Wednesday 24th of April 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

our special fascist friend .....

‘My fellow Americans, it’s official now: We live in a fascist nation.

Now, the term "fascist" has been thrown around over the last fifty years in a loose way that has drained it of much of its meaning. If someone wanted to cut 5% off of a leftist professor's favourite welfare programme, the professor would call his opponent a "fascist." I’m not using the word like that. I mean honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, 1930s style fascism, featuring such old favourites as:

- Secret prisons – they’re back!
- Torture – we’re doing it.
- Spying on all citizens.
- Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
- Rampant militarism.
- Secret detention.
- Enforced disappearance.
- Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
- Prolonged incommunicado detention.
- Unfair trial procedures.

(This list was compiled partially based on the work of Amnesty International, available here.)

An absolutely mind-numbing response to complaints that our traditional legal system is being torn apart is the question, "So, you want to protect the rights of terrorists?"

Um, no, I want to protect the rights of non-terrorists who might be falsely accused of terrorism! That was sort of, you know, the whole idea of our legal system. I’m sure there was some neo-con around in the 1700s saying to Jefferson or Madison, "So, you want to protect the rights of murderers and robbers?" but luckily they ignored him.’

Welcome to Fascist America!

a poisoned fruitcake...

Yes John

What many people these days don't realise is that Fascism and Hitler did not just happen in old black and white — and the occasional scratchy coloured — movie reel... (Only a few hundred thousands people were at these Nuremberg rallies... not much more that a grand final football stadium crowd...) Most people either did not care, did not stop the slow evolving process in fear of reprisal or were fully complicit to protect their greed.

But many unaware decent Germans were having a good normal life, enjoying the sunshine, leisurely boating on the lakes and hosting glorious family picnics in the beautiful bountiful fruitful and bloomiful springtime... Then the shiver hit the fan...

What it's about

No, not this tripe, Bindi cyber squatter fury, peddled by the commercials as 'news'.

But, The Daily Show as Substantive as Broadcast News at Slashdot:

They stopped being about "news" a long time ago.
Now, they are ALL about "entertainment". Which is why CNN has "The Situation Room" and such.
The Daily Show SHOULD be operating with a handicap. They have to focus solely on the items that they can turn into a joke. That should not be easy. They should be scraping the bottom of the barrel.
But they have one advantage that the "news" shows do not. The Daily Show has SMART people working for it. They REMEMBER previous statements by politicians and they are not afraid to show how the politicians contradict themselves.
When was the last time you saw actual analysis and comparisons of a politician's statements on a regular news program. Yet they are a staple of The Daily Show. Because it is FUNNY when they catch a politician contradicting him/herself. And then The Daily Show will continue to hammer on the joke.
It should be stupid. It should be lame. But because the regular "news" shows have abandoned even the pretense of being about "news", The Daily Show wins by default.
The Daily Show mines recent events for jokes.
Regular news shows can't even mine recent events for news.

 

As the Living Brain, Barry Jones, said in his speech about Peter Lalor and the Eureka Stockade: 

'Framing' can shape community discourse and understanding. People who try to kill themselves at the Baxter Detention Centre might deserve sympathy if their actions are called 'suicide attempts', but not if defined as 'attention seeking incidents'. 'Refugees' or 'queue jumpers'? 'Academics' or 'members of the chattering classes'? 'Terrorists' or 'martyrs?'. 'Accountability' or 'playing the blame game'? 'Security' or 'rigidity'? 'Insecurity' or 'flexibility'? 'Strategic withdrawal' or 'cutting and running'? 'Reform' or 'change'? 'War against terror' or 'Invasion of Iraq'? 'Moving on'/'Closure' means 'Don't discuss it.'

Discussion is what David Cameron, UK Conservative leader, has opened up at his clever website. One of the posters suggested, in Troops 'waiting for NHS treatment':

England is a country with a government that follows without question the foreign policy of the American Government. It simply has to stop.

Well, yes, except that Rupert Murdoch is behind Cameron, and what does Fox News want?  Don't expect to hear much from Cameron on that score. Wouldn't want to sound anti-American. Not like those treacherous New Zealanders. From Firms fear Govt ban on drug ads:

Direct-to-the-consumer drug advertising could soon be banned as the Government moves to tighten controls on the multimillion-dollar industry. But opponents warn such a ban could spell the end of clinical research in New Zealand, and threaten the viability of the pharmaceutical industry. It could also derail New Zealand's biggest annual motor-sport event as key sponsor Merck Sharp and Dohme pulls out because it expects the Government to make such sponsorship illegal. "(A ban) would send another signal that this is an anti-industry, anti-United States government," Merck Sharp and Dohme managing director Alister Brown said yesterday.

feeling safer .....

“America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours & allies," according to a new survey of Great Britain, Mexico, Israel & Canada "that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq."