Tribes upset over wind turbines ~Mashpee, Mass.

http://tinyurl.com/yhsxf6h

Tribes upset over wind turbines

Jay Lindsay, Associated Press

Sunday, November 8, 2009

(11-08) 04:00 PST Mashpee, Mass. --

The sun rises over Nantucket Sound as seen from Mashpee, Mass. Local tribes object to the proposed construction of wind turbines that would obscure the view.

Photo: Julia Cumes / AP

From a blustery perch over a Cape Cod beach, Chuckie Green gestures toward a stretch of horizon where he says construction of the nation's first offshore wind farm would destroy his Indian tribe's religion.

The Wampanoag - the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and known as "The People of the First Light" - practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist once 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from shore in Nantucket Sound, visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

Tribal rituals, including dancing and chanting, take place at secret sacred sites around the sound at various times, such as the summer and winter solstices and when an elder passes.

The Wampanoag fight to preserve their ceremonies has become the latest obstacle - some say delay tactic - for a pioneering wind energy project that seemed at the cusp of final approval.

"We, the Wampanoag people, who opened our arms and allowed people to come here for religious freedoms, are now being threatened with our religion being taken away for the profits of one single group of investors," Green said.

The Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoag claim Nantucket Sound is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. The tribes say the designation, which would come with new regulations for activity on the sound, is needed to preserve not only their pristine views but ancestors' remains buried on Horseshoe Shoal, where the turbines would be built.

Cape Wind supporters say the tribes' claim for a National Register listing for the sound is baseless and was sprung late, in league with the project's most vociferous opponents, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

"I think this is clearly a tactic for delay, for delay's sake," said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind. "I think it's fair to say, looking at the past eight years, that opponents to Cape Wind have tried every conceivable strategy to slow down or stop the project."

Green bristles at the notion that the tribes, prodded by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, are jumping in late just to gum up the works. Green and Audra Parker, the alliance's executive director, said the alliance supports the Wampanoags' claim, but didn't engineer it.

Cape Wind, proposed in 2001 and expected to cost $1 billion, aims to provide up to 75 percent of Cape Cod's power. Other offshore wind farm proposals are in earlier stages of development in several states, including Rhode Island, Delaware and Texas.

Cape Wind opponents say it would be a hazard to aviation, harm the environment - including fish and bird life - and mar historic vistas. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy, whose family compound would be in view of the project, fought the project until his death, saying it was a triumph of special interests over state interests.

A major decision on the Wampanoag claim is due within two weeks.

The U.S. Minerals Management Service, the lead agency reviewing the proposed wind farm, has recommended to Brona Simon, head of the Massachusetts Historical Commission, that the sound is not eligible for the National Register.

Simon must decide by Nov. 12 if she disagrees. If so, the claim would be sent to the National Parks Service for a final ruling within 45 days.

A parks service decision that the sound should be listed a Traditional Cultural Property wouldn't kill Cape Wind, but it could add months to the approval process by forcing developers to comply with the designation's various standards.

Simon declined comment through a spokesman for the Massachusetts Secretary of State, which has jurisdiction over her office.

Earlier this year, in a letter to the minerals service, Simon criticized federal review of the project, saying it appeared to value Cape Wind's profitability and schedule over "effects to historic properties."

Barbara Hill of Clean Power Now, an advocacy group that supports Cape Wind, said the entire offshore wind industry would suffer if Simon decides more review of the tribal claim is needed.

"If there is going to be an allowance to this type of viewshed issue, as far as the eyes can see, what are we going to build?" she said.

Cape Wind appeared close to final approval in January when the minerals service concluded the project posed no major environmental problems. If the tribes win their claim, say project supporters, there would be a host of unintended consequences.

Two Massachusetts environmental and economic development officials, Ian Bowles and Greg Bialecki, produced a list of commercial activities - from commercial fishing to sand mining - they said would be hurt by the ensuing new regulations. They also argued the Supreme Court has ruled that a vast, unenclosed body of water such as the 560-square mile Nantucket Sound isn't eligible as a Traditional Cultural Property.

"It seems clear that this request for such a designation, coming at this time, is an attempt to block or further delay renewable energy development in Nantucket Sound," their letter said.

Rodgers said the tribes' concerns have always been taken seriously, and noted borings were taken at the project site to determine if an Indian burial ground is there - though Green says they don't go deep enough. In a September letter to the tribes, the minerals service listed numerous times in the last three years when it met, or tried to meet, to discuss their concerns.

Green said despite the years of review, regulators have never truly met requirements to thoroughly address their concerns - including the pending claim about the sound.

"I don't expect anything from this, except for due process," Green said.

"And I have not received due process."

This article appeared on page F - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/08/BUDF1AE3J0.DTL

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Comment: Yet another potential violation of the natural rights of indigenous native tribes upon Mother Earth!
 
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STUDYING FASCISM, VIOLENCE AND FAILURE: GEORGE L. JACKSON’S "BLOOD IN MY EYE ~ Thor Ritz

http://www.proudfleshjournal.com/issue5/ritz.html


 




 

PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness ISSN: 1543-0855 Issue 5 (2007) STUDYING FASCISM, VIOLENCE AND FAILURE: GEORGE L. JACKSON’S "BLOOD IN MY EYE

Thor Ritz

George Jackson completed Blood in My Eye—an extremely important piece of Black prison writing, of revolutionary theory, and of theory’s practical application—hardly a week before he was assassinated by guards at San Quentin prison on August 21, 1971. The book, “written literally in bedlam” on a plastic typewriter (Jackson xviii), spoke directly to the struggles being waged in the international context of the early 70’s, especially those in Amerika. And the gravity of Jackson’s words has not expired with time. The message has lived on and greets us today as the latest forms of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism—or what Jackson a theorized as Fascism—have expanded and become entrenched. We need these words, perhaps now more than ever.

In what follows, I will dig into a number of different topics that loom large in Blood in My Eye. I will try to critically flesh out some of the ideas and begin to bring them to bear on the situation we—people struggling for justice—face today. Because of the incredible depth and complexity that Jackson opens up for us, this project must be understood as a beginning, a work-in-progress, always in motion. Hopefully, this is a project that many of us are (or will be) undertaking because of the way it speaks to and potentially influences the struggles we are (or should be) engaged in today.

Racism and the Failure of the Vanguard

One theme that recurs throughout Blood in My Eye is a critique of what George Jackson calls the “old vanguard.” Largely in reference to the emergence of “international fascism,” Jackson draws attention to the failure of the vanguard to seize the opportunity for successful revolution that presented itself during the Great Depression of the late 1920’s. He castigates them for allowing capitalism to “regroup” and solidify itself in Italy and Germany, but most especially in the United States. Seeming to argue that their actions went beyond failure, he denounces this “vanguard” for betraying the international socialist movement by supporting a nationalist war and accepting compromise and reform.

He writes, “The old vanguard parties copped out and supported a nation-state ruling-class war which wasted the blood and energy of their proletariats” (172). They “supported strikes that asked only for reformist measures,” and “excused themselves by claiming that they were ‘exploiting the inherent contradictions of monopoly capital’” (170). They “made gross strategic and tactical errors” as “compromises were made in the thirties, the forties, the fifties” (120).
While Jackson is writing as an African revolutionary; and while he is definitely writing with a look forward to the fight that will be “spearheaded by the blacks of the lower class and their vanguard party, the Black Panther Party” (174), his work is also directed toward the creation of a “united front.” The critique of the “old vanguard,” especially within the U.S., must be understood (perhaps fundamentally) as a critique of a white working-class vanguard. It is in this context that his discussion of racism may be most relevant.

Jackson views “contradictions” of class and race as closely related. He argues that racism, or more specifically, white racism, “is a matter of ingrained traditional attitudes conditioned through institutions” (111). In the U.S. it has served as “a pressure release for the psychopathic destructiveness evinced by a people made fearful and insecure by a way of life they never understood and resented from the day of their birth” (172). White racism has functioned “in the past to render the progressive movement almost totally impotent” (111).

