Happy New Year! You've Got Mail and the Leader Wants to Read It!

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." - Rev. Martin Luther King

We must be slient as a people no more.

Just in time to ring in the new year, Bush, in yet another signing statement (close to 800 now), claimed the right to snoop though our mail without a warrant. All in the name of liberty. All in the name of security. Feel safe yet?

Just like with phone tapping, data mining/trolling, no fly lists, suspension of Habeas Corpus, and the like, Bush claims he is above the law, that's what a signing statement is. It states how the president will execute a particular law through his own interpretation, not the courts' or congress. He's the decider. He makes decisions with war on his mind. But why does it seem like he is at war with his own country and the constitution ("It's just a god-damned piece of paper" W once blurted). See here, too. Welcome to the fourth reich... Let's take a peek behind the curtain, shall we? We may not like what we see.

Like it or not, and the ridiculous of historical analogies aside (i.e. Bush is not Hitler and we are not Nazis), it is difficult not to notice how much we are sharing in terms of political dynamics with faultering Weimar Germany through the 1930's (read Milton Meyer's "They Thought They Were Free," William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," maybe Friendly Fascism by Bertram Gross, or even Sinclair Lewis "It Can't Happen Here"). Fascism is a movement and force of government that comes from a democratic structure and mutates into, well, something like this and this. The three part series from Heather Wokucsh, just prior, is quite instructive with all its links, though it is difficult to have a reasonable discussion due to possible red herrings, hysteria, and paranoia. However, if the fish fits...endless wars, spiraling debt, curtailment of rights...

"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it." - Alexis de Tocqueville

Remember that Benito Musolini once stated, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Corporatism. We should really ponder what that means today in America. We should look at the military industrial complex and it's impact on American democracy. We should notice the effects. They are not hard to measure.

Let's hope for a better world in '007. Not off to such a great start in the Old American Century. Checks (and Balances) are in the mail...