This is a well documented post reprinted from www.dailykos.com
I am not going to rehash all the ways that the Bush administration has used its so called War on Terra to initiate the first steps towards fascism. They had us waving flags and fearing the Enemy and giving up our civil liberties and circling our wagons and profiling Muslims and Arabs, the way the play book demands if you are trying to weaken a democracy and make it safe for fascism. However, the threat from a handful of Saudi terrorists over there is so vague. What they really needed was an internal threat. Something that would allow them to call out the National Guard using the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007

http://www.towardfreedom.com/... /

so that they could round up immigrants and confine them in Halliburton constructed camps where they could be put to work. All it would take is for a handful of Latinos to try to fight back when the Minutemen show up to use them for target practice on the border. Once that happens, all Latinos in the country will be suspect, since their sympathies will be presumed to lie with their incarcerated kinfolk. Good thing the President now has the power to declare even citizens enemy combatants. Lock them up, too. Let them pluck chickens for Tyson, with Halliburton collecting their wages. Or put them to work picking crops on the chain gang.

Mexico won’t like it. But hey, part of fascism is expansionism. If Mexico gets too uppity, that will give us an excuse to invade for the umpteenth time so that we can liberate all of that nationalized oil.

We are kidding ourselves if we think that no one in the far right is thinking this way in America right now. The right wing movement which tried to have FDR overthrown in a political coup and which is trying to stack our courts with Federalist judges can benefit from a fascist political movement, which can, in turn, benefit from partnering with the political elite. And a fascist political movement needs some group here at home to hate, preferably an immigrant group.

http://www.splcenter.org/...

In times of economic hardship, it is even easier to sell messages of hate, since the working class wants to blame someone. While unions and the left attempt to blame the business owner and the politicians and the rich (income disparity has never been higher), the hate right says "Blame the immigrant. He is taking your job and using up your tax money." And it is always easier to kick someone more vulnerable than it is to shake your fist at someone above you.

Most ominous of all, We will also lose our sense of justice. The "all of us are created equal" doctrine will be thrown out the window.

The natural tendencies of man are to be loyal to ones’ own people, thus having an aversion to all that is foreign. Preying upon this very idea, the Klansmen preached of their hatred for all groups alien to their original American stock. These groups included Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and all immigrants in general. http://www.theamericanist.com/...

We all recognize that this is fascism: http://www.ushmm.org/...

On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms against Germany's Jews. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. This event came to be called Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets.
Snip
Stormtroopers killed at least 91 Jews and injured many others. For the first time, Jews were arrested on a massive scale and transported to Nazi concentration camps.

Keep your eyes open, and when it is finally fascism, someone be sure to tell the rest of us, so that we can panic.

Feature: Doorways

Introduction: http://www.sapphyr.net/natam/na-active.htm
The article below has been re-printed with kind permission of the author, Sharon Pacione. It is an attempt to wake people up out of their complacency and ignorance and see what's really happening around them, right at this very minute. The US launched an attack on Iraq, regardless of the many in the world who opposed it, including most of the nations of the UN. Do we really believe this bullying will stop at Iraq? Country after country will follow the same fate as Iraq, until we wake up to what is going on.
History books are written by the victors, and is never an indication of the truth of what really happened, and the Native Americans are but one example. We are not being told the real truth, whether it be about history, or about current events.
But now, more and more, courageous voices are speaking out against war as a solution to anything. The first step to creating Peace is to arm yourself with the Truth. The second step is to do something about it. Each of us individually has the power to create the Peace we all wish for. And not just the power, but we have a responsibility as Global Citizens. As long as we sit back and do nothing, whether out of fear or out of ignorance, we will all be victims in the end.
I encourage you to arm yourself with Knowledge. Then rid yourself of your fears and start to do something, before it is too late. Let's give our children a world to look forward to. The native americans have the custom of basing all their actions on how it will affect 7 generations into the future; that is, the future we leave our children with. What a wonderful idea for governments to implement before they make any policies. Start to become aware of what's happening, and look behind the scenes. Start questioning.
War does not determine who's right, only who's left!
Author Unknown

Aquila ka Hecate writes, in an article about electoral politics in South Africa,

It may be only as more of us start to grow up into the realisation that we are deeply responsible, each of us, for our creations, that we may begin to stand outside of ourselves-outside of our wants and perceived needs, outside of our drives to power over and oblivion from,that we can begin to be what we shaped ourselves to be originally- the universe in mortal consciousness, feeling our connection to each other and to all with every fibre of our beings, waking and sleeping in the surety that whatever befalls our brother befalls ourselves, and knowing beyond a shadow of doubt that we all belong here.