While Jackson’s formulation of the functioning of white racism at the “psycho-social” level, as well as his delineation of three categories of white racists—the overt racist, the “self-interdicting” racist, and the unconscious racist (111), that is—deserves closer study, a closer study than I have engaged in here, it must be understood in the context of the project which he has undertaken. As mentioned above, Blood In My Eye is in large part a call for a united front. I do not argue that, in this sense, we should view his treatment of racism as compromised (Jackson certainly wouldn’t have intended that), but it should be understood as a platform for a “search” for the “reconcilable” (105). As such, perhaps we can agree that a more thorough examination of white racism and its role in radical organizing is called for if our aim is to move against the system in which “Black, brown and white are all victims together” (113).

David Gilbert’s piece titled, “Looking at the White Working Class Historically” might serve as a useful beginning to such a project. There he argues that the white left’s position has by far been one of opportunism that entails “an unwillingness to recognize the leading role within the U.S. of national liberation struggles, a failure to make the fight against white supremacy a conscious and prime element of all organizing and … a general lack of revolutionary combatitiveness against the imperial state.” Looking critically at the white left’s “best moments,” he points out that they have often “fallen into an elitist or perhaps defeatist view that dismisses the possibility of organizing” significant numbers of working class whites” (1).1

So, if the vanguard has failed us where do we turn now? Today, with fascism solidly established, what must be done? Jackson’s answer, as discussed above, is first: “There will be a fight.” The fight will involve a united front (assuming that the white left can confront its racism) spearheaded by a Black vanguard (174). It will involve “real union activity” that will cut the ties that bind the working class to its state-led labor elites. It will involve “reawakening” the people’s revolutionary consciousness (175). And it is along these lines that we proceed. . . .

Violence and Dialectical Materialism

“Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one”
— Marx, Capital

“Part of the myth that we must destroy is that “the people” reduced to a state of inexplicable misery still have a choice of action. Invariably their response will take some form of violence. I term this violence, individual or collective, not crime but antithesis”
— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye

George Jackson is a self-proclaimed “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fanonist.” This descriptor is useful when considering his conception of consciousness and violence. First, he asserts that violence is already widespread, already an inherent fact of life; in capitalism and especially for Black people in fascist Amerika, “violence is a forced issue” (126). He points to “the long history of the Amerikan business oligarchy’s penchant for violent repression of any forces that have threatened its centralist movement,” and “the very natural defense reflexes of any form of state power” (133). Here, we might see the influence of Marx who saw not only the history of the initial expropriation required for capitalist relations, “primitive” accumulation, “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire” (Marx 1967: 669), but also saw the day-to-day struggle over relative surplus value and socially necessary labor time as, inherently and necessarily, a violent one. The resistance to capitalism, of course, must also be understood as unavoidably violent (although Marx would predict that it would be less so).

It is to his “Fanonist” influences that we might look when considering the relationship between consciousness and violence. In The Wretched of the Earth Fanon writes, “Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect” (94). In this sense violence is no longer just an inherent characteristic of a particular mode of production or a necessary ingredient in overthrowing it. Violence now figures as a question of consciousness, as a psychological element of revolt.
Jackson picks up this reformulation of violence, which now includes questions of revolutionary consciousness, and runs with it. He writes, “In blacks, the authoritarian traits are mainly the effects of terrorism and lack of intellectual stimulation.” “But it requires only the proper trauma, the proper eco-sociological set of circumstantial pressures to bring forth a revolutionary consciousness.” He says that “the communal experience will redeem them” (124). Carrying on from the conclusion of the previous section, we can now see that violent revolt plays a critical part in the development of revolutionary consciousness. Jonathan Jackson would add that the reaction to violent revolt is also crucial. He writes, “Repression exposes. By drawing violence from the beast, the vanguard party is demonstrating for the world to examine just exactly what terms their rule is predicated on—their power to organize violence, our acquiescence” (23).

Considering Fanon, we might come back to the question of racism which we discussed earlier. If Fanon saw racism as a unifying force, bringing together rich and poor (white) Europeans, in the project of colonization, we can see a similar function of racism in Jackson’s fascist Amerika. Concerning the white working class, Jackson writes, “The huge mass of blue-collar workers seem to be working totally against themselves in their support of a system owned and controlled by a tiny minority.” These contradictory behaviors can be explained “by feelings of loyalty to race, by their identification with the white hierarchy and by their economic advantage over the oppressed races. They may be oppressed themselves, but in return they are allowed to oppress millions of others” (183).

This is a similar but slightly different perspective on racism than we dealt with earlier. Whereas Jackson began by pointing to the way racism played on psychological effects of capitalist modes of production and functioned to diffuse progressive movements, now we might see ways that racism materially benefited and benefits working class whites. Also, with this perspective we can view the relationship between race and class a bit differently. As we move out of the strictly economic sphere of processes of accumulation and class relations we encounter unavoidable considerations of race and racism. Fanon pushes aside the dialectical opposition of capital and labor to examine the “meeting of two forces, opposed to each other by their very nature”: native and settler (36). This relation is still highly economic in nature but unintelligible without an understanding of a racism that unites colonizing capitalists and the colonizing proletariat.

We began this section by hinting at another sense of violence which Jackson employs in his work: violence as antithesis. This, as I understand it, is a radical reworking of the traditional Marxist model for understanding the historical development of human society. In this model we have a thesis, which is a particular dominant idea of how the world should be organized, as in capitalism. The anti-thesis can be understood as an oppositional, contradictory idea, as in socialism. The synthesis is the product of the meeting and working out of these contradictory ideas which then comes to function as a new thesis, and so on..

Rather than view the dominant conflict driving change as that between the capitalist class and the working class—the traditional Marxist model focused on mode of production, rather exclusively—Jackson’s formulation pits the “oppressor” against the “oppressed.” In this model oppression operates from the position of thesis, the currently prevailing regime. Resistance operates from the position of antithesis, moving against, in opposition to oppression. The result, or synthesis, is increased oppression—perhaps more accurately termed repression—and “excesses.” As this situation now exists as the thesis, it is met with increased resistance in the form of increased violence. The process escalates either until oppression is defeated or the oppressed are destroyed. 2
An illustrative excerpt from the text reads:

[The system] also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression (Jackson 1972: 182).

While similar formulations can be found throughout the book, there is never an explicit explanation of the development and reasoning of such a theory. An elucidation and examination of what work he is drawing on and how he is reworking it as he describes history as “clearly a long continuum of synthesizing elements” (182) is certainly important but will not be taken up in this essay.

George Jackson’s Understanding of Fascism

“Our purpose here is to understand the essence of this living, moving thing so that we will understand how to move against it”
— George Jackson, Blood in My Eye

In order to understand George Jackson’s analysis of Fascism we must understand that it is, first and foremost, dialectical in nature. In a mode similar to Fanon’s—who we saw previously describe the colonial struggle as that between settler and native—Jackson, laboring to “examine things in their total sequence, see them in process” (49), views fascism as the result of the struggle between international capitalism and international socialism. He argues “that out of the economic crisis of the last great depression fascism-corporativism did indeed emerge, develop and consolidate itself into its most advanced form here in Amerika” (129). While it is in this study of fascism that we could, given more time, draw together the various considerations we’ve dealt thus far, for now we will only attempt to familiarize ourselves with the general points and arguments he develops.

We might begin by acknowledging that Jackson’s study of fascism engages, and rises out of, a much wider (Marxist and non-Marxist) discourse. It is clear that he critiques and sets out to redress “several old left notions” about fascism. First, he argues that analyzing the emergence and “consolidation” of fascism does not lead “to a defeatist view of history.” In fact, he says, it is necessary if we are to “regroup and even think of carrying on the fight” (129-130).

The second notion he critiques is the “old guard’s” definition of fascism “simply as an economic geo-political affair where only one political party is allowed to exist aboveground and no opposition political activity is allowed” (132). However, I am yet unclear as to whom he is engaging with. Wilhelm Reich and Franz Neumann are referred to explicitly—while “important,” the former tends to be “overanalytical to the point of idealism” and the latter is “too narrowly based” on Nazi Germany (130). But beyond that it isn’t clear to me whose ideas are being drawn on or critiqued and reshaped.

One way that we can come at the question of fascism is by differentiating between a number of different perspectives of Fascism. Jackson seems to do just this as he writes, “The importance or form of a particular political regime can never be understood simply as it stands alone. Its social and economic past must be investigated and clearly defined before the distinctive being of the political realm takes shape” (144). While each never gets explicitly isolated from the other it might be useful for us to identify some characteristics of each separately.

In regards to the economic dimensions of fascism, Jackson argues that the rebound from the Great Depression signaled the rise of fascist economy. In this argument the business cycle (or the accumulation cycle) and the trend toward monopoly capital (Jackson 1972: 136) take center stage in the historical development of capitalism: “The heart of the fascist economy is an attempt at control through centralization: monopoly capital control, price fixing, wage freezes, and carefully balanced foreign trade” (155).

The “political” dimensions of fascism seem to entail what Jackson terms “corporativism.” In one sense, this seems to refer to the marriage of state elites and industrial elites through the process mentioned previously: nation-state bureaucracies and international monetary institutions team up with industrial capitalists and (attempt to) take the steering wheel in the regulation of economic processes. However, it is important to remember that “the capitalist business cycle cannot be controlled. Inflationary spasmodic attacks, regional recession and depression pursue capitalism in all its forms like a nemesis, break its spirit, reduce its top heavy bureaucratic backbone to jelly” (Jackson 1972, 160).

Another sense of corporativism is its strategic incorporation and co-optation of potential challenge into the system through reform. Jackson writes, “Each economic reform that perpetuates ruling-class hegemony has to be disguised as a positive gain for the upthrusting masses” (118). Reform is carried out in the form of concessions “to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone between the ruling class and the still potentially revolutionary segments of the lower classes” (119). This sense of corporativism, or fascism, can bring us back to a discussion of racism which operates to unify capitalists and the white working class which they exploit. It can also bring us back to the failure of the old vanguard that allowed the formation of a fundamental ingredient to effective fascism: the partnership between capital and labor.

The “psycho-social” dimensions of fascism are, of course, tied closely to these considerations. Jackson identifies the presence of competitiveness, “a sense of insecurity and insignificance that is inculcated into the workers by conditions of life and work,” and that gives rise to “the resentment and the seedbed of fear” which is “patterned into every modern capitalist society,” and racism, “the morbid traditional fear of blacks, Indians, Mexicans” and the desire “to inflict pain on them when they began to compete in industrial sectors” (171). This racism and competitiveness are seen as necessary features for a fascist state.

Another key element of the “psycho-social” functions of fascism is the way that it plays on and encourages what he calls the “authoritarian syndrome.” While in blacks he sees this condition as relatively superficially engrained, for elements of the white working-class it seems deeply instilled. He describes it as a “loyalty syndrome” that “feeds on a small but still false sense of class consciousness and the need for a community.” He also describes it as a “morbid phenomenon that grows out of the psychopathology of mob behavior” (152). This functions to “degenerate and diffuse working-class consciousness with a psycho-social appeal to man’s herd instincts” and it is “at the center of totalitarian capitalism (fascism)” (152).

The connection to our earlier discussion of racism is obvious. The “authoritarian syndrome” can be seen as another perspective on the racism of working class whites. From here we might follow Jackson’s lead and ask, how do we raise a new revolutionary consciousness? Earlier we covered Jackson’s formulation for raising Black revolutionary consciousness. What are the possibilities for an anti-racist white working class consciousness, toward the desired united front? In what ways would the process be similar? In what ways would it differ?

We have only begun to understand the workings of fascism as Jackson formulated them. We can say, for example, that a close reading of his historical study of the rise of fascism in Europe and Amerika is fundamental to understanding the different “dimensions” which we have separated out for the sake of our analysis. We can also say that a study of fascism would be a useful platform on which to draw together questions of racism, violence, consciousness, and capitalism together. I am particularly interested in following the line of questioning set up at the end of the previous paragraph. How does the situation we face today relate to Jackson’s time and place? Where are the movements of fascism at today (because if Jackson’s fascism was developed then, it is certainly still strong)? And how do go about moving against it? 

How do we raise revolutionary consciousness within a system “programmed against our old methods,” moreover? How do we raise consciousness in the white working class in order to begin to develop our United Front—against Fascism? How should our struggle to “combat racism while we are in the process of destroying the system” be organized and initiated?
With these sorts of questions as a guide, with the muscle of our brain and our arm, we “must prove our predictions about the future with action” (Jackson 1972, 7).

Works Cited

Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Gilbert, David. [1984]. “Looking at the White Working Class Historically.”
http://kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/lwwch.html.

Jackson, George. [1972]. Blood in My Eye. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1990.
Sakai, J. Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat. Morningstar Press, 1989. (Copies available from the Cooperative Distribution Service, Rm. 1409-93, 5 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago, IL 60602.

Notes

1 Gilbert’s article seems valuable for the way it deals openly with racism in the white left and for its emphasis on the necessity of organizing large numbers of white people. However, I argue that we should be weary of his tendency to cling to the notion of a white working class proper, illustrated in his reading of J. Sakai’s Settlers.

2 This reading was developed from class discussion in ETS 352 with Professor Greg Thomas (Fall 2005, Syracuse University).

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Citation Format:
Thor Ritz. “Studying Fascism, Violence and Failure: George L. Jackson’s Blood in My Eye,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness:   Issue 5, 2007.
Copyright © 2007 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

http://www.proudfleshjournal.com/issue5/ritz.html 





Related Link ~ 
 http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/George_Jackson/George_Jackson_index.html



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FYI: Response to Urgent Help Needed to Support Palestinians Arriving in the US from Iraq

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
9-11-2009 ~ Gracias Brother Zahi ~ On this special tragic day
let us remember the victims of 911 and keep in mind that the
repercussions from that tragic Tuesday continue to reverberate
throughout the world.

The kind of negative tensions and historical resentments that were
psych-warfare factors in the original 911 are if anything worse now
than they were before. plus the madness in the Middle East continues
despite the lessons learned or lessons that should of been learned by
all of us.

Afghanistan is now the achille's heel of the Obama regime and it will
fail in its efforts to dominate the Afghan people, who are really a great
diverse people of many tribes not easily catergorized , the same as the
former Soviet Union failed. All has not been said and done. The day is
still young!

We must learn to evolve beyond petty nationalist interests and see
the collective survival interests of all peoples, including the right to
life, the right to work and the right to propserpous happiness.

As a Chicano activist born and raised inside the brain of the fascist
beast I relate to the struggles of all oppressed peoples, including that
of the heroic Palestinian people.

The present so-called Obama Health Care Plan of the  Obama Regime
fails to include Mexican immigrants who reside in the millions inside
the United States, these are indigenous descendants of the original
peoples of these lands I call Aztlan ~ our land ~ and the sacred right
to good health is an essential need for all peoples.

We need to evolve our collective consciousness beyond the divisions
of race, nation and tribe into a higher understanding of ourselves as
human beings with natural humane rights, including the right to decent
and affordable health care. These are concepts that could be explained
to a child but are hard for a narrow-minded mean-spirited adult to come
to agreement about and fathom.

Chicanos-Latinos inside the United States are victims of a racist fed
cultural nationalism the same as Palestinian people inside the United
States are suffering from prejudice, discrimination and gross injustice
on a daily basis. In the name of La Raza Cosmica, if I may be so bold and
not appear arrogant, I welcome our friends and allies among the Palestinian
people and look forward to our working together, struggling together and
coming together for our collective survival and ultimate success.

Venceremos! is Spanish for 'We Will Win!' and I have no doubt that once
we raise our collective consciousness above the many  divisions amongst
us that we will win a brave new world where all people can breathe and live
under a true socialist democracy in a truly humane society.

Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka ~Peta-de-Aztlan~
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 
 
Come Together! Join Up! Seize the Time!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://humane-rights-agenda-network.ning.com/
 
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/

c/s

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From: Zahi Damuni <zahi@al-awda.org>
To: thepalestinian@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:47:07 PM
Subject: [THIRD-WORLD-NEWS] Urgent Help Needed to Support Palestinians Arriving in the US from Iraq

 

 

ACTION ALERT September 10, 2009 Urgent Help Needed to Support Palestinians Arriving in the US from Iraq TO ALL AL-AWDA MEMBERS AND SUPPORTERS The US government has approved most of the population of Al-Waleed Palestinian refugee camp for resettlement as refugees in the US in the coming year. For more information see http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0708/p02s04-usgn.html and http://english. aljazeera. net/news/ middleeast/ 2009/06/20096181 61946158577. html The first Palestinian family of the year will be arriving next week in San Diego on Wednesday September 16, 2009. This family, as with all the refugees who will be relocated to the US from Al-Waleed, will arrive with essentially nothing. Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, is therefore conducting an urgent fund raising campaign to help all the Palestinian refugees arriving in the US soon with their transition to a new life in this country. BACKGROUND An estimated 19,000 Palestinians, out of an initial population of 34,000, fled Iraq since the American invasion in 2003. Of these refugees, approximately 2500 have been stranded, under very harsh conditions, some for more than five years, in three camps, Al-Tanaf, Al-Waleed and Al-Hol. These camps are located in the middle of the desert far from any population centers. Al-Tanaf camp is located in no-man's land on the borders between Iraq and Syria. Al-Waleed is located on the Iraqi side of the border with Syria and Al-Hol is located in Syria in the Hasaka region. The camp residents had fled largely from Baghdad due to harassment, threats of deportation, abuse by the media, arbitrary detention, torture and murder by organized death squads. They thus became refugees again, originally as a result of the Zionist theft and colonial occupation of Palestine beginning in 1948. Some became refugees also when they were expelled from Kuwait in 1991 by the US-backed Kuwaiti government. Now, after years of waiting, many of the refugees stranded in the camps on the borders of Iraq are being relocated largely to Europe and the US, which continues to occupy Iraq to this day.   The first Palestinian family from Al-Waleed this year will be arriving in San Diego on  September 16, 2009, a few days before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with 1350 more Palestinians to follow in the months ahead. According to the Christian Science Monitor most of these will be resettled in Southern California and possibly Pennsylvania and Omaha. ACTION Al-Awda is asking all its activists, members and supporters to contribute to help our sisters and brothers in their move to the US. Please donate today! Address your tax-deductible donation via check or money order to: Al-Awda, PRRC, PO Box 131352, Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA - Please note on the memo line of the check "Palestinians from Iraq" Alternatively, please donate online using your credit card. Go to http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions. Please indicate that your donation is for "Palestinians from Iraq" with your submission. Drop off locations:   We will also need furniture, cars, clothes, toys for the kids etc. The following are the current drop off locations: General: 8531 Wellsford pl # f, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 Te: 562-693-1600 Tel: 323-350-0000 For Clothes: 1773 West Lincoln Ave., Anaheim, CA 92801 For Southern California residents, an emergency meeting is being called for this Sunday starting at 2 PM at the Al-Awda Center, 2734 Loker Avenue West Suite K, in Carlsbad CA 92010. Our sisters and brothers need all the help they can get after having suffered from the death squads in Baghdad, and more than five years stranded in the camps. We need our people to feel at home as much as possible. We can not disappoint them.   THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROUS SUPPORT Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition PO Box 131352 Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA Tel: 760-918-9441 Fax: 760-918-9442 E-mail: info@al-awda. org WWW: http://al-awda. org Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.

 

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5 Ways to Build a Fascist-Proof America ~ By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future

http://tinyurl.com/nypaqm

Posted on August 27, 2009 ~
http://www.alternet.org/story/142250/

August, die she must. The town hall freak show is winding down, the media circus is packing the cameras and satellite dishes and hairspray back into the vans, and Congress is soon heading back to the relative safety of Washington.

Yet, after all the fuss and bother, they're probably no more or less resolved to pass health care reform than they were back in June, when those first delirious fevers rose like clouds of infectious mosquito nymphs hatched from a thick, overheated carpet of soggy Astroturf.

Let's hope they succeed at getting it done. But, win or lose, we're crazy to think that the goon squads formed and trained to instigate this summer's health care wars will pack it in just because the silly season is over.

Those folks have tasted power, graduated from their introductory courses in Political Bullying 101, shared some camaraderie and beer and felt the heft of their own political muscle. That was fun. Now, what do we do next? Paralyze the school board over evolution in the textbooks? Intimidate the city council into shutting down the immigrants' services center -- or beat up some immigrants, so they'll just stop using it? Vandalize the cars and houses of known liberals? Get one of our own elected sheriff, so he can deputize the rest of us and make our posse official?

Nothin' but good times ahead. Now that they're organized up and had a little practice, the possibilities for further mayhem are limited only by the boundless paranoia and unfettered fantasies of the right-wing mind.

Out at our local county fair this past weekend, the GOP booth was festooned with a wide array of buttons, T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming the owner's status as a "Proud Member of the Right-Wing Mob," and other similarly, um, assertively empowered sentiments.

Judging from the general belligerence of the collection on offer, that seems to be the GOP's whole political identity now. It's determined to move boldly into 2010 as the party of America's union-, immigrant-, democracy- and (if necessary) head-busting squadristi -- and it's damn proud of it all, you betcha.

* * *

How in the hell did we get here? And more to the point: How do we get back out?

The first question is depressingly easy. This is precisely where 40 years wandering in the right-wing moral, cultural and economic wilderness has left us -- and, in fact, where it was always intended to lead us.

A liberal democratic society is a complex system that's designed to be very resilient and self-correcting in the face of all kinds of extremism. But the health of that system -- especially its natural immunity to would-be attackers -- ultimately depends on just one factor: It cannot survive without people's ongoing confidence in a functioning political contract.

When it's working right, this contract guarantees the upper classes predictable, reliable wealth in return for their investments. It promises the middle class mobility, comfort and security. It ensures the working classes fair reward for fair work, chances to move ahead and protection against very real risk that they'll be forced into poverty if they can't work any more.

Generally, as long as everybody gets their piece of this constantly renegotiated deal, everybody stays invested in keeping the system going -- and a democratic society will remain upright, healthy and moving mostly forward.

For the past four decades, conservatives have done everything in their power to dismantle that essential contract, and thus destroy our mutual confidence in the fundamental agreements that allow any democratic system to function. (None dare call it treason -- but a solid case could be made.)

This isn't news: by now, most of us can recite the litany, chapter and verse, of the all the many ways they hacked away at America's essential ability to function as the Constitution intended.

But the biggest loser, as always, has been the working class -- the people whose only real power lies in their sweat and their numbers. Their faith in the promise of democratic self-government has been shattered through years of union-busting, farm foreclosures, factory exports, college grant cuts, subprime mortgage scams and all manner of betrayal, treachery, neglect and abuse.

Over in the comments threads at Orcinus, we hear from these furious folks almost every day. The way they see it, representative democracy has repeatedly failed to deliver on anything it might have once promised them. At this point, the disgust runs so deep that anybody who has other ideas -- theocracy, corporatocracy, anarchy, whaddaya got? -- has a fair shot at getting their attention.

And their outrage is so total that any target they're offered looks about as good as any other. Without that reason-strangling sense of betrayal and paralyzing fear of further loss already in place, it's hard to see how Fox News' windbags or Dick Armey's checkbook would have been able to convince these people to turn on the best chance at real government help they've been offered in decades. But with it, they're about ready to shoot at anything they're told to aim at.

America's best (and perhaps only) chance to keep the shreds of its tattered democracy intact is to get serious about cutting working Americans back into the democratic contract -- and repair their broken trust by making damn sure those promises are actually kept.

