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turnkey...

 

turnkey

Americans often ascribe to economics effects that are in fact caused by politics. Before the Espionage Act, for instance, there were hundreds of radical newspapers, many of them socialist or communist - or just sympathetic to the plight of workers. After the war, most disappeared. That wasn't the result of market forces. The US government went to great pains at great expense to persuade Americans to embrace an approved ideology while it silenced dissidents with old-fashioned censorship. The Masses, along with 70 other radical publications, went out of business, because the US Post Office wouldn't deliver it.

Yet they were the lucky ones.

'A turnkey totalitarian state'

The Wilson era saw 2,000 prosecutions under the Espionage Act. One was Eugene V Debs, the union organiser. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving a speech, lambasting the draft for World War I. Today, the Obama administration hopes to convict Bradley Manning for allegedly leaking documents to WikiLeaks, including a video of an American helicopter gunning down Iraqi children.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012325104534414953.html

 

It's that simple...

 

The United States' power elite generally regards capitalism and freedom as synonymous and proportional - liberated markets equal a liberated people. Perhaps that's true philosophically, but in practice, the opposite has usually been true. The more unfettered capitalism becomes, the more destructive it becomes. It's that simple. Yet the US government has decided that national security is more important than economic security, and over three decades, these have acted as opposing forces to diminish our core liberties.

This wasn't an accident. About three decades ago, the government unleashed capitalism from the bonds of the New Deal in the name of freedom. Capitalism slowly and then quickly destroyed lives and stole billions. When protesters rose up in the name of freedom, the government smacked them down. As Howard Zinn wrote in A People's History of the United States: "The courts and jails had been used to reinforce the idea that certain ideas and certain kinds of resistance could not be tolerated."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/2012325104534414953.html

 

See also "The Age of Deceit"...

 

morality in the United States...

Republicans are causing a moral crisis in America

 

Katrina vanden Heuvel

Opinion Writer

 

There is moral crisis afoot! So say the Republican candidates for president, their pals in Congress and in state houses. Abortion, gay marriage, contraception — contraception, for Pete’s sake — things that so shock the conscience that it’s a wonder The Washington Post can even print the words!

Here’s something I bet you wouldn’t think I’d say: They’re right. There is a moral crisis in the United States. The only thing is — they’re wrong about what it is and who is causing it.

The real crisis of public morality in the United States doesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology — and a set of policies — that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-are-causing-a-moral-crisis-in-america/2012/03/26/gIQACSM2dS_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop