem of any economy based on capitalism. It's insidious as corporations grow and become more powerful, more and more laws are passed favoring large corporations and the rights of the people are damned. Fascism has never appeared first in its full-blown totalitarian state. It took Hitler six years to consolidate his power into a fully fascist state. Fascism always assumes power in gradual steps. It destroys our rights one at a time until suddenly it blossoms into full-blown fascism, a totalitarian society controlled by the corporate elite.

Yesterday, just back from a visit to her birthplace, Arianna Huffington explained, with great perception and elegance, and without ever using the no-no words "Nazi" or even "fascist," what's at stake in Greece and why it's also at stake in Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas, Michigan... and, ultimately, throughout the U.S. Yeadon's warning about how we snatched defeat from the jaws of the hard-won victories against Germany, Italy and Japan is something we all have to take into account as the same fascist families who financed the Nazis and escaped from justice after World War II are making their move again... although this time we have no FDR, no Churchill, no Stalin and virtually no union movement or even a viable workers' party to oppose them. (We have Twitter.)

Arianna on Greece:

Can a truly democratic movement break the stranglehold of corrupt elites and powerful anti-democratic institutional forces that have come to characterize not just the politics of Greece, but most Western democracies, including our own? Greece is only an extreme example of an unfolding seismic social shift that is challenging democracies the world over.

What happens in Greece might very well tell us whether democracy will recover from the crisis of legitimacy exacerbated by the financial crisis or whether it will shrink-- undermined by the very forces that brought on the crisis in the first place.

It's way too early to tell whether the forces of democracy will prevail, but I came away extraordinarily moved and heartened by the courage, passion, engagement and dedication I witnessed during a trip in which three different perspectives converged.

First and foremost, there was The Square.

The happenings in Cairo's Tahrir Square led the news for weeks earlier this year, but from what we are being shown back in America, you wouldn't know that there's a remarkably similar scene unfolding in Athens. Not only are the physical setting, the demographics of the participants, and the way they're being organized similar to Tahrir Square, but so are the demands being made. In Athens, the place of the moment attracting thousands of people a day is Syntagma Square, situated directly across from the Greek parliament.

The movement has become a permanent encampment in Syntagma, with a growing number of people taking up residence in the square, vowing not to leave until their demands are met. Of course, the young are well-represented there-- no surprise when unemployment among Greek youth runs as high as 40 percent-- but I was struck by the wide range of participants.

Young, old, activists, pensioners, unemployed, self-employed, they're all there, every day and every night. As you'd expect, various political parties and organized groups-- some resorting to violence-- are trying to co-opt the square. Indeed, on Tuesday, a demonstration of 20,000 protesters that started peacefully disintegrated when a group of mostly young people began hurling stones at the police.

As has recently been the case around the world, the protests are being fueled by social media. Given that the Greeks have always been all about connection, expansiveness and intimacy, it's no surprise that social media have combined with the Greek personality to create a perfect storm of expression, engagement and democracy. According to MRB Hellas, from 2008 to 2010, the number of Greeks using social networks grew by 350 percent. Currently, almost 92 percent have at least one social media account, making it much easier for protests to be coordinated via a Facebook page-- "Indignants at Syntagma" (the name taken from the Spanish protest, "los indignados")-- which more than 152,000 people have "liked."

...Everywhere I went I was stunned by the level of engagement-- it's not just those physically at the square who are all in. The sense I came away with was that they're all all in. Waiters, taxi drivers, storekeepers, salespeople, anybody sitting next to you at dinner -- they're all talking about the same thing.

"The experience of standing daily and confronting the parliament opposite has changed the politics of Greece for good and made the elites worried for the first time," writes Douzinas. "Their common demand is that the corrupt political elites who have ruled the country for some 30 years and brought it to the edge of collapse should go."

What happens in Greece is not so different from what has been happening in America: a few profit, but when the chickens come home to roost, the pain is not equally distributed-- and what happened is suddenly everybody's fault.

So, yes, there's a lot of anger and resentment in the square-- most of it very justified-- but there's also an incredible amount of hope, and, considering how hard things are for millions of people in Greece, an incredible lack of cynicism. This isn't just an "anti" protest -- there's a lot of "pro" in it, as well. "What I like about this square is that people discuss things, they express themselves without fear," said 18-year-old student Stavroula Koloverou. "We want the system to change and we want all traditional politicians out. We want young people suffering in this system who still have dreams to take over."

Still have dreams-- it's a testament to the Greek character when so much of what they're living through is a nightmare.

"They don't just represent the Greek people, they are the people," said Peter Bratsis, a lecturer in political theory at the UK's University of Salford. "It's beyond the control of the political parties and this is something different."

The second perspective I got on my trip came during dinner with the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou. Even those who don't follow Greek politics will likely recognize his name. That's because, as the Financial Times' Tony Barber explains, Papandreou is a member of the "politikos kosmos," the "entrenched semi-hereditary political caste that has ruled and misruled Greece for as long as anyone can remember." Not only was his father Andreas prime minister for two terms, his grandfather held the position for three terms.

And the task confronting the son/grandson is one worthy of the great Greek dramatists. As Barber writes, Papandreou must now rescue his country by "dismantling the system of gluttonous patronage and parasitism on the state that his father Andreas constructed." So far it's been a rocky road. Assuming office in the middle of the crisis, in 2009, Papandreou's tenure has been a precarious balancing act of trying to satisfy the draconian demands of the EU while dealing with the increasing unrest and economic misery of his people. The week before I met him, he'd just narrowly survived a vote of no confidence.

We met for dinner at Kastelorizo, a restaurant in Kifissia, a suburb of Athens where the prime minister lives and where, as it happens, I was born. We were joined by his wife, Ada, whom he met more than 20 years ago when he was campaigning in Patras in the Peloponnese, where she was born. Eating fresh fish followed by fresh fruit, we talked about the country's deep-seated problems, but also about all the incredible possibilities. The saying "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" has never been more true than it is in today's Greece. The decay has been allowed to fester for so long, nothing short of a major crisis could have precipitated the widespread demands for reform.

And though many of the demonstrators camped out at Syntagma are clearly directing their frustrations toward his office, the prime minister spoke about them with understanding and a clear awareness not only of their power and authenticity, but also their potential. Can he harness their energy, idealism, ingenuity and passion?

"What they say is correct, we have to change," he told me. "Corruption is everywhere-- and even when we change our laws you cannot eradicate corruption overnight." He is, he said, trying to make the government more transparent by posting every bill online before it gets voted on by parliament. He's also posting job listings. "We posted 87 openings," he told me, "and received 28,000 applications, which created its own problems in the way we handled the avalanche."

But the big problem is that, as he told me, "Greece needs a new narrative." Whether he can provide that narrative is unclear, but this is clearly a man who chafes at the portrayal of his people that dominates the European media. "There is so much good being done, so much creativity and innovation, that are not getting any attention," he said, "while everyone is focusing just on what's dysfunctional."

He went on to talk about a woman who started a snail farm in Milatos that now exports snails around the world. He also told me about a farmer growing olive oil in Kritsa in Crete who branded it Lambda and now sells it at Harrods. "We have such an over-abundance of resources," he said.

The question he's facing is whether any politician remotely associated with the old guard-- however well-intentioned-- can be the one to tap into these resources and build on what has been awakened. Yes, Greece is corrupt, and the problems exist at all levels. It's a place where playing by the rules came to be seen as for suckers only, creating a system of clientelism, in which attaching yourself to a powerful individual or political machine for income was seen as the smart thing to do.

But now people are rushing, quite literally, to reengage in civic life. They want to start fresh and awaken the public good. They want a real democracy again. And my daily interactions with Greeks during my visit were a reminder of the incredible talents and abilities and resources that are being wasted.

Nevertheless, the media's focus is on the shrunken and pinched debate about austerity. Instead of a debate about how to tap into the human and natural resources Greece teems with, all we hear is about how deeply services should be cut. Well, the Greeks don't do pinched well. They're an expansive lot, and if any people can pry open this dangerously narrow debate with their humanity, it's the Greeks. Because this isn't just a policy debate-- it's a debate about what the big outlines of what we call democracy are going to be for the next century. The forces of the status quo would have you believe austerity is the answer-- that it's the answer in Greece, the answer in Spain, the answer in the UK and the answer in the U.S. But it's also clear that it's not just the Greeks who want something more out of civic life than they're currently getting.