Once they're back on board, the system will begin to work again for everyone. Until then, the accelerating breakdown is just going to continue.

It's not going to be easy. Right-wing populism is riding so high among the middle and working classes right now that there's nothing progressives can say right now that they're likely to believe. So we need to let our actions do the talking -- and there are five solid places we can start that will get their attention.

First: Ironically, passing health care reform would be a colossal trust-builder, as I've argued before. The right wing knows this, which is precisely why it's recruited the very people most likely to benefit from reform to fight as their shock troops against it.

Simply seeing the government working to provide such an essential common good for everyone would shift the entire American conversation about the purposes and capabilities of government. It would go a long way toward restoring our confidence in the very idea of democracy and make it much harder for anti-democratic arguments to get traction.

Second: We need to re-establish the rule of law. You cannot have a credible democracy as long as there's so obviously one standard of economic and civil justice for the rich and well-connected, and a very different one that's designed to make victims out of everybody else.

Nobody seriously believes any more that rich or powerful people can ever be held accountable by an American court. Prosecuting the Bush administration for its assorted crimes against America and the world would make an unforgettable, inarguable statement -- both to our own citizens, and the rest of the planet -- about our renewed commitment to justice.

That would be a great start. But we'd need to follow it up with a whole series of reforms, including holding corporations fully accountable for actions that destroy the commons; ending the catastrophic "war on drugs"; giving people back their access to the courts; and restoring some proportionality to our sentencing laws, which have put millions of lower-class families into the permanent thrall of the justice system.

Third: We need to get serious about investing in education. It's well understood now that our broken health care system is right on the bottom of the barrel among industrialized countries; but most of us don't realize that our schools are in the same comparatively wretched shape.

Thomas Jefferson understood that liberal democracy is impossible without a literate, well-informed populace; and the endless parade of teabagger loonitude is precisely the kind of know-nothing nightmare he most feared.

Conservative "tax revolt" politics have been undermining American education since California's Proposition 13 passed in 1977 -- and we should draw a clear, bright line between decades of systematic defunding and the monumental failures of reason we're seeing all around us now.

Don't know much about history -- so the Christian right is busily rewriting it to argue that there's no such thing as a wall between church and state. Don't know much biology -- so fewer than half of all Americans think the theory of evolution explains our origins. Don't know much about the science book -- so we're ready to believe whatever junk science the corporate PR folks can conjure up. Don't know much about the French I took -- which has left the country insular, parochial and unable to work and play well with others in a world it purports to lead.

But the worst failure is that we went through a decades-long patch where we didn't teach civics -- and still don't much, especially in states where it's not part of the standardized tests. Which means that there are tens of millions among us who have absolutely no idea what's in the Bill of Rights, or how a law gets made, or where the limits of state power lie.

It's quite possible that if the conservatives hadn't undermined universal civics education, the right-wing talking heads would have never found an audience. Instead, what we have is a country where most people are getting their basic political education from Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

If we want our democracy back, that has to change.

Fourth: No democracy in history has ever survived with our current levels of inequality. There's no reason for the middle and working classes to trust anything about a system that's so clearly rigged to suck money straight out of their pockets into the tax-free offshore bank accounts of the wealthy -- who, of course, turn right around and use that money to buy off our government, so they can suck up even more of our economy for themselves.

This has gone on so long that we've arrived at the endpoint where every single civic function you can name -- health care, defense, law enforcement, prisons, infrastructure development, research, media and (increasingly) education -- makes decisions not on the basis of what will best serve the common good or give taxpayers or consumers the biggest bang for the buck, but whether and how much it will pay off some well-connected corporation.

It doesn't matter what the public wants, or what makes sense, or what will save money in the long run. The bottom line is: If Halliburton or Wackenhut or United Health aren't getting their cuts, it ain't happening, period. And that's pretty much the definition of a corporatized state -- which, as we've seen, is one of the two necessary ingredients required for full-on fascism.

Restoring equality also means meaningful immigration reform. As long as there's a two-tiered employment system that lets employers sidestep wage, discrimination and safety laws by hiring undocumented workers without penalty, there's going to be a permanent trap door under the feet of American workers.

To close that door, we need to shore up the border, completely revamp our utterly dysfunctional immigration process, enforce existing workplace laws and prosecute employers who violate them, and get our current crop of undocumented immigrants on the books so the laws can be applied to them, too.

Until we do this, nobody is going to get a fair shake in the job market -- and there's no reason for working-class Americans to have any trust at all in the system's ability to deliver for them.

Finally: We need to focus on restoring our basic liberal institutions. In 2005, Chris Bowers noted that progressive ideology has always been disseminated through four major cultural drivers: the universities (and related intellectual infrastructure); unions; the media; and liberal religious organizations. Knowing this, conservatives set out back in the 1970s to undermine all four of these institutions -- and over time, they've largely succeeded in blunting their historic capacity to disseminate and perpetuate the progressive worldview.

But change is on the way.

The new GI Bill, like the previous one, is likely to create an expansive renaissance in American university education, restoring vigor and diversity to our academic and intellectual community.

The Employee Free Choice Act, if passed, will help unions regain their role as the voice and political muscle of the working and middle classes.

Bloggers have formed the core of a new progressive media that's calling the corporate media to account, and slowly forcing it to change its one-sided ways.

On the other hand, there's still considerable misunderstanding and confusion within our own camp about the essential role liberal religion should play in lending heart and spirit to the progressive resurgence. With a few notable exceptions (Tom Paine, Robert Ingersoll), American progressivism has always drawn its most compelling moral voices from the ranks of Catholics, Jews, Quakers, Unitarians and Universalists, and a wide collection of social-gospel evangelicals.

And even now, the vast majority of Americans -- on both ends of the spectrum -- still draw their political ethics straight out of their personal religious beliefs. As Bowers points out, we need those voices if we're going to succeed.

Fascism is so dangerous precisely because it speaks to its believers in the language of emotion, populism, purity, redemption and enduring values. Nobody on the progressive side knows how to speak that language -- and match that moral force and energy -- better than our own native faith groups. Secular progressives may wish it weren't true, but it is: there's simply no way we can rebuild a strong democratic system without holding up our end of a broad, new culturewide discussion about morality, meaning, priorities, passion and values. And those conversations begin most naturally in our houses of worship.

* * *

I'm well aware that this reads like a liberal wish list. And that's really my entire point.

Progressive democracy is a self-reinforcing system. Wherever you have educated citizens, thriving progressive institutions, a solid public infrastructure, fair courts and a relatively level economic and social playing field, you've got prime growing conditions that lead to an expanding economy, increased rights and freedoms, and a strong collective sense of investment and confidence in the system.

Progressivism fosters the conditions that make a nation secure, peaceful, stable and virtually impervious to revolutions of all kinds. In particular, it creates a natural resistance that recognizes fascism as a mortal enemy and never fails to raise effective immune antibodies against it.

Almost every conservative policy going back to Nixon has, in one way or another, undermined our ability to mount this kind of resistance.

The emergence of corporate-backed brownshirts is a clear warning sign of that the system that keeps America progressive and free is now hitting its point of fatal breakdown. And we don't have much time: If their behavior succeeds and escalates in the coming months, we could be done for in a matter of months. By next August, this one may be remembered as the last moment of calm before the revolution.

Doing nothing is not an option. The only long-term antidote to our current wave of emergent fascism is a big, strong dose of trust-building progressive culture and politics, administered daily until the system's basic democratic functions come back on line.

If we want to build a fascist-proof America for the long haul, we must stand up now for everything we believe and everything we are.

Sara Robinson is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006 and is a founding member of Group News Blog.
© 2009 Campaign for America's Future All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142250/


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Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. Lopez {aka:Peta} Sacramento, California,Aztlan Yahoo
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Come Together! Join Up! Seize the Time!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/ http://humane-rights-agenda-network.ning.com/
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c/s

Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism? ~ By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future

http://www.alternet.org/rights/141819/is_the_u.s._on_the_brink_of_fascism?page=entire

Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?

By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future
Posted on August 7, 2009, Printed on August 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

What is fascism?

The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further as

"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

.
Jonah Goldberg aside, that's a basic definition most legitimate scholars in the field can agree on, and the one I'll be referring to here.

From proto-fascism to the tipping point

According to Paxton, fascism unfolds in five stages. The first two are pretty solidly behind us -- and the third should be of particular interest to progressives right now.

In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Paxton suggests that the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction, may in fact be the first authentically fascist movement in modern times. Almost every major country in Europe sprouted a proto-fascist movement in the wretched years following WWI (when the Klan enjoyed a major resurgence here as well) -- but most of them stalled either at this first stage, or the next one.

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."

That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the hardcore remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.

When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.

The third stage: being there

All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.

The fail-safe point

According to Paxton, the forging of this third-stage alliance is the make-or-break moment -- and the worst part of it is that by the time you've arrived at that point, it's probably too late to stop it. From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names.

Where's the danger line? Paxton offers three quick questions that point us straight at it:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?

2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

By my reckoning, we're three for three. That's too close. Way too close.

The Road Ahead

History tells us that once this alliance catalyzes and makes a successful bid for power, there's no way off this ride. As Dave Neiwert wrote in his recent book, The Eliminationists, "if we can only identify fascism in its mature form—the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies—then it will be far too late to stop it." Paxton (who presciently warned that "An authentic popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black") agrees that if a corporate/brownshirt alliance gets a toehold -- as ours is now scrambling to do -- it can very quickly rise to power and destroy the last vestiges of democratic government. Once they start racking up wins, the country will be doomed to take the whole ugly trip through the last two stages, with no turnoffs or pit stops between now and the end.

What awaits us? In stage four, as the duo assumes full control of the country, power struggles emerge between the brownshirt-bred party faithful and the institutions of the conservative elites -- church, military, professions, and business. The character of the regime is determined by who gets the upper hand. If the party members (who gained power through street thuggery) win, an authoritarian police state may well follow. If the conservatives can get them back under control, a more traditional theocracy, corporatocracy, or military regime can re-emerge over time. But in neither case will the results resemble the democracy that this alliance overthrew.

Paxton characterizes stage five as "radicalization or entropy." Radicalization is likely if the new regime scores a big military victory, which consolidates its power and whets its appetite for expansion and large-scale social engineering. (See: Germany) In the absence of a radicalizing event, entropy may set in, as the state gets lost in its own purposes and degenerates into incoherence. (See: Italy)

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

How do we pull back? That's my next post.

Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.

© 2009 Campaign for America's Future All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

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Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. Lopez {aka:Peta}
Sacramento, California,Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com 
 
Come Together! Join Up! Seize the Time!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
 
http://humane-rights-agenda-network.ning.com/
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/

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Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program? By Jeremy Scahill

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23054.htm and
http://rebelreports.com/post/141481294/is-obama-continuing-the-bush-cheney-assassination

Tue

Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?

Congress is outraged that Cheney concealed a CIA program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders, but they should also be investigating why Obama is continuing—and expanding—U.S. assassinations.

By Jeremy Scahill

In June, CIA Director Leon Panetta allegedly informed members of the House Intelligence Committee of the existence of a secret Bush era program implemented in the days after 9-11 that, until last month, had been hidden from lawmakers. The concealment of the plan, Panetta alleged, happened at the orders of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

Now, The New York Times is reporting that this secret program that had "been hidden from lawmakers" by Cheney was a plan "to dispatch small teams overseas to kill senior Qaeda terrorists." The Wall Street Journal, which originally reported on the plan, reported that the paramilitary teams were to implement a "2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts."

The plan, the Times says, never was carried out because "Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles." Instead, the Bush administration "sought an alternative to killing terror suspects with missiles fired from drone aircraft or seizing them overseas and imprisoning them in secret C.I.A. jails."

The House Intelligence Committee is now reportedly preparing an investigation into this program and the Senate may follow suit. "We were kept in the dark. That's something that should never, ever happen again," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein. Withholding this information from Congress "is a big problem, because the law is very clear."

There are several important issues raised by this unfolding story. First, while the Times claims the program was never implemented, the program sounds very similar to what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sy Hersh described in March as an "executive assassination ring" run by Dick Cheney that operated throughout the Bush years:

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

Hersh's description sounds remarkably similar to that offered by the Times and the Wall Street Journal. While the House and Senate should certainly investigate this program—and lying to Congress, misleading it or concealing from it such programs is likely illegal—it is also important to guarantee that it has actually stopped. But another pressing issue for the Congress is investigating the Obama administration's adoption of this secret program's central components. As the Times noted, the major reason—beyond logistical hurdles—that the program was not implemented (if that is even true) was that the Bush administration began increasing its use of weaponized drones to conduct Israeli-style targeted assassinations (often, these drones kill many more civilians than so-called "targets"). These drone attacks, coupled with the use of extraordinary rendition and secret prisons, became the official program for "eliminating" specific individuals labeled "high value" targets by the administration.

The Obama administration has not only continued the Bush policy of using drones to carry out targeted assassinations, but has also continued the use of prisons where people are held indefinitely without charge or access to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Under Obama, Bagram air base in Afghanistan is expanding and, at present, hundreds of prisoners are held there without charges. In essence, the Obama administration is doing exactly what this secret CIA program sought to do, albeit out in the open.

Beyond the Cheney assassination program, what is really worthy of Congressional investigation right now is the legality of Obama's current policy of assassination. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905.

White House lawyers—with their seemingly infinite legal creativity—would likely say that the drone strikes are not assassinations, but rather part of war. That putting poison in a cigar of a foreign leader is different than launching missiles at a funeral where an "enemy" is believed to be among the mourners. While the implications of the U.S. assassinating heads of state or foreign officials are grave, it could be argued that, on some levels, the drone attacks are worse in the sense that they kill many more civilians. Moreover, these drone attacks largely take place is Pakistan, which is a sovereign nation. There is no legal or Congressional declaration of war against Pakistan.

It is long past due that the Congress investigate this U.S. government assassination program. The politically inconvenient truth, however, is this: An actual investigation would require the Democrats pounding Cheney over his concealment of an assassination program (that allegedly was not implemented) to focus their investigation on how President Obama actually implemented and expanded that very program.

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Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
http://anhglobal.ning.com/profile/peta51

Wake Up! Join Up! Rise Up!
http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan' ~ NEWS BBC + Comment

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8146466.stm

Page last updated at 11:29 GMT, Sunday, 12 July 2009 12:29 UK

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Cheney 'ordered CIA to hide plan'

Dick Cheney played a key role in US anti-terror policy after 9/11 Former US Vice-President Dick Cheney gave direct orders to the CIA to conceal an intelligence programme from Congress, US media reports say. The existence of the programme, set up after 9/11, was hidden for eight years and even now its nature is not known. CIA director Leon Panetta is said to have abandoned the project when he learnt of it last month. He has now told a House committee that Mr Cheney was behind the secrecy, the unnamed US sources say. There has been no comment from Mr Cheney. War of words The claims come amid an increasingly bitter row between the CIA and Congress over whether key information was withheld about other aspects of the agency's operations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods including waterboarding, while other senior Democrats have quoted Mr Panetta as admitting that his agency regularly misled Congress before he took office. Panetta is said to have closed the programme when he discovered it Details of the newly-revealed secret programme have still not been divulged, but sources say it did not relate to the CIA's rendition programme, interrogation methods or a controversial domestic surveillance project. Officials quoted by the New York Times say the programme was launched by anti-terror operatives at the CIA soon after the 2001 attacks, and involved planning and training but never became fully operational. Another unnamed official told AP it was an embryonic intelligence-gathering effort, aimed at yielding intelligence that would be used to conduct covert operations abroad. Sources have told a number of US media outlets Mr Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold information about the programme from Congress. Mr Panetta - who took over directorship of the CIA under President Obama's administration - is said to have learnt about the programme only on 23 June. The next day he called an emergency meeting with congressional intelligence committees to tell them about its existence and to say that it was being cancelled, the reports say. Veto threat The allegations come as Democrats in Congress are trying to push through new rules that would increase the number of members of Congress who are told about covert operations. The White House is threatening to veto the bill, fearing that operational secrecy could be compromised. The CIA has not commented on the reports of Mr Cheney's role. "It's not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing," said spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect." A CIA spokesman insisted earlier this week that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress."

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Comment: This confirms my suspicions and makes me realize that I was
'sensing and feeling' more than actually knowing from proven facts about the evils
emanating out of the Oval Office during the reign of former President Fuhrer Bush
and his Oval Office Cabal.

After all legal peaceful methods of resistance have been clearly exhausted then the
social forces of liberation have no other choice than to resort to selective targeted
violence to sternly and dramatically correct corporate-state-fascist wrongdoings.
The 'foco' theory is put into practice.

I myself have taken a qualified vow of peace but I will still coontinue to advocate
dramatic global transformation of the present state of property relations between
the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'.

Recall: after the legal coup-d-etat of Fuhrer Bush in 2000 there was a rising movement
inside the United States for his impeachment and a callng into question the whole legitimacy
of the whole corporate state, including the U.S. Supreme Court, then 911 saved his ass!

Radicals 'dumbed down' and then referred to themselves as 'progressives' so as not to
be linked up and connected with the bogeyman of Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden. People
started getting dressed up in the red-white-and-blue Amerikan flag and the fascist state
machinery was able to control public opinion, instill fear and paranoism into the general population.

The U.S. government is still fascist with a black face in the White House, the perfect fascist-
corporate puppet in the name of President Barack Obama. Compared to the bumbling fool
Fuhrer Bush, who is not going to look like a real progressive improvement?

Let us not go to sleep now gentle people! Fascism is still 'in power and secure' and we are
still wasting billions of dollars trying to police the world and fighting ghost wars!!!

We must speak the truth, our truth and when we agree there is harmony, when there is
some disagreement among humane liberated souls let us agree to disagree, so long as we agree on helping to meet the basic survival needs of the people: food, clothing, shelter, medical care and quality education. We must mobilize the masses around their basic survival needs.

From a long-term strategic viewpoint we require a true worldwide democratic socialist revolution, not mere reform of a corrupt decaying system! Social revolution would be a relevant quantum leap in human evolution!

Beyond the days of Che Guevara, we can now utilize the Power of the Internet to reach out
to others, to raise cosmic consciousness and to neutralize the fanatical forces of reaction.

Let there be thousands of groups, parties and progressive organizations! Let us come
together as one unified humanity beyond flags, borders, artificial races and petty
cultural nationalism.

We can do this in unity with all peoples who desire real social change and a dramatic improvement in their personal lives. The future of our children is at stake in what we do or do not do in these troubled times.

Education for Liberation!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Wake Up! Join Up! Rise Up!
http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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The HELP Survival Platform

http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/2007/01/help-survival-platform.html and ~

http://help-matrix.ning.com/profiles/blogs/humaneliberationparty-survival

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HumanE Liberation Party ~ HELP
~A Vanguard Education Party~
HELP 5-Point Survival Platform
First Post Online: ~ January 1, 2001 ~
Sacramento, California, USA ~

#1. We demand our basic humane needs for the survival of our species: nutritional food, proper clothing, decent shelter, wholistic medicine and quality education for our present welfare and future success in the New Millennium.

#2. We demand complete employment for our natural energies, relevant job training or a guaranteed income for our continued life existence as humane beings in order to work in decent positions as functional mature adults.

#3. We demand worldwide socialist democracy with proportional representation: wherein the majority rules, protects minorities and cares for all based upon 'one human being, one legitimate vote' in fair, free and open monitored elections.

#4. We demand equal respect for all humane rights: no matter the economic class, blood race, gender sex, national identity, native tribe. cultural origin or personal orientation and the conscientious resolution of violations against the humane rights of all indigenous native tribes.

#5. We demand true Peace on Earth and an immediate end to all evil unjust wars, regional conflicts and territorial disputes in conjunction with the total elimination of all Weapons of Mass-Destruction by any and all means mandatory.

When in the Course of Human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Humankind requires that they should declare the root Causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Human Beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights---that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness-That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among People, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles and Organizing its Powers in such Forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes: and according all Experience hath shown that Humankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursing invariably the Same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under a Mature Fascism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their Future security.

Click:
http://help-matrix.ning.com/profiles/blogs/humaneliberationparty-survival

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"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for the people!"
~~ El General George L. Jackson ~ Field Marshal Black Panther Party {1942–1971}

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/index-beb.html
<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>

HELP: the HumanE-Liberation-Party Blog
http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/2007/01/help-survival-platform.html

Morpheus: "...Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself."
<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>+<•>
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>

HELP: the HumanE-Liberation-Party Blog
http://help-matrix.blogspot.com/

<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>

FYI: News for a New Humanity

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Join the Alliance for a New Humanity!
Education for Liberation! Peter S. Lopez ~aka: Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

http://anhglobal.ning.com/group/humanerightsagenda
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/
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From: The Alliance for a New Humanity <newsletter@anhglobal.org> To: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 4:32:33 PM Subject: News for a New Humanity

June 2009 IN THIS ISSUE Welcome Transform Serve Connect IN BRIEF U.N. Launches "Seal the Deal" Campaign Growing U.S. support for U.N. initiatives is raising hopes among those who want to see the world community take immediate . More. . . Self-Reflection Exercise: Identifying Your Toxic Emotions Identify your toxic emotions with Dr. David Simon... More. . . Walking the World Life brings with it so much opportunity, so many directions and so many interesting people. But which opportunity, direction or person do you choose? More. . . Causecast and United We Serve: Get Involved! People want to do good, want to be inspired, and want to inspire others to join them in giving back. More. . . Together We Can Make A Difference I once had a dream. Since I was a child, I was "haunted" by a vision. Through my mind's eyes, I kept seeing a beautiful place, merged into nature, where people lived peacefully and happily.This vision became an obsession to me. I just could not stop thinking about such a place. I wanted to change the world, to participate in the construction of that peaceful world I envisioned. More. . . Dear Friends, I am thrilled that my good friend who is like a brother, Fred Matser, has accepted the position of Chairman of the Board of the Alliance for a New Humanity. He is a man with a heart who lives the principles of personal transformation, connectivity and service. Read more of Deepak's letter . . . Dear ANH Community Allies, Some of you may know that I stepped in as Chairman early June after having been on the Board for about 1 1/2 years. I feel honoured to have the trust of all my fellow Board members to step into the shoes of my wonderful predecessor, Roberto Savio. Read more of Fred's letter . . . Over the coming month we will be updating our site, please excuse any glitches in service or functionality. We're working diligently to improve our online presence. Thank you for your patience. TRANSFORM – BE THE CHANGE Starting With the Man in the Mirror... In a perfect world Michael Jackson would have drifted off into Neverland peacefully and quietly almost without want or worry. But when his heart stopped and news spread, the whole world stopped along with him. More . . . Challenge Day mission is to provide youth and their communities with experiential workshops and programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth, and full expression. More . . . Self Powering Generators Imagine living off of the grid, not paying electric bills anymore, and having an alternative energy source consisting of a small self powering generator that is running your entire property! More . . . Check out the Transform area of the website. . . To contribute to the Transform element: transform@anhglobal.org To learn more about the Be the Change program: bethechange@anhglobal.org SERVE – MAKE A DIFFERENCE Thoreau once observed that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." We, The Difference Makers, have a calling to bring our energy and talents into a collective force that goes out into the community and creates solutions . . . More . . . Three Australian skateboarders brought their boards to Kabul and started teaching the kids how to skate to interact with them and develop cross-cultural learning. Skateistan is Afghanistans first dedicated skateboarding school. It engages the growing numbers of urbanised youth through skateboarding and provides new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction and education. Read more and get involved. Check out the Serve area of the website. . . To learn more about Make a Difference: makeadifference@anhglobal.org CONNECT – SHARE YOUR PASSION ANH Generosity Exchange Part 3! The Generosity Exchange platform intends to nourish the following needs of its members: to expand our individual and collective evolutionary creative flow, to sincerely value and care for ourselves, each other and the world we . . . Read more and get involved! Rebekah started an interesting and active forum dialogue... So much history in our world relates to "separateness", and clinging to 'borders" and divisions... It is easy to feel discouraged and even lost certain moments. The path for unity of consciousness healing is daily manifest, new... Indeed determination is needed to climb the mountain, or to physically achieve goals, reach objectives, create dreams, to seed healing . . . Participate in the dialogue! A New Humanity If you're out there, stand up and sing it loud . .. . If you're looking for a leader to change the world . . . watch the video here. If you want to Make a Difference, start your a group in your community today! To learn how to begin, and discover the tools and support we can offer, walk through our Group Kit and get started today! Check out the Connect area of the website. . . To learn how you can start a group in your community: groups@anhglobal.org For more information about our Human Forums: humanforum@anhglobal.org MISSION STATEMENT Our mission is to connect people, who, through personal and social transformation, aim to build a just, peaceful, and sustainable world, reflecting the unity of all humanity. Email: newsletter@anhglobal.org Phone: (787) 722-7728 Web: www.anhglobal.org To contribute to the TRANSFORM element: transform@anhglobal.org To learn more about Make a Difference: makeadifference@anhglobal.org For more information about our Human Forums: humanforum@anhglobal.org To learn how you can start a group in your community: groups@anhglobal.org To learn more about the Be the Change Program: bethechange@anhglobal.org Address: Alliance for a New Humanity, 400 Calle Calaf, PMB 460, suite 233, San Juan, PR, 00918, Puerto Rico Register to become a member of Alliance for a New Humanity