Posted & reprinted from: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112707K.shtml
Baghdad - Gunmen in Baghdad's Shaab neighborhood stormed into a house not far from an Iraqi police checkpoint and killed 11 members of an Iraqi journalist's family, witnesses and journalism organizations reported Monday.

The killings came after the journalist, Dhia al Kawazz, who edits a Web site from Amman, Jordan, that's frequently critical of militia groups, was warned to stop his work, said the family member, who asked to be identified only as Abu Mohammed. Kawazz was in Amman during the attack.

"As you've noticed, there is no one seeking an investigation, and no investigation has been opened," said Ibrahim al Saraj, who heads the Association to Defend Iraqi Journalists' Rights in Iraq. Saraj said the killings were part of a campaign to attack journalists "to dim the news in this country and to oppress journalistic freedom in Iraq."

Journalists are frequent targets of violence in Iraq. At least 206 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, according to the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters without Borders, which condemned the killings on Monday.

But Sunday's killings also provided a chilling look at why Baghdad remains a city governed by fear, despite declines in violence hailed by Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Abu Mohammed, Kawazz's relative, said neighbors told him that the Land Cruiser was carrying five men when it pulled up in front of Kawazz's house at 7:30 a.m. Four gunmen got out and used some type of explosive to enter the house, where members of the family were eating breakfast. One man stayed in the vehicle, its engine running.

The four gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons, Abu Mohammed said, killing seven children, two women who reportedly were Kawazz's sisters and their husbands. Kawazz's mother survived because she was on the roof, Abu Mohammed said.

The men detonated another explosive as they left the house, but nearby police made no effort to stop the assailants as they drove away, said Mohammed, a colleague who refused to be identified, and Saraj.

Kawazz, a Shiite, runs an electronic news agency that often criticizes the U.S. and Iranian "occupations" in Iraq as well as the Mahdi Army and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its military wing, the Badr Organization. His Web site, www.aliraqnews.com, often drops the honorific "sayed" or "honored one" from before Sadr's name, and Kawazz recently published a lengthy article detailing divisions within the Mahdi Army.

Kawazz was told of the killings by a third sister on Sunday. His Web site published an account of the attack on Monday and accused "sectarian militias" of the crime.

Abu Mohammed said that Kawazz had received letter and telephone threats to stop his work. "They are seeking to make Iraq empty of journalists who can report the truth," he said.

Feature: Doorways

Posted /reprinted from: http://usterrorism.blogspot.com/
I received this email also.....had the same response...
I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.

But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue. Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table...everywhere. And others birds were boisterous and loud:
They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.
...I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone... no one demanding their rights toa free meal.
Now lets see....... our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen.
Then the illegal's came by the tens of thousands.
Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families: you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor: your child's 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English:
* Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box;
* I have to press 'one' to hear my bank talk to me in English:
* and people waving flags other than 'Old Glory' are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
Maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.

"Wow, what a bunch of crap. That kind of "logic" is the Jim Crow of today's racist, fascist subculture.There is no debate that whoever wrote this is motivated by a strong vein of racism and white supremacy, but that aside, there are some 'points' he tries to make that are worth dispelling." Subsidies The truth is the US government subsidizes the oil companies, defense contractors, weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, mega-farms and other big profit industries to an massive degree, and things like urban development, housing projects, and food programs get a pittance. "Welfare," as Americans know it, has been intentionally set up to fail. Take second to think about it-- ever since Reagan, there has been a conscious attempt by right-wing ideologues to only pass legislation that makes such social programs bloated, bureaucratic, and destined to fail. But if you take a look at European "welfare states" such as France, Germany, the UK, and the Scandinavian nations, their "welfare" systems guarantee such things as months of paid leave for new mothers, subsidized daycare, sick leave, 1 month paid vacation, etc.. Things that help people and society work better.. WORK. The concept of a "safety net" is a strawman set up by Republicans to encourage "free market" social policy-- raping our national resources, including labor and capital, and filling the coffers of big business. The real thesis of this racist's tirade is that: the US is some kind of big free meal ticket, with bloated, generous, and free access to vast amounts of freebies and easy rides...and that's why we have all the problems we have, everything from violence and crime to budgetary problems.

