DESTRUCTICONS
by MALIK ISASIS



My liberal brethren may be surprised to know that the neoconservatives evolved from a group of elite liberal intellectuals. The taxonomy can be traced back to the start of the Cold War when these liberal intellectuals began advocating for a more robust and aggressive foreign policy toward the Soviet Union. James Zogby aptly defined neoconservatives as a reaction to the Democratic Party’s appeasement toward the Soviet Union (Eurolegal). These intellectual liberals were a small influential group of writers, and commentators who where against the banning of abortion, and against school prayer (Center for Media and Democracy) but believed in a protected class, and that an elite and privileged few should govern the masses. (Berlet and Lyons). The social movements of the 60s and 70s like the feminist movement, student movements and African Americans gaining equal access to their Constitutional Rights caused this strand of liberals to precipitously evolve, “these liberals drifted toward conservatism: thus they are new (neo) conservatives” (Center for Media and Democracy).
The neoconservatives developed political narratives through their think-tanks, political operatives, and the Southern Strategy which emphasized American Exceptionalism and the casting of the Democratic Party as feminine and weak. The contrasting narrative of the Republican Party as the party of strength and the Democratic Party as the party of weakness played out during the Vietnam War, and during the Iranian Hostage Crisis. The neocons constructed pseudo-sociological paradigms that transformed political philosophy into racial, geographical and gendered-based tribalism (see the Southern Strategy). The neocons were evolving again. “The advent of Ronald Reagan shifted the emphasis from pragmatism to an ideology. Now, the emphasis was on "the Evil Empire", which was not merely to be contained, but overthrown” (Eurolegal Services). The neocons were seen as a splinter group by mainstream politicians and to the paleo-conservatives (or traditional conservatives) such as Bob Dole,William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, John McCaine, Robert Novak and President George Bush’s father, George Hebert Walker Bush, the neocons were still seen as a movement on the fringes of governance. They were in fact a fringe group, working as very successful political operatives, creating public relation firms, and think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and The Project for the New American Century . The Project for the New American Century began in 1997 with the philosophy “that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle” (Project for the New American Century). Even with its prestigious members ranging from Donald Rumsfield (current Secretary of Defense), Dick Cheney (current Vice President), Dan Quayle (former Vice President) Richard Perle (former member of Defense Policy Board under Bush Administration), Scooter Libby (former Chief of Staff), Jeb Bush (Governor of Florida), James Woosely (former CIA Director), Paul Wolfawitz (former Under Secretary of Defense) to Jeane Kirkpatrick (United Nations Human Rights Commission) the neocons were still viewed as extreme and were minimized by the paleoconservatives--except during political season when the neocons were brought out like the Gimp, in the feature film, Pulp Fiction, to fuck the American populace in the ass and then swiftly escorted back into the shadows of the Republican Party’s propaganda machine until the next election cycle. Although the paleoconservatives treated the neocons like a one-night stand, they also understood they were a good fuck. They were efficient and won elections, however, the paleoconservatives were not interested in a serious relationship.

This all changed when the United States Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the Presidency in 2000. Although President Bush came into office under a cloud of controversy--losing the Popular vote, he was going to govern as though he had a mandate. The Bush Administration had no less than 30 Project for the New American Century members at every level of the new government (Source Watch). The neocons were no longer confined to political mercenary missions. They had reached the pinnacle of power, capturing all three branches of government: the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial. When September 11th, 2001 happened, their values and ideology once viewed as extreme, would become mainstream Republican governance.

The neocons’ skillful tactic of conflating Right-wing conservative ideology which is secular, with religion has created millions of neoconic ideologues. They are able to mobilize the Evangelical base by dividing the world into Good versus Evil. Republican voters, typically Evangelical Christians, have become dogmatic and based their support on faith, rather than reality.

