Over at the conspiracy minded Prison Planet, Paul Joseph Watson conducts an interview with Naomi Wolf where she connects the Nazi sympathizing ancestors of the current US president with the rise of their financial and political power today:
“A small group of people began very systematically to use the law and dismantle the Constitution and put pressure on citizens to subvert the law – and that opened the door for everything that followed,” [...]
“There was a scheme in the 30′s and Prescott Bush was one of the leaders of this scheme, an industrialist who admired fascism and thought that was a good idea – to have a coup in the United States along the lines of the coup they saw taking place in Italy and Germany,” said Wolf, referring to the testimony of Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, who was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush – the current President’s grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. [...]
“What is amazing to me and resonant to me is that when the Nuremberg trials were finally put in place, these Nazi industrialists, some of whom had colluded with Americans including IBM, were about to be brought to trial and sent to prison – there was a moment at which they were going to look into turning the spotlight on their American partners,” [...]
“The family history is that you can make so much money uniting corporate interests with a fascist state that violently represses people, that’s why when I saw the recycling of so much Nazi language, Nazi tactics, Nazi strategies, Nazi imagery in the Bush White House and then finally belatedly people brought to me this history of Prescott Bush’s attempted coup and Smedley Butler’s revelations – it gives me absolute chills,”
Concludes Watson:
The fact that Bush’s grandfather was a Nazi cannot be presented alone as proof that President Bush is carrying on the legacy, but his policies and rhetoric, which in her essay Wolf clearly documents are borrowed from the Nazi playbook, and in particular the recent move to smear administration critics as potential terrorists, are evidence that George W. Bush is the figurehead for a modern-day fascist coup in America led by the Neo-Cons.
Wolf concluded that history shows the only safe course for preserving freedom in such a climate is to prosecute and jail the protagonists of the coup as early as possible, a process many would argue should have been enacted several years ago.
Bill McKibben has written an interesting article in The Atlantic on how internet radio trumps satellite radio because internet radio makes local radio global. His point being that community is what people crave, and local community allows people to connect in a way that a disjointed, chaotic or simply programmed (24 hours of music but no talk.) does not.
The web will be the venue of the next media movement, but first it needs to iron out the kinks. It will be community based and the closer it can get to real time, the better. At first, like Facebook and Twitter, the social communities will be random and somewhat disjointed, the result of who is in your address book and using the application too, mixed with connecting via random interest in a plethora of searched words, links and web sites, all brought together by curiosity, the technological newness of the application and the desire to reach out and touch someone.
The process is similar to how AOL chats worked in the mid 90′s.- a new computer, new connection to “cyberspace”, and lots of people just like you, looking to talk. Both ICQ and AOL were great at bringing strangers and friends together, but the common elements that create a lasting and growing community were lacking. It was pretty chaotic. People coming and going, not really getting any farther than idle chit chat, which is pretty much the scene on Twitter and Facebook and My Space. IM’s function in a similar manner, as do text messages.
At first, the AOL chat rooms that were so popular began to morph into something else. The ability to create your own chat became the popular choice and established AOL created chat areas faded away. But, not all of them. Some of those prefab chat rooms on AOL began to coalesce into more specific communities, and you’d notice that the same 50 to 100 people were now regulars. Like a cyberspace bar.
The binding connection was like minded lives and interests. You could find anything from car talk to conspiracy talk to bondage in the AOL chat area. My hangout was a public chat called Hollywood Tonight, and once the membership became solid, it evolved and moved into the Hollywood Cafe, a place hidden away in a mostly forgotten area of AOL, which meant that it wasn’t really monitored by the AOL police and that you pretty much had to know where it was to find it. So, it was pretty exclusive.
The “HC” was a den of thieves and Cheers all at once- celebrities, producers, agents, writers, directors, crew and wannabes- all hanging out at the wee hours of the morning talking about pretty much everything under the sun, but most especially movies and the biz. And, when you entered (assuming you’d already gone through the ritual verbal hazing for a month or two), a bunch of people knew your name. (Or your screen name actually.) It was the flamiest place on the web and the most fun. But, you had to pay your dues. Everyone knew each other in either the cyber world or the real world or both. And, relationships were tight. The famous mingled with the infamous and the nobodies. The real action was in IM’s of course.
What linked everyone together was their love of the movie and tv industry and networking. People networked for everything- agents, scripts, connections, introductions, cyber sex and in a number of cases, real sex. And, there was even a real world meet up at an LA bar where everyone could actually meet the people they’ve known only through a bemusing screen name. They’d chat about work, and network. It was quite the hot spot. We affectionately referred to ourselves as “the dorks”.