Well, if that's true, and the US government is such a generous free ride, the statistics sure don't think so. You'd expect the US to be at the top of a list of nations and their expenditures on social programs:Immigration is a totally separate issue. The same neoliberal/neoconservative policies that the IMF, World Bank, the Chicago School, and Economic Hitmen have forcefully implemented in South and Central America over the past 50 years has created a blowback of desperate immigration. If we hadn't pillaged their nations and corrupted their governments, people would be quite happy to stay at home. There is no room in this debate for such blatant ignorance, racism, and fascism. And it makes me sick.

Feature: Crossroads

How long will Americans ignore the terrorism of their government?
How long before we recognize the enemy?




"They call it terror if you are few and have no B-52s
if you are not a head of state with an army and police
if you have neither napalm nor tanks nor electronic battlefields
terror is if you are dispossessed and have only your own two hands each other and your rage
It is not terror if you are New York’s Finest and you shoot a ten-year old Black child in the back because you think Black people all look like
they’ve just committed a robbery
It is not terror if you are ITT and buy the men who line Chilean doctors up in their hospital corridors and shoot them for supporting the late democratic government of their country
It is not terror but heroism if you were captured by the Vietnamese for dropping fragmentation bombs on their schools and hospitals Only those who have nothing can be terrorists ....... "

a poem by the Women of the Weather Underground, from Sing a Battle Song: Poetry by Women in the Weather Underground Organization (Factory School/Southpaw Culture, 2006; originally published in 1975 by the Red Dragon Print Collective)

Feature: Crossroads

Posted and reprinted from:
http://www.nativeamericans.com/

One path to healing is to bring what lives in the shadows to full light. It is a choice; to either seek truth or to believe whatever is repeated as truth over and over.
It is a choice to be fully present or minimally alive.

"LONG BEFORE the white man set foot on American soil, the Native Americans , had been living in America. When the Europeans came here, there were probably about 10 million Indians populating America north of present-day Mexico. And they had been living in America for quite some time. It is believed that the first Native Americans arrived during the last ice-age, approximately 20,000 - 30,000 years ago through a land-bridge across the Bering Sound, from northeastern Siberia into Alaska . The oldest documented Indian cultures in North America are Sandia (15000 BC), Clovis (12000 BC) and Folsom (8000 BC)

So, when the Europeans started to arrive in the 16th- and 17th-century they were met by Native Americans , and enthusiastically so. The Natives regarded their white-complexioned visitors as something of a marvel, not only for their outlandish dress and beards and winged ships but even more for their wonderful technology - steel knives and swords, fire-belching arquebus and cannon, mirrors, hawkbells and earrings, copper and brass kettles, and so on.

However, conflicts eventually arose. As a starter, the arriving Europeans seemed attuned to another world, they appeared to be oblivious to the rhythms and spirit of nature. Nature to the Europeans - and the Indians detected this - was something of an obstacle, even an enemy. It was also a commodity: A forest was so many board feet of timber, a beaver colony so many pelts, a herd of buffalo so many robes and tongues. Even the Indians themselves were a resource - souls ripe for the Jesuit, Dominican, or Puritan plucking.

It was the Europeans' cultural arrogance, coupled with their materialistic view of the land and its animal and plant beings, that the Indians found repellent. Europeans, in sum, were regarded as something mechanical - soulless creatures who wielded diabolically ingenious tools and weapons to accomplish mad ends.

The Europeans brought with them not only a desire and will to conquer the new continent for all its material richness, but they also brought with them diseases that hit the Indians hard. Conflicts developed between the Native Americans and the Invaders, the latter arriving in overwhelming numbers, as many "as the stars in heaven". The Europeans were accustomed to own land and laid claim to it while they considered the Indians to be nomads with no interest to claim land ownership. The conflicts led to the Indian Wars , the Indian Removal Act empowered by President Andrew Jackson in 1830 and other acts instituted by the Europeans in order to accomplish their objectives, as they viewed them at the time. In these wars the Indian tribes were at a great disadvantage because of their modest numbers, nomadic life, lack of advanced weapons, and unwillingness to cooperate, even in their own defense.
The end of the wars more or less coincided with the end of the 19th century. The last major war was not really a war, it was a massacre in 1890 where Indian warriors, women, and children were slaughtered by U.S. cavalrymen at Wounded Knee , South Dakota , in a final spasm of ferocity.
A stupefying record of greed and treachery, of heroism and pain, had come to an end, a record forever staining the immense history of the westward movement, which in its drama and tragedy is also distinctively and unforgettably American."