[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Interesting email...

[Jason McIntosh <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I found the following email very interesting.  I'm not sure however of 
its historical accuracy, but I thought I'd toss the email out for 
discussion. (My personal opinion is that Bush is definitely focusing 
wayyy too much on his personal war and not enough on the economy or
Korea or the rest of the world.  I don't necessarily think he's capable
of the same crimes as the person following)
Cheers!
Jason McIntosh

_______________________________________________________________________
When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely
reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that
fateful
day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the
anniversary
by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all
across
the
world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic
crisis,
received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue
had
launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely
ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew,
however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are
still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service
helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in
part
because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the
nation's
leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of
citizens
claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton,
some
said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white
terms
and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a
nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of
language
-
reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his
simplistic
and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats,
foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and
media.
And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an
occult-sounding
name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human
bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he
didn't
know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an
aide
brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze,
he
verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the
scene
and
called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he
proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by
national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion,
"is
the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it -
to
declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a
people,
he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found
motivation
for
their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in
Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous
terrorist.
In
a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere,
even
printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular
leader
had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and
fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended
constitutional
guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now
intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be
imprisoned
without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police
could
sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved
terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State"
passed
over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he
agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency
provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and
rights
would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be
re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read
the
bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police
agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and
holding
them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few
hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by
the
mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a
leader
with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in
public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the
newly
empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest
zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the
meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking,
learning
to
control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very
competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion
of a
political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage.
He
wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of
referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The
Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934
speech
recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The
Will."
As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an
us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens
thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people,"
he
suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall
on
others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our
lives
better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the
French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international
body
that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own
nation
was
neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the
League
Of
Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments
agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide
military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people
that
he
was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in
Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian
faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man
in
his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns"
-
God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined
that
the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were
lacking
the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary
to
deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those
citizens
who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and
communist
sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He
proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the
homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent
police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new
agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role
in
the government equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist
attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning
the
legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his
checkered
past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central
security
office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips
about
suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of
some
of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations.
Those
denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who
dared
speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now
controlled
through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't
enough.
He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former
executives
of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A
flood
of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war
against
the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and
to
prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to
him
to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the
nation,
particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle
Eastern
ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally
got
the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale
detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow.
Industry
flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of
dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had
started
an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society),
and
leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose
rhetoric.
He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the
corporate
cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly
illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil
libertarians
about the people being held in detention without due process or access
to
attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began
a
campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war
was
necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle
Eastern
people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set
afire
the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held
resources
their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain
their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an
ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international
uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and
nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out
that
it
was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide
empire,
like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with
European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the
United
Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began,
Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving
in
to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our
time."
Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of
popular
support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government
was
unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and
German
corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain
foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal
methods. I
can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course
of
my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed
the
former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I
have
never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his
politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a
campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation
itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the
terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting
the
nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be
only
"one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein
Reich,
ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide
campaign
charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself.
Those
questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it
was
suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the
patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform.
It
was
one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning
people
(from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and
liberals"
who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully
and
quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again
raised
in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the
dangers
of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and
totally
suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public
attention
from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing
dissidents;
violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of
crony
capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector
but
threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was
now
fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of
national
security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth
remembering.

February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus
van
der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag)
building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and
reshaped
the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action
to
seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the
most
beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around
the
world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland,
known
as
the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most
famous agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent
warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while
generating
devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and
awe"
among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book
"Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.

  Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton
  Mifflin
Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the
German
democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest
German
corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power:
"fas-cism
(fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of
the
extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business
leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to
remember
that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United
States
alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very
different
courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and
reward
the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle
dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion
of
prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed
minimum
wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to
diminish
the
power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the
wealthiest
individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last
resort
through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and
replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again
ours.

Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the
author
of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last
Hours
of
Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but
permission
is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as
this
credit is attached.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0316-08.htm

_________________________________________

-- 
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| Jason McIntosh                       | CELL: 573-424-7612        |
| Webmaster, thinker, Programmer, etc. | WORK: 573-884-3865        |
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