The aggressive new campaign by the Bush regime to depict US foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and The Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database by IPS.

All of those outlets, as well as two other right-wing U.S. magazines -- The National Review and The American Spectator -- far outpaced their commercial rivals in the frequency of their use of key words and names, such as "appeasement," "fascism", and "Hitler", particularly with respect to Iran and its controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.   more »

Isn't it time for the networks to pull the plug on presidential press conferences and Bushian blather like they have on political party conventions?

If there was ever a case for admitting the Emperor has no clothes, this is it. Who in the press corps(e) will have the courage to turn their backs on the Rumsfeld Comedy Hour once and for all?

Now there are some media outlets beginning to draw these lessons and tell the truth.

The NY Times which shamefully did so much to sell the war is now returning to its senses with more stories than can no longer be suppressed of setbacks in the field and corruption at home.

But even it seems more caught up with "perception" and image" stories than connecting the dots about demoralized and ineffective military effort and the continuing erosion of US influence and "progress" in a country devolving into a civil war US policies contributed to-without accountability.

Many Democrats are starting to hammer at the incompetence of those fighting the war without being willing to admit that the whole pre-emptive adventure is as flawed as the Vietnam War before it   more »

Over the last month I have tried to describe conservative power in Washington, but with a small change of emphasis I could just as well have been describing the failure of liberalism: the center-left’s inability to comprehend the current political situation or to draw upon what is most vital in its own history.

What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years.

All that is missing is a return to the gold standard and a war to Christianize the Philippines.

Historically, liberalism was a fighting response to precisely these conditions. Look through the foundational texts of American liberalism and you can find everything you need to derail the conservative juggernaut.

But don’t expect liberal leaders in Washington to use those things. They are “New Democrats” now, enlightened and entrepreneurial and barely able to get out of bed in the morning, let alone muster the strength to deliver some Rooseveltian stemwinder against “economic royalists.”   more »

The theory that Communism and fascism were twins was developed to justify the Cold War. Now the right needs a new enemy - and has discovered ‘Islamofascism’.

These claims about “extremism” and “Islamofascism” are the latest version of right wing arguments that have deep historical roots.

They are a pointed ideological weapon of the ruling class - a weapon that the anti-war movement needs to confront.

By justifying imperial wars in terms of broad and abstract “values”, Bush and Blair can effectively license any sort of military attack anywhere in the world.

They no longer need to justify their actions in terms of the threat of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.   more »

TWISTED DEFINITIONS OF “ANTI-SEMITISM”

1. Any assertion “that the Jewish community controls government, the media, international business and the financial world” is anti-Semitic.

2. “Strong anti-Israel sentiment” is anti-Semitic.

3. “Virulent criticism” of Israel’s leaders, past or present, is anti-Semitic. According to the State Department, anti-Semitism occurs when a swastika is portrayed in a cartoon decrying the behavior of a past or present Zionist leader.

Thus, a cartoon that includes a swastika to criticize Ariel Sharon’s brutal 2002 invasion of the West Bank, raining “hell-fire” missiles on hapless Palestinian men, women and children, is anti-Semitic.   more »

31 AUGUST

Dazed & Confused: Is Bush's Brain Shrinking?

Jonbenet 'Killer': Media Frenzy Ends in Fiasco

The Zionist Lobby Ensures a Pro-Israel America

Desperate Measures: Bush Regime Pumps up the Propaganda

Israel's 'Final Solution': Wiping What's Left of Palestine off the Map

Bush Is Mentally Challenged [To Put It Politely]