Letters to the Editor
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There is a cancer
on the body politic.
Aggressive treatment is advised.
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It is funny...
... that despite all their chest thumping, neo-conservatives are really cowards at heart. They want their daddy Bubba Bush to protect them.
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Apologies for the OT Anthrax post on this thread
I found this at Chip Berlet's PRA:
http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/third_position.html#black-nationalism
Some of you liked PRA's sectors of the American Right.
http://www.publiceye.org/research/chart_of_sectors.html
An excerpt from:
Racial Nationalism, the Third Position, and Ethnoviolence
Including a Discussion of Possible Connections Between Militant Islamic Fundamentalists and the U.S. Extreme Right
There is no hard evidence linking domestic U.S. right-wing groups to either the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01; the mailing of real anthrax letters, or other acts of domestic terrorism. For example, the list of potential suspects in the real anthrax mailing cases is long, and the evidence is missing. Claims about a connection between the Oklahoma City bombing and Middle East terrorists are based on dubious speculation. Some U.S. Extreme Right groups praised the 9/11 attacks along with some militant Islamic fundamentalists. Most Muslims around the world denounced the attacks.
In considering potential suspects for terrorism, however, possible connections between the U.S. extreme right and certain elements of militant Islamic fundamentalism cannot be dismissed. There is also a possible connection between these sectors and some Black Nationalists, the Third Position, and Antisemitism. Racial nationalism is a core building block of fascism. Most Black nationalists do not ascribe to the Third Position tendency. The matter of mental illness also needs to be considered.
If right-wing domestic groups are shown to be involved in the live anthrax letters, it may well be rank opportunism based on one of the first two ideological affinities with the terrorists. The intriguing ideological link of Third Position ethnonationalism deserves special scrutiny because it explains one reason why U.S. and European Extreme Right White supremacist activists have already forged an alliance with Islamic supremacists or Arab supremacists that goes back over two decades.
(...)
U.S. White Supremacist Groups and Militant Islamic Fundamentalists
11.15.01 NPR senior correspondent Howard Berkes:
Some investigators and researchers believe Osama bin Laden might still be getting help from within the United States. They suggest that help might not be coming solely from people with extreme views about Islam. It could also be coming from white supremacy groups." Hear the story using Real Player -- from Thursday's All Things Considered.
According to an article in the Washington Post:
A remote possibility is a collaborative effort. U.S. monitoring groups cite increased contacts between Middle Eastern radicals and some Americans on the far right. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center protested a planned meeting this year in Beirut between neo-Nazis and members of militant Islamic organizations. The gathering was shifted to Jordan, he said, and later canceled.
"It's a long, long way from rubbing elbows and giving hateful speeches to acting out or inspiring others to act out," Cooper said. "But those connections are there."1
In a Financial Times online article "Far-right has ties with Islamic extreme," by Hugh Williamson and Philipp Jaklin, Berlin, November 8 2001:
Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss businessman and former journalist who converted to Islam in the 1960s, is a board member of Nada Management, a financial services and consultancy company which is part of the international Al Taqwa group. The US says this group has long acted as financial advisers to al-Qaeda.
Mr Huber, who is based in Bern, is known in Switzerland and Germany as an Islamic fundamentalist who attempts to forge links to far-right and neo-Nazi movements.
A spokesman for Germany's office for the protection of the constitution, the internal intelligence agency, said on Thursday that Mr Huber "sees himself as a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups". He also belongs to the revisionist movement, which believes the Holocaust did not take place, the spokesman said.
Klaus Beier, spokesman for the NPD, one of Germany's main far-right political parties, said Mr Huber has often addressed NPD events...
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It's Not The Weekly Standard I'm Worried About
Of course, it's entirely appropriate to write about the Weekly Standard in this context. But it's not them I'm worried about. It's the fact that they are simply expressing quite clearly what seems to be the operative default assumption that forms the background for virtually all foreign policy discussion in our national media, and amongst our political elite more generally.
The whole lot of them need to go back to high school and re-take their class in civics. There is nothing the least bit obscure in the enumeration of Congressional powers. If I were as ignorant as the talking heads who dominate current discussions, I damn sure wouldn't have made the honor roll. The things they don't know were the meat and potatoes of the tests we had to make sure we'd actually read the material.
Maybe we could arrange a switch. Let their kids run the country while their civics lessons are still vividly in mind. And send them back to school where they can learn a thing or two about American civics and history, as well as basic critical thinking skills.
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Anyone wish to wager that the Weekly Standard will do a 180 as soon as a Democrat is elected POTUS?
America was founded to avoid the warped and tyrannical vision which The Weekly Standard and its comrades crave (and which they have spent the last six years pursuing and implementing).
They only crave unlimited executive power when conservatives are POTUS.
Just look at the way Clinton got treated.
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Thank you, GG for another edition of...
"no wonder I swing by here first thing in the morning."
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Getting Rome Right
Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator,
Hamilton probably took it for granted that his readers would know what the Roman office of dictator was all about. Up until the first century BC, dictators were chosen--by the Senate--for six month terms only. They were intended to replace the usual two consuls under special circumstances, such as a military emergency--Fabius during the Second Punic War is the best-known case.
Note that dictators didn't seize power for themselves; they were granted special powers by the Senate. They couldn't exercise those powers indefinitely; they could lose the office after only six months--this is what happened to Fabius.
In other words, the Roman dictatorship had nothing in common with the term as used in the modern world and the authors of the Constitution were well aware of this.
And isn't it interesting how some of the people who nowadays claim to be defending Western Civilization--using "near-dictatorial" methods--seem to know so little about it?