In fact, austerity is not the answer even in the purely economic debate. As the Guardian's Michael Burke shows, the problem Greece is facing isn't due to too much spending. "Falling taxation revenues are the problem," he writes, "as the cuts themselves have sent the economy into a tailspin." He also explodes another Greek myth (the non-ancient kind) prevalent in Europe right now-- that the Greeks are lazy, and that's what brought their problems on. As he notes, Greeks work the second-longest weekly hours of any workers in Europe and have the highest level of weekend hours worked.

It's worth reading Arianna's entire post, and, although she doesn't mention Scott Walker or Rick Scott, Rick Snyder, Rick Perry or John Kasich, her very last sentence is that the Greeks' struggle-- the struggle to reclaim democracy-- is our struggle too. And we're fighting the same foes they are, even if there is no Hitler or Mussolini this time... just a bunch of avaricious Kochs and their ilk and the political whores willing to do their bidding, whether a Chris Christie, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Rahm Emanuel. Ever go to shooting practice? I do. I donate to anti-fascist progressives as well. I think we still have a chance to stop them... without violence and bloodshed. [Maybe I'm a dreamer.]

I noticed that this post is getting awfully long. But we can't leave out the speech Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made on the Senate floor Monday. Notice the "I" after his name; it isn't a "D." We'll pick up with that in a post at 10am PT.

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Remembering The Patriot Act

bipartisan

I started reading Nazi Hydra In America by Glen Yeadon and John Hawkins the other day and the very first page of the intro of the 700-plus page book went right at Bush and his penchant for fascism and dual and visceral disdain for civil liberties and the Constitution. Yeadon and Hawkins get right into the Patriot Act, the "ill-named" Patriot Act, which, they emphasize, "passed without a single congressman reading the bill."

[T]he printing of the bill had been deliberately delayed by the Bush administration to ensure passage. Written largely by Attorney General John Ashcroft, it was a full-scale assault on our rights and freedoms. This act eliminated our rights to unwarranted searches, the right to legal counsel, the right to a trial. It greatly expanded the government's ability to spy on citizens without a warrant.

Many people believed-- or at least entertained HOPE, a word that will soon come into play-- that Bush was an anomaly and a "normal" president would follow and get rid of this assault. CHANGE and HOPE elected Barack Obama in 2008. It's hard to imagine what could reelect him next year other than fear of something even worse than Bush as the alternative.

Obama was an Illinois state senator on October 25, 2001, the day the Senate took up the bill, so he didn't have to vote on it. Conservative Democrat Mary Landrieu was away from the Senate that day so she didn't vote. 98 other senators voted YEA, including then-Senator Joe Biden, and liberal stalwarts Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Patrick Leahy, Chuck Schumer... and Paul Wellstone. as well as less liberal Democrats, from Hillary Clinton and Blanche Lincoln to Ben Nelson and John Breaux and every single Republican, obviously. "Mr. Constitution," Robert Byrd, voted for it as well. One senator voted NAY: Russ Feingold, who was recently defeated by delusional Wisconsin voters, brain-washed by millions of dollars worth of advertising financed by the Koch Brothers and China. Wisconsin went from being able to boast having the Giant of The Senate to being represented by a clueless backbencher pip-squeak, nervous all the highly unpopular commotion being made by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Congressman Paul Ryan could have a negative impact on his cush new life in the country's most exclusive club.

The day before the Senate gave Bush the thumbs up to make a mockery of the Constitution and basically rule as a tyrant, the House had already passed the bill 357-77. Three Republican constitutionalists-- of whom only one, Ron Paul, is still in Congress-- joined Bernie Sanders, then an Independent congressman from Vermont and 62 Democrats in opposition. Aside from Paul, the only Members of Congress still serving who voted against the Patriot Act were

Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH), currently in the Senate
Mike Capuano (D-MA)
John Conyers (D-MI)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
Diana DeGette (D-CO)
John Dingell (D-MI)
Sam Farr (D-CA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Barney Frank (D-MA)
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Mike Honda (D-CA)
Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Jim McGovern (D-MA)
George Miller (D-CA)
Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
John Olver (D-MA)
Ed Pastor (D-AZ)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Collin Peterson (D-MN)
Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Bobby Rush (D-IL)
Jan Scakowsky (D-IL)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Pete Stark (D-CA)
Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
John Tierney (D-MA)
Mark Udall (D-CO), currently in the Senate
Tom Udall (D-NM), currently in the Senate
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Mel Watt (D-NC)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
David Wu (D-OR)

Among the Democrats joining the GOP to vote for the act were Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Weiner, Steny Hoyer, now-NJ Senator Bob Menendez, Marcy Kaptur, Henry Waxman, current DCCC-Chair Steve Israel, Charlie Rangel... and other Beltway Democrats we had a right to expect would step up. Needless to say, self-proclaimed strict constructionists like then-Congressmen Jim DeMint, Roy Blunt, David Vitter, Mark Kirk, Johnny Isakson, Richard Burr and Rob Portman, now Tea Party string puller Dick Armey, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Darrell Issa, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and wannabe senators Denny Rehberg and Jeff Flake were as happy to shred the Constitution then as they always are.

Nice to know who's who in these matters after the passions of the moment die down a little.

Right Wing Messaging Works Well Because... Well, They Own The Media

Yesterday Rolling Stone published a spectacular feature by Tim Dickinson, How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory. "Ailes runs the most profitable-- and therefore least accountable – head of the News Corp. hydra," he writes. "Fox News reaped an estimated profit of $816 million last year-- nearly a fifth of Murdoch’s global haul. The cable channel’s earnings rivaled those of News Corp.’s entire film division, which includes 20th Century Fox, and helped offset a slump at Murdoch’s beloved newspapers unit, which took a $3 billion write-down after acquiring the Wall Street Journal. With its bare-bones news-gathering operation-- Fox News has one-third the staff and 30 fewer bureaus than CNN-- Ailes generates profit margins above 50 percent... Fox News now reaches 100 million households, attracting more viewers than all other cable-news outlets combined, and Ailes aims for his network to “throw off a billion in profits.” Like right-wing media moguls before him, he sells fear-- anger, bombast, a virulent paranoid streak, unending appeals to white resentment... And Americans have been buying it.

One of the primary components of right-wing dominance in American politics is their almost total control of the mass media-- even including the irony of the absurd phrase "the liberal media." In fact, the media is completely corporate and overwhelmingly right-wing. Although many people trace that back the deregulatory catastrophe of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (gutting the Communications Act of 1934 and empowering Australian fascist Rupert Murdoch), this has been a major problem for progressives since American oligarchs and fascists made a conscious decision to buy up the media after the success of the muckrakers. As Glen Yeadon points out in The Nazi Hydra in America, American corporate leaders-- a fabulously wealthy elite commonly knows as the robber barons whose practices were universally detested by the public and subject to unwanted scrutiny and regulation by reform-minded government-- saw themselves as the victims of a political atmosphere created by the muckrakers. "Having experienced first hand the power of the press," writes Yeadon, "corporate America employed the media in a full scale assault to regain its stature. It used the three most successful propaganda method ever devised: patriotism, religion and anti-communism." But first it had to get control of the media. On Feb. 9, 1917 Texas Democrat, Rep. Oscar Callaway, inserted a statement into the Congressional Record that unmasks the machinations of the robber barons' play for control of the media:

“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, ship building and powder interests and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States.

“These 12 men worked the problems out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."

Revealing? Now let's see if career-long corporate shill Bill Clinton can do for Paul Ryan something like what he did for Rupert Murdoch-- and do America as much damage as he did with NAFTA and the Telecommunications Act. Bill Clinton? What's he got to do with anything? Watch:

The Media Has Always Been And Will Always Be Liberal-- Just Ask Any Republican

It was probably apparent to astute observers since the day Obama was elected that the Republican Party would do their worst in trying to delegitimize him and to even go so far as to punish America for electing him, all in the service of recapturing the government for their never changing fascist agenda. From day one Kyl, the #2 man in the Senate Republican caucus, said they would block his nominees, while Jim DeMint started off the year by talking about "breaking him" and bringing on his "Waterloo." Meanwhile, the GOP's top communications force, Rush Limbaugh, has only gotten more hysterical and more extreme since his "I want him to fail" fit at the beginning of his term. Wednesday we tried to demonstrate how driving up the unemployment rate has been Republican Party policy since Obama became president. Thursday Robert Parry did a brilliant analysis of Republican strategy over at AlterNet. The whole thing is very much worth reading (which is why I provided the link) but below are some takeaways:

Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.

Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.

...Obviously, given the wealth of the American elites, the relative proportion of the propaganda funding is derived more domestically in the United States than it would be in a place like Chile (or some other unfortunate Third World country that has gotten on Washington’s bad side).

But the concept remains the same: Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent’s government, economically and politically; blame if for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power.

Today’s Republicans have fully embraced this concept of political warfare, whereas the Democrats generally have tried to play by the old rules, acquiescing when Republicans are in office with the goal of “making government work,” even if the Republicans are setting the agenda.

Unlike the Democrats and the Left, the Republicans and the Right have prepared themselves for this battle, almost as if they are following a CIA training manual. They have invested tens of billions of dollars in a propaganda infrastructure that operates 24/7, year-round, to spot and exploit missteps by political enemies.

Parry is only just beginning and, again, I urge you to read his entire post. I just want to add that the right-wing control of the media is something they've been perfecting since the ruling elites were stung by the muckrakers in the early 1900s. As we saw last month, the robber barons simply got together at bought enough of the media to control the conventional wisdom from then on. It's worse than ever now. Glen Yeadon has a subchapter in his book, The Nazi Hydra in America called "The Press Sells Out To The Nazis," and while it certainly did, I want to draw on some of his research that emphasizes how the Republicans have used the media to further they far right political agenda (rather than Hitler's, which is well documented by Yeadon). In the 1930s, with only 3 or 4 exceptions "all the large newspaper columnists and radio commentators were right wing reactionaries... The 1930s media was overtly pro-fascist, especially the major chains of newspapers. Hearst admired Mussolini and even paid him to write articles for his upstart United Press wire services. Mussolini was paid $1,750 per article an amount that would be the equivalent of about $17,000 today. The articles were poorly written by Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini's mistress." Hearst tried to get Hitler as well. How different is it today? Do you watch Fox News? Or even Meet The Press?

The situation remains unchanged in the 21st Century. The columnists and the radio mouthpieces are almost fully hard right in their views. ... Today the media is even more consolidated than the media in the 1940s, less than ten corporations control over eighty percent of the airwaves and press. The Republicans have repeated the lie that the media is biased to the left so many times that many people buy into it-- even though the reverse is true. ... In the sixty years that have followed WWII the Republican Party and the far right wing extremists have adopted the philosophy at the heart of fascism, corporate rule. It is the basis for the intense hatred of unions and working people. In the entire eight years of the Reagan administration the minimum wage was not raised once although inflation still raged through the early 80s.

What does the video below have to do with the stuff above? Use your imagination

Whose Side Is Ron Johnson On?

During his campaign for the Senate last year, Wisconsin right-wing extremist and multimillionaire Ron Johnson made it clear his vision of America was made in China. And, as you can see here, after China itself got one of several senators, Johnson promised the people of Wisconsin to put his finances into a blind trust after news broke that he-- with his massive holdings of BP stock in his portfolio-- had been defending the company on the campaign trail. That was a year ago this week. He still hasn't done so. Instead, he gave himself a $10 million bonus check after the campaign, an arrangement that more than covers, quite illegally, the millions of his own money he spent on his campaign.

But Johnson is far from the first U.S. Senator who has put his own financial interests ahead of his constituents-- nor is he the first right-wing fanatic to put another country's interests ahead of the U.S.'s. As I was flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong this morning, I was reading in Glen Yeadon's Nazi Hydra in America about two right-wing Members of Congress, Mississippi Democrat John Rankin, a dedicated KKK sociopath, and Michigan Republican George Dondero, who served the interests of the Nazis even after the U.S. military defeated Germany! Both were rabid anti-Semites.

First a little background from Yeadon, writing about the demise of the country's intelligence service, the OSS, at the hands of the triumphant Republican rightists in the 1946 congressional elections.

In March 1946 while McCormack struggled for funding from congress, the chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee charged that a person with strong Soviet leanings had joined the State Department. McCormack demanded a retraction. Instead, congress cut the entire appropriation for his unit. The pro-fascist faction within the State Department had convinced enough influential congressmen that ex-OSS officers were far to the left and committed to a socialization of America and the redistribution of wealth on a global basis.

By mid 1946, Donovan’s OSS had been completely dismantled. The United States would be without an intelligence service. At first, it was suggested that private enterprise could provide the government with intelligence. A former OSS Deputy Director proposed to Watson of IBM the formation of a private intelligence service. The two men raised the initial venture capital. The venture was in vain as President Truman and congress created the CIA in 1947.

In the short space of a year, the government had dissolved the OSS only to recreate it under a new name. This wasn’t a case of a vacillating government. If President Truman had not signed the executive order dissolving the OSS, congress would simply have eliminated any funding for it as it did to the remnants of it in the State Department.

The disbanding of the OSS had an express purpose. The leftists within the OSS would serve as the sacrificial lambs to atone du Pont’s new feckless goddess on the altar of free enterprise. Those that had served their country gallantly during war and who were dedicated to stomping out the last vestige of fascism would now become victims to the fascists within the United States. The American industrialists who willingly supported Hitler during the war had to be protected... In 1946, the Republicans gained control of both chambers of congress. The stage was now set for a wholesale purging of the government of leftists who were dedicated to wiping out fascism.

... While there were members like Morgenthau in the Truman administration who carried on the fight for justice, the Nazis had powerful friends in the halls of Congress to protect them. One such congressman was John Rankin. Excerpts from his speech to the House of Representatives on November 27, 1947 follows below:

"What is taking place at Nuremberg, Germany, is a disgrace to the United States. Every other country has now washed its hands and withdrawn from this Saturalia of persecution. But a racial minority, two and half years after the war closed, are in Nuremberg not only hanging German soldiers but trying German businessmen in the name of the United States."

Note Rankin used the words racial minority to refer to Jews in the above quote. Rankin’s racism and pro-fascist allegiance was already presented in previous chapters. Rankin was not alone in Congress in opposing the trials. George Dondero, Republican representative from Michigan, was another. Dondero was a former mayor of Royal Oak, Michigan, before being elected to the House. Royal Oak was the home of the pro-Nazi priest Father Coughlin and a hotbed for pro-Nazi groups. Dondero described the trials as a result of Jewish and communist treachery. He singled out ten lawyers from the I.G. Farben case including the leading prosecutor Josiah DuBois whom he called a known left-winger from the Treasury Department who had been a student of the Communist Party. Dondero became something of an art critic in the late 1940s and 1950s, dismissing modern art as communist inspired. He labored to censor the worked of abstract artists.

Also, based in Dondero’s district was Dow Chemical. Dow had several cartel arrangements with I.G. Farben and feared that the trial could lead to exposing its full collaboration with I.G and the Nazis.

Today Dondero has a high school named after him in Royal Oak, Michigan. He's even better known as a critic of modern art than as an agent of fascism; same mentality though. According to Wikipedia he asserted that "Cubism aims to destroy by designed disorder... Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule... Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms" (CR 16 August 1949; 81st Congress 1st Session, Speech in US House of Representatives). In 1952, Dondero went so far as to tell Congress that modern art was, in fact, a conspiracy by Moscow to spread communism in the United States. This speech won him the International Fine Arts Council's Gold Medal of Honor for "dedicated service to American Art." Rankin remained the most outspoken racist and anti-Semitic fanatic in Congress until he was finally defeated by Thomas Abernathy in 1952.

Ron Johnson is just a freshman, but I suspect he will do a lot more harm than either Dondero or Rankin.

Would The CIA Harm Us... American Civilians? Operation Midnight Climax

A few days ago I let loose with a provocative and kind of random tweet based on something I was reading about the post World War II American national security state in Glen Yeadon's book Nazi Hydra In America. I sometimes forget not everyone has read that book. So this little tweet dialogue ensued:


Operation Midnight Climax was part of a CIA mind-control research program after the U.S. started importing hundreds of Nazi "scientists who had been experimenting on human beings in concentration camps. According to Wikipedia, this project "consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York. It was established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.

... News of the story began to leak following a landmark story by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh on illegal CIA domestic surveillance. This report triggered Senate Subcommittee hearings which investigated MKULTRA, and brought Operation Midnight Climax to light.

I found an old report from 1977 in Time, slightly minimizing the magnitude of what the U.S. government was doing. Let's take a look at some of what Yeadon had to say that inspired my little tweet:

Just as the immigration of Nazis and war criminals into the US involved the use of several projects of which Paperclip is the most widely known such is the case of MK-Ultra. There were 149 sub projects under MK-Ultra. The use of drugs for truth serum and for mind control were conducted under a bewildering list of Project or Operations.

...Army documents suggest there is a contingency plan to use BZ [aka, Buzz or Quinuclidinyl benzilate] as a domestic civilian riot control method. STP, PCP and hundreds of other drugs were tested for use in mind control and as incapacitating agents.

Most research involved LSD. The Army tested LSD on approximately 1,500 military personnel in the mid-1960s. Soldiers were not the only guinea pigs used by the CIA. The list of expendables: war prisoners, prostitutes, sexual psychopaths, prison inmates, certain war objectors, mentally retarded people, the elderly, terminally ill patients, schizophrenics, drug addicts, foreigners, and, of course, any other man, woman or child who fit the need.

...Besides being illegal, such testing [Operation Midnight Climax] without subjects' informed consent is a violation of the Nuremberg code, a set of ethical principles regarding experiments with human subjects and other medical research, which guided the Nuremberg Tribunal.

No idea if the Brits recently used-- or even have-- any of these mind control drugs. No doubt a pissed off right-wing prime minister-- who had to interrupt his Tuscan vacation and hurry home-- wouldn't hesitate for a moment to use them. And now he isn't hesitating to kick arrested suspects' families out of their homes. His coalition partners, the Liberal-Democrats are starting to get a little nervous that they're hooked up with an increasingly dangerous sociopath and that their party could well be headed for extinction. The party's business secretary, looking to the underlying causes of the anti-Austerity riots that shook Britain last week, wants to impose a wealth, or mansion, tax, in the form of a capital gains tax, on properties valued at over £1 million. Their Conservative partners, like the Republicans here, will never go for it. In fact they are committed to lowering taxes on the rich which ramping up the Austerity regime that is convulsing the country. Does this sound familiar?

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, [Chancellor of the Exchequer George] Osborne said there was "not much point" in having a tax that raised scant funds but that served to drive businesses out of Britain.

Osborne said: "I've said with the 50p rate I don't see that as a lasting tax rate for Britain because it's very uncompetitive internationally, and people frankly can move. What is it actually raising? It's only been in operation for a year, this tax, put in place by the last government."

Another Lib-Dem MP, Simon Hughes, who represents a district in South London, Old Southwark, hit hard by rioting last week, penned a column for The Guardian Sunday, Profits must no longer go to the few at the top. It probably wasn't very well-received by anyone at or near the top, particularly not David Cameron. Hughes called for "a fundamental shift in the politics of the last 30 Conservative and Labour years which have sacrificed people's jobs and security in the name of efficiency, and then seen the profits go only to the few at the top."

We must now focus on the redistribution of wealth. But this will not succeed by means of greater hand-outs. Financial benefits must seek to engage people positively. The redistribution of hope and opportunity means the redistribution as well as the creation of work. Co-operative and mutual businesses and social enterprise should be prioritised. The private sector, like the public sector, should not be allowed to get away with obscene pay ratios and bonuses. All employers should be required to consider how they can increase employment and training, by themselves or with others.

Where communities are unable to provide work the government must be prepared to intervene.

A responsible economy is necessary for a responsible society. Building local, regional and national economies which provide the opportunity for all to participate in for fair reward will build much stronger communities. This will counter the appeal of the gangs and the get-rich-quick merchants. Other people and activity must now capture the energies and abilities of a generation that has greater potential than any we have had before.

The Austerity the Republicans are demanding-- and to which Obama seems to be giving in to without any fight at all-- is what's infecting Britain and Greece and dozens of other countries on the verge of explosions. I just don't want to see anyone get hurt with all those experimental drugs.