In the end, it was destroyed by the elements that destroy most communities- a deadly combination of outside forces and inside acrimony. Whilst the members of our little community devolved into clique fighting and petty arguments, the little virtual bar we called the Cafe was under assault by the corporation that was AOL. The area that we inhabited was to be discontinued. (The chat room was part of the Hollywood Online area, and it was dismantled when AOL acquired Moviefone.) For awhile we moved into a private chat, but the member limit was too low, and only allowed 30 members at a time, when it wasn’t uncommon for a daily chat to flow to over 50 and the active members on “the dork list” numbered easily over 100. Plus, being a private chat meant that new members couldn’t join unless they were invited and sent a link to the chat by an existing member. So, new blood was cut off. All in all, a deadly combination that doomed the Hollywood Cafe to the dustbin as a place of legendary social interactive networking on the web years before anyone had thought to call it that.
It’s the great example of how AOL pretty much killed itself by eliminating one of the most popular features for a good number of users. They could not see the value in a community of people all congregating in large groups, at the same time, nearly every single night of the week, but especially on weekends and during big industry nights (the Oscar night chats were incredible, especially when it wasn’t uncommon for someone we knew to be there.). It would take another ten years before corporations like AOL would see the value (on their terms, which means collecting information on users) of social networking at its best.
Today, much of the social networking applications are weak substitutes for the intensity that was a good AOL chat room. From sex talk to philosophy, it was all there. But, more importantly, relationships were built and nurtured and destroyed and rebuilt and abandoned and kindled and ignored, new friends found, enemies were made, just like the real world.
The lesson is that in order to foster a strong social community, the sense of place – even a virtual one- has to be solidly established. It’s essential. Not just a location on the web, not just a web page with all of your likes and information on it. Facebook and Twitter are both lively and interesting communities, but that sense of place and of intimacy is not there yet. Information about what you are doing and thinking moves back and forth, but that sense of place isn’t. Even a virtual Cheers is better than the emptiness of open cyberspace. It’s about the people in the space, it’s about the ability to mimic what we do in person- congregate in groups together and talk and hook up. Simply knowing what someone is thinking or doing at any given moment isn’t enough. You have to be able to take it to the next level, to connect on an intimate level and make a friend or an enemy.
Otherwise, it’s all just chit chat, an endless loop of nothing. Like 24 hour all country radio on Sirius or XM satellite. No signposts in the road. Just fence post after fence post after fence post.
Be sure to watch the new featured video in the upper right hand corner. (c/o Noelle Belle at Crooks and Liars) If you can’t see the video, that probably means you are using an old version of Internet Explorer, and you should be using Firefox anyway!
A new study finds that the US prison system is a “costly failure” – not a deterrent to crime and a black hole that sucks taxpayers money – but that reality is most definitely secondary, since prisons are one of the great corporate growth industries, both in the US and Iraq. It’s the wild wild west, and law and order lay in the hands of those with the most guns.
From the Brian Leher Show’s Video Picks on WNYC, Harlan Ellison rants righteously on how so many of the big media corporations are perfectly willing to ask people for free access to all kinds of content – in this instance an interview with the famed writer to be put on a DVD – for zero compensation. Something for nothing.
It’s a situation that stymies the production end as well, especially in the blossoming area of web content. There are a lot of people creating content for the web for little or no compensation, that content is uploaded to Google or YouTube and they utilize it without any real accounting done as to how much profit they make from specific videos they air. It’s a racket all around, which will hopefully get ironed out as more people become wise to the ruse. (There’s also some additional goodies in the video. Enjoy.)
What is old is new again. Digby is doing an amazing job of comparing and contrasting the dirty tricks of the Nixon era with those currently underway. Snippet:
After years of this sort of politics, from Atwater to Rove, from Willie Horton to Swift Boats, it would be nice to think the mainstream media have learned from the past and will ensure that things like this are adequately examined within the context of history and not just the heat of the moment. But that’s clearly too much to hope for.
I’ve become convinced that assuming that people will naturally veer towards the truly honorable and right perspective in dealing with our fledgling and floundering democracy isn’t in the cards. There will always be those who are willing to lie and steal in order to maintain their base of power and access to power. Money is more important to these people than democracy. And, that’s the “no shit sherlock” moment of the day.
Bill Moyers Journal focused on a little covered legislative scuffle concerning recent developments with media consolidation that is currently underway:
On November 2, 2007, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced that the Commission would hold the sixth and final public hearing on media consolidation November 9, 2007 in Seattle, Washington. Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein blasted the Chairman’s decision to give the public only five business days notice before the hearing: “With such short notice, many people will be shut out … This is outrageous and not how important media policy should be made.”