Forward email y. Email Marketing by Alliance for a New Humanity | 400 Calle Calaf, PMB 460, | suite 233 | San Juan | PR | 00918 | Puerto Rico

Reversing Bush policy, US seeks seat on UN Human Rights council + Comment

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0401/p02s01-usfp.html

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Diplomatic: President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived at the US ambassador's residence in London Wednesday to meet China's president, Hu Jintao. Ms. Clinton announced Tuesday that the US will join the UN Human Rights Council, some of whose members including China have shielded human rights violators such as Sudan. Jason Reed/Reuters

Reversing Bush policy, US seeks seat on UN Human Rights council

The US will try to reform the council – some of whose members shield human rights violators – from within, officials said.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 1, 2009 edition

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Reporter Howard LaFranchi discusses how the Obama administration is looking to change US policy on human rights.

Washington - President Obama is taking another step down the road of engaging America's adversaries with the decision to seek a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, a group President Bush had shunned..

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced in a statement Tuesday the reversal of Bush's policy of remaining outside the council as a way of protesting its makeup and work. "With others, we will engage in the work of improving the UN human rights system," Secretary Clinton said, with the goal of "advancing the vision of the UN declaration on Human Rights."

The administration's decision set off the latest installment of a debate in foreign-policy circles over whether the world's most egregious rights abusers are best confronted from within or outside the international human rights tent embodied by the council.

The 47-country council is tasked with defending international rights, but even some of its members concede the Geneva-based body spends too much time criticizing Israel and focusing on issues such as Islamophobia in Western countries. The council's predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission, was branded as a club for dictators and scuttled in 2006. The current council is dominated by countries from Africa and Asia that have shielded human rights violators such as Sudan and Zimbabwe from scrutiny.

The Bush administration concluded that US membership would only grant legitimacy to the council, and stayed outside when it was created in 2006. The US initially accepted observer status but then decided even that was too much.

But on the same day that the Obama administration extended overtures to Iran, US officials at the UN explained the new "reform from within" stance on the council.

Joining the council is part of Obama's "new era of diplomatic engagement," said the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, adding that the aim was to make the council "a more effective body and to protect and promote human rights."

Preempting potential protests from conservatives who preferred the Bush administration's express condemnation of the council, Ambassador Rice added, "As a fully engaged member of the council, we'll be working from within rather than sitting on the sidelines – and thus can do more."

"Getting in now would put the US in the "best position to influence the 2011 council review," Rice added in a conference call with reporters.

The US will go up for election to the council in a mid-May vote, but will join Belgium and Norway in a three-candidate ticket for three seats and thus is virtually guaranteed a seat.

But some UN and human rights experts say remaining outside now with the 2011 review as a bargaining chip would have been the better way to pursue reform of the council.

"US membership and the prestige that comes with it should have been withheld until 2011," says Steven Groves, a specialist in international human rights institutions at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. The Obama administration could have used the fact that the world wants the US in the council as a means of pressing for meaningful changes, he adds, "but the US surrendered that ground without a fight."

Now, he says, the US will just be one of seven Western democracies up against 40 countries – mostly from Africa and Asia – that are suspicious of any institutional focus on countries from their regions.

"We're probably going to be replacing Canada with the US," Mr. Groves says, "so it's hard too see how this will be an improvement under the current structure."

Still, most international human rights groups received the US decision favorably. "Active involvement by the US will bring new energy and focus to the Human Rights Council's deliberations and actions, helping it become a more credible force for human rights promotion," says Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

Mr. Roth acknowledged the council's failure to address "the wide range of serious human rights problems around the world" while keeping a "one-sided focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But, he says, as a member the US could lead the council to "fulfill its potential."

Related Stories

Obama's moment on human rights 12/10/2008

Recast UN human rights group: any better? 10/03/2007

Related Link: Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~ December 10, 1948

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Comment: To me, this is great news and shows a key difference between the former Bush Regime and the present Obama Administration. It highlights the central role of the humane rights movement on a global level and cosmic level. These central rights are given to us by merit of us all being Creatures of the Creator ~ creatures of the Creator have declared these rights to be sacred but they have always been and are as a key part of our birthright and our priceless inheritance as human beings in an often inhumane world such as we live in today.

Our common agenda in the political-social-economic spheres of life should be a basic, fundamental humane rights agenda. It is the common denominator for all of us who seek a new world of peace, prosperity and representative democracy for all peoples. It should be   

the common denominator whether we are Left-Wing or Right-Wing, Democratic or Republican, Black or White, Gay or straight or caught up in any kind of either-or cultural stance that excludes any significant group of people upon the planet Earth. It is the key central common denominator that can unite the now divided progressive movement inside the United States and throughout the world because it is based upon our common humane rights, including our basic survival rights of food, clothing, shelter, medical care and quality education! We mobilize the masses around their basic common needs, common dreams and common humane rights!

The immigrant rights movement is a part of the humane rights movement as are all positive progressive movements that fight for the rights of any particular group, people or social orientation. The violation of the humane rights of anyone is a violation upon all of us. If there is a devil be sure that the devil is a divider who gets a perverted thrill when he sees good hearted and well-intentioned people fight each other other surface superficial differences. Have the vision to see the clarity beyond the present chaos!

In relation to human beings there is only one race: the human race. A human being as such can simply mean a two-legged carnivorous animal. A HUMANE BEING is one who strives to have tender care, genuine concern and loving compassion for all of living beings, especially human beings who are creatures of the Creator. Racism against any one particular ethnic group or so-called race is a mental-spiritual disorder.

Let us not be divided by flags, borders, religions or confused philosophies. There is only one Mother Earth and she is in deep trouble on a global level. Human beings are NOW truly an endangered species. No one can guarantee the promise of tomorrow as it never arrives. All we have to work with and work in is the HERE NOW of CONNECTED REALITY. The rest is either a longing for a never-to-return past that does not exist or a longed for future that is always ahead of in the timeline of life. All we have is HERE NOW and on the cosmic level we should strive to see that we are ALL ONE. We are all involved in 'this thing of ours' called life and we can only survive and succeed as a unique species of life if we come together in genuine unity based upon a COMMON HUMANE RIGHTS AGENDA!

Education for Liberation! Join Up!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/

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