After September 11, 2001, the same strategy of using black and white, carefully polled, and marketed language was used to categorize the whole wide world into two positions, “You’re either with us, or you are with the terrorists.” The Bush Administration’s intial response to September 11th was the Bush Doctrine, which made no distinctions between the terrorists who committed acts of terrorism and Nations who harbored them; the neocons fashioned a simple language, researched and produced by pollsters such as Frank Luntz, who coined the ubiquitous term, “War on Terror”(Rushkoff and Goodman). This ubiquitous term proved fruitful. The media forgoing its Constitutional responsibility to keep a check on government began using the term “War on Terror” without questioning its meaning. In fact the media used the term as a marketing campaign during the build up to the Iraq War and subsequent occupation. The Democratic Party acquiesced and gave George Bush everything he has asked for without much of a fight.

The neocons are sustained by keeping the people ignorant, scared and paranoid. Six years of complete power has wrought overwhelming destruction in the world. The power lust of just a few and their tendency to self-indulge has made America, arguably one of the most destructive forces on earth. In our name, the United States has illegaly invaded and is now illegaly occupying Iraq. During the invasion and now the occupation, more Iraqis have been killed by war, death squads, disease and civil strife than under Saddam; terrorism has flourished world wide; the United States sold weapons and munitions to Israel during the Lebanon and Israeli War which killed hundreds of civilians; and under their leadership nuclear proliferation among Iran and North Korea has expanded.

The necons are great and efficient at destroying things, but are miserable at building and Statesmanship. They have attempted to disassemble Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal-- social welfare programs like social security, unemployment benefits etc., by bankrupting the treasury with over-spending, corporate tax cuts, and uncontrolled spending on the occupation of Iraq. They have nothing but contempt for the government and for the people whom they govern. This is why they continue to lie even when the lie is pointed out to them. They are great performers, having built a public realtions and crisis management style of governing, however, they can no longer run or hide from the shit that they’ve shovelled under the carpet. Six years of insecurity, legislative and economic failure has revealed to the American people their lack of compassion, their lack of sacrifice. They have sold themselves to the American people as the tonic for the Democratic Party’s moral decay, however, it’s a reflection of their incompetence in governance and moral decay. The neocons’rule of thumb: project your weakness and short-comings onto your political opponent to destroy him.

I can not stand these people. They will do anything to hold onto to power. They have become a destructive force in politics and global interaction. Having turned politics into blind ideology, they have torn the country apart. The Destructicons is probably a more accurate name for the Republican Party, it is a name that has been well-earned.



Sources:

A Project of the Center for Democracy, Liberalism, Neoconservatives
Dr. James Zogby, Arab American Institute.
Berlet, Chip and Lyons, N. Matthew, Right-Wing Populsim in America: Too Close for Comfort, New York: Guilford Press (2000)
Brown, David Washington Post, "Study Claims Iraq's ‘Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000”October 11, 2006.
Carter, Estanislao, “1984 Orwellian Parallels” October 1, 2006.
Euro Legal Services, The Neoconservatives
Find Articles “Nixon’s Southern Strategy and Forces Against Brown”
Goodman, Barak, and Rushkoff, Douglas Frontline: The Pursuaders. Narr. Douglass Rushkoff. PBS. WBGH Boston. 9 November 2004.
Human Rights Watch, US: Deny Israeli Request for Cluster Munitions
Mandel. Joan, How Political Is the Personal?: Identity Politics, Feminism and Social Change, Colgate University.
Mazetti, Mark New York Times “Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat” September 23, 2006.
United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Voting Section
Project for the New American Century
Steve Schoenherr, Professor of History, University of San Diego

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Here is the first story in the series: Immigrants Are Us. This legal immigrant is from the Muslim community in Seattle. This is his testimony, in his own words. His words were not edited or revised. It is the straight dope. The public hearing was held on October 18, 2006 with State, County, Community Activists and City officials present.

THE FBI HAS YOUR DOCUMENTS
by a LEGAL IMMIGRANT


Good evening. There is a very thriving and growing industry that only lives to spread fear and hate in this country; and as you get closer to the election on November 7th you will see more and more people will start taking bashes at Arabs and Muslims. I am Muslim. So I see a lot of this. I see more information coming against Arabs and Muslims on a daily basis than our local papers or the New York Times put out in a week. And the manifestation of the hate-generation is insidious—wide spread it shows itself not only in the way it is enforced against a certain targeted people or group, but it shows its ugly face in laws and in the way we treat people—the way we dehumanize human beings.
A friend of mine came to me one day and he said, “Help me. I don’t know what to do.” Now just to give you a picture –those of you who are lucky enough to have been born here and don’t know any reality other than the works of this country—so far, it might change if we don’t do any thing about it. When the first generation people who come hear. We live under fear of authority. If you raise your head it will get whacked off. If you speak out, you will be shut up. So, questioning why somebody is doing something is a huge under taking on somebody’s part. My friend came to me and said, “Help me.” My friend is a deep scholar of Islam. One of the most wonderful broadly educated scholar [sic] you can imagine in Comparative Religion—he knows four or five different languages—so fluently that…I can’t even speak English that well. I said, “What’s the problem?” He had applied for citizenship, he already had his green card. He’d been here for years and years. All the paperwork went through-- everything was processed. He was sent a letter saying come on this day for your final interview. And just a few days before that given date, he received a letter which in typical bureaucratize [sic] said “you have been descheduled from your interview.” So, he waited. He waited a few months—nothing happened. Somebody told him, “Hire an attorney,” which probably in this case is a good way to hit brakes on everything. It took forever--months later. They found out that his paperwork is not moving. So he came to me. We went to our senator. The senator was helpful, up to a point. She was able to get a hold of immigration and say, “What’s going on?” and the immigration service came back and said, “Well, the FBI has the documents. When they bring them. We will deal with them.” Well we used a few connections with the FBI and found out no, the FBI had checked the documents, passed them, cleared him and sent them back to immigration. And all this is sucking up more and more weeks as each time we go back and forth. We finally find out that finally another terse letter comes from immigration saying, “Well, his documents are with the…” I dunno Homeland Security or something, under National Security and at that point our very wise senator with an eye on re-election said, “Nope, can’t deal with it. National Security.” And his papers are buried. He is not moving any further on that issue. What can we do about it? Nothing. Meanwhile he’s living in fear that somebody’s going to come and attack him for being –God knows-- terrorist or enemy combatant or non-combatant or something. I have another friend whose sister was all cleared to come from Pakistan to this country with her husband and two children. She was about to get her final green card documents so that she can come here. She only had to go for an interview to the US Embassy. Suddenly she got a letter saying, “Hold everything” no explanation--nothing, just hold everything. "We will tell you." Now in Pakistan or any foreign country you have to have a full medical check up…from head-to-toe before you go in for your interview and that check up is only good for 90 days. In Pakistan you can only go to a few doctors listed in the whole country. So this family of four, every 90 days, has to fly 900 miles to a doctor in the capital city, stay in a hotel, get full medical check up so that they don’t lose their status and come back and wait again. This is an extremely expensive business for anybody.
People in this country are being locked up for the simple crime of being Muslims. Oh yes, there are official reasons—just like you throw somebody in the jail for jaywalking. The official reasons here are, visa violations. That alone, will cover just about everything. All right so this guy is deportable. There are people in jail in the United States of America who have said, “Okay I give. I’m sorry. I overstayed my visa by five days. I’ve been in jail for two years. If you let me go, I will go” And they say, “Fine, you’re deportable.” They signed the documents but they never let him go. There are people who’ve been rotting in jail under this situation for years. Why? Nobody is saying. He’s deportable, yes. Well deport him, okay and then it stops. We have something called the Constitution. I’d like to think once-in-a-while we open it and read it. I went to Washington D.C. a couple of years ago and I wanted to see the Constitution. I love that document--went to the Smithsonian and suddenly I realize our politicians don’t apply the Constitution. You can’t see it! You look at it you can’t read it! And I thought, “Ahh, the penny dropped. Now I know why these guys can’t read the Constitution.” There is an Article 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. I strongly recommend you read it. And if you read it years ago, I strongly recommend you read it again. It is the clearest statement that every person in the jurisdiction of this country—not a citizen of the United States but any person who is under the jurisdiction of the United States has a right to due process of the law, has a right to liberty, and has a right to a speedy trail. These are rights, these are not privileges –these are not just something somebody just enjoys because they have a document in their pocket.
Now I’ll close by just one thing. Some of you are too young to know this. Remember the Soviet Union? Well it use to exist back then. The Soviet Union had one of the finest Constitutions known in the world. What was the difference between the Soviet Union and the United States of America? We actually used our Constitution. Soviet Union never did. Guess what? Today we’re busy destroying our Constitution. It won’t come back because of some miracle. It won’t comeback because we have regime change or party change. It’ll come back because of you. Every one of you. Don’t just nod your head. Don’t just say say, “It’s a terrible story.” Go home and think about it—talk to people and vote those people out who think the Constitution belongs to a privileged few. Vote them out. Forget about party loyalties. And I guarantee you we will come into a better country than we are in right now. Thank you.

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IMMIGRANTS ARE US
by MALIK ISASIS



I am currently working on a documentary with the non-profit organization Hate Free Zone here in Seattle on what they refer to as the broken immigration system. Hate Free Zone has sponsored a series of public hearings “highlighting the real cost to our communities of our broken immigration system.”

During this political season, both legal and illegal immigrants have been the scapegoats for politicians across both political spectra. As the United States’ population has crossed the threshold of 300 million, there must be more creativity than building yet another wall to address the immigration system, which both liberals and conservatives agree is broken.

I went to film one of the public hearings on October 18, 2006. The hearing consisted of legal immigrants telling stories of mistreatment by Homeland Security, FBI, detention centers, and the courts. I am currently transcribing the testimony by the immigrants and will be sharing their stories with you.

There will be a series of stories from the immigrants themselves, telling the stories in their own voices. Their identities will be redacted for protection.


Source:

Pictured is Amaneh Ekhtair from the Iranian film, "A Time for Drunken Horses"

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TIPPING WINDMILLS
by MALIK ISASIS


As the November 2006 election nears, the wheels have come off the Republican Party's propaganda machine; an accumulation of scandals has finally pulled back the curtains on the Republicans’ veneer of being the party of strength, security, and moral superiority. Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley, just to name a few, were involved in everything from bribery, money laundering to eliciting sexual solicitation from minors. These scandals involving Republicans and their conservative cabal are being reported as if they were developed in a vacuum, however, the shenanigans by the Republicans and their conservative cabal have been well documented over the past six years (see for yourself).
The accumulation of scandals is only a symptom of a much larger issue: absolute power. Absolute power has infected this Republican Party to the marrow. In spite of their virtues being compromised by hubristic corruption, they deflect fault and refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoing, instead they play six degrees of Bill Clinton; the Republicans can connect Bill Clinton to any scandal. Since the Republicans’ leadership paradigm is top-down, it is very interesting to see them implode. They lash out like cornered cats, wanting to take everyone down with them; and because the Republican Party works from the top-down, that is, they lead from the top-down, lock-step, when one falls, many more of them will fall, like dominoes.

The Republican implosion is not new. Throughout the 20th century, there are examples of Republicans reaching the pinnacle of power and then collapsing from the weight of their incompetence and lack of compassion. It’s the Peter Principle, which theorizes that a person will be promoted to the highest level of his/or her competence and eventually advance to a level of incompetence. The modern Republican Party implodes every other generation under its own ineptitude and rises like the Phoenix, only to repeat the same mistakes.

The 1920s was an era of Republican dominance. During the 1920s there were three consecutive Republican Presidencies: Warren Harding (1920-1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933). Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, like President Bush, favored tax cuts and a hands-off approach toward corporate power. “Taxes and regulation [sic] were slashed dramatically, monopolies were allowed to form, and inequality of wealth and income reached record levels. The country was on the conservative's preferred gold standard, and the Federal Reserve was not allowed to significantly change the money supply (Kangas). The Laissez faire doctrine of unfettered capitalism “was most strictly applied during the Republican presidencies of Warren Harding (1920-1923) and Calvin Coolidge (1923-1928) (Kangas). President Bush's Administration and policies most resembles that of President Warren Harding’s Administration and polices.

"Once in office, Harding admitted to his close friends that the job was beyond him. The capable men that Harding appointed to his cabinet included Charles Evans Hughes as Secretary of State, Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, and Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce. But he also surrounded himself with dishonest cheats, who came to be known as "the Ohio gang." Many of them were later charged with defrauding the government, and some of them went to jail. Though Harding knew of the limitations of men like Harry Dougherty, the slick friend he appointed attorney general, he liked to play poker with them, drink whiskey, smoke, tell jokes, play golf, and keep late hours."…
…Most historians regard Harding as the worst President in the nation's history. In the end, it was not his corrupt friends, but rather, Harding's own lack of vision that was most responsible for the tarnished legacy"
( Americanpresident.org).

President Warren Harding'’s hands-off approach of the investment class helped exacerbate and deepen the class divide. The richer were richer, and the poor were poorer and the small middle-class was on life support. Workers could not afford the products that they were manufacturing. In effect, America was an oligarchy. Eventually, this corporate governance caused the Great Depression.

I would like to take a moment to give a quick shout-out to the late Habeas Corpus (1679 – 2006). Habeas Corpus was laid to rest on October 17, 2006 with a few strokes of President Bush's pen. Let us just have a moment of silence. We can now hold foriegners and Americans in detentions, indefinitely.

Arlen Spector (R), Senator and Judiciary Committee Chairman from Pennsylvania stated that the Supreme Court is likely to invalidate the legislation that would create military commissions to try terrorist suspects and yet, he voted with the Republican Party to kill habeas corpus. Democrats are accomplices as they stood and stand by silently. What caused Arlen Spector to vote against his conscience? Was it the top-down management style of the Republican Party or was it fear of losing his Judiciary Committee Chairmanship? Senator Spector's cowardice to stand up to the Republican machine is a microcosm of the sickness within the Republican Party, and that is, personal gain over public responsibility, multiply this times the number of Republican politicians and you have what is wrong with this party and why they collapse when they attain power.

It may not be this election cycle, but the Republicans will fall spectacularly, they always do, it'’s in their political DNA. When they again rise from the ashes, they will have no synaptic connections to why they failed; they will only see it as their destiny.

Sources:

For more on the twin Presidencies of President Warren Harding and President George W. Bush, click here

Causes of the Great Depression: A Review of Keynesian Theory
by Steve Kangas

Salon
Americanpresident.org
U.S. History
Bartleby Encyclopedia

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PROPAGANDA
by J. SINGH


The Corporate media is a carefully constructed mechanism of mass distraction; it contextualizes very little and turn things like war, environmental degradation, disease, social injustice and massive economic disparity into infotainment. The corporate media bombards us with violence, disease, natural and man-made disasters and a wide variety of abominations of human behavior in an effort to keep us feeling isolated and terrorized. The isolation and terror derives from the corporate media's pornographic obsession with violent imagery, and a lack of context, as in the beginning of the Iraq War when the miltitary began dropping bombs on Baghdad. Before the first bombs were dropped, news programs began a count down clock. The decending voices that discussed the human damage and consequences of a shock and awe campaign were all but squeezed out of the media.

In the upside-down cake world of corporate news, the genocide in Darfur, the horrific plight of New Orleanians during and after Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and Afhghanistan all took the back seat to the white missing teenager in Aruba, Natalee Holloway. As the Bush Administration began molesting the United States Constitution by dissolving habeas corpus, the corporate media salivated and perserverated on John Mark Karr and while all eyes are on the next manufactured news story (Michelle Gardner-Quinn) US soldiers lay maimed, emotionally and mentally cripple and dying in under funded Veteran Administration hospitals.

It is our responsibility to educate ourselves to combat isolation and the shadow of terror and ignorance that keeps us from our true potential. Propaganda is designed to sway opinion in the interests of advancement. My propaganda is in advancing the pace of humanity stepping toward a renewed sense of individual empowerment and collective unity.

As we awaken from the slumber, it is our collaborative and experiential education that will lead us to band together to expose the media as corporate shills.

The true power of humanity is found in the unification and education of the masses.

One People, One Destiny….. One Love

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