The business as usual practice of placing the needs of big business before the democratic process and the role of the people should be met at every moment it occurs. Our democracy is being bought and sold to the highest bidders, as is access.
Watch the video online, and contact the FCC and let them know that doing an end run on the democratic process will not stand.
Media outlets are the extended voice of the people. There is a reason the Founding Fathers placed the right of free speech and of a free press right at the top of the Bill of Rights. What is going on now is the threat they foresaw.
A couple weeks ago, working with NeoVids, yours truly shot some video with Greg Palast for the Air America show Ring of Fire that is now playing on Go Left TV. The topic was the Attack on Dan Rather. Check it out.
Former Sec. of State Donald Rumsfeld had to flee France because citizens there want to prosecute him as a war criminal. If this had happened even ten years ago, it would have been front page, top of the news hour. Today, in the age of Dubya, it barely gets noticed. USA as banana republic. No one expects better. Shame that.
The USA edges closer and closer to 1984 every single day. The outrage over this inexplicable event was subdued. Fake news conferences should give every single American, no matter their political bent, pause to finally admit that certain elements of the Bush Administration are so deeply steeped in incompetence and anti-democratic hubris as to be laughable and damnable at the same time. Paddy Chayefsky is rolling in his grave.
Sadly No! unveils a much needed new award, The Medved!
There was a time when we could do anything. Walking on the moon wasn’t a fantasy, it was a reality. Alas, the past seven years we’ve seen the bar lowered by a two term Bush White House compliant to politics and arrogance rather than the difficult choices and compromises that foster real solutions. The result has been the acquiescence of a stronger, more confident American policy and popular consensus of the role of America, both here and abroad. This malaise in leadership nurtures a perception amongst the domestic and global populace that expects nothing more than the usual level of brilliant incompetence. “Our leadership is incapable of anything more” is the general common belief, our leaders aim to please.
Expectations are so low that when an inferior candidate for placement as the top cop in the land is presented, the general response from our leaders is “we can’t expect to do any better, so this will have to do.” Logic has been turned on it’s head. We settle for less, because shooting for better isn’t a an option any more. Better is the new bad. Up is down, down is up. Torture isn’t torture (because they say so and it’s something they truly believe in) when to any sane person, waterboarding is clearly torture.
In the real world, whilst American’s argue about whether the so-called surge in Iraq is working or not working, those human beings whose lives are hanging by a thread because of the war in Iraq and the destabilization of the entire Middle East are experiencing a reality that has nothing to do with the politics of how the US military campaign is perceived or even whether the surge is a success or a failure and everything to do with staying alive. The contrast is striking, and embarrassing.
And, it is costing us dearly. Not to mention the higher cost on the ground in Iraq. Which is the reality check.
Remember when everyone was discussing whether the price of oil would rise above $65 a barrel? Yours truly surely does. Currently, it’s at around $96 a barrel and poised to top $100.
A few years ago, I posted on this issue at Jakeneck and was met with a certain amount of consternation and denial. Harking back to these older posts is in no way meant as an “I told you so” or anything like that. It’s just interesting to me that it was right in front of our eyes and so many just didn’t want to see it. The peak oil issue is a matter of historical record in my opinion, nothing more. This post really sums up the issue at the time, a mere two years ago:
Of course, the Iraq War doesn’t help matters at all.
Nor does the current state of the Saudi kingdom help.
And, the Iranian nuclear situation is cause for concern as well. Some good background information on the Iran political and economic scenario is here and here. (You’ll need a subscription to read the entire article.)
During the late spring of last year, a similar item was posted here on Jakeneck, and a long discussion ensued as to whether oil would actually break the $50 a barrel mark. I was claiming it would and go much beyond it, and others were convinced it would not. I remember spending a good amount of time explaining the issue and peak oil and the war, to little or no real progress. People want to believe what they want to believe, and the facts are not important.
So, here we are and oil is at $65 a barrel, and the murmuring around the oil sites is “how high will it go?”
It’s not rocket surgery… I’m simply not that smart. But, I do like puzzles.
Boone Pickens, the Dallas hedge fund manager and former oil company executive, said oil will reach $75 a barrel in the next 12 months. Pickens, who correctly predicted in October that oil would reach $60 a barrel, spoke on the NBC Nightly News yesterday. He oversees more than $2.5 billion in energy commodity and stock investments.
Over at the conspiracy minded Prison Planet, Paul Joseph Watson conducts an interview with Naomi Wolf where she connects the Nazi sympathizing ancestors of the current US president with the rise of their financial and political power today:
