Washington Perspectives :

Many citizens are attacking Starr, complaining about his flexible ethics; or attacking Reno on her inflexible ethics, or maybe it's about her partial ethical style; or Bill Clinton and his ethical methods - or is it a common pathology? - in dealing with Arkansas drug runs, foreign contributions, Whitewater cover-ups and many bimbos. Or was all that about his Christian fervors and Antichrist behaviors? And some citizens even attacked Hyde, and then Livingston, and other members of Congress, about the ethical things they pay attention to, or cover up, or do not pay attention to. Like mixing contributions and tobacco; or was it alcohol and book deals, or old lovers and religious self-righteousness, or those personal pressures mixing God and Satan? Or was it......?

Maybe it would be a surprise to some citizens to realize that the bottom line on all these complaints is, simply put, JUSTICE. What's it all about, this Washington model of justice trickling-down? Hopefully to serve justice by adding realities balancing the scales of lady Justice - maybe even to remove the blindfold covering certain perspectives on the values national leaders trickle over our children - I would like to pose a few more questions. Plus tell a true story. A story and questions which possibly might serve to enlighten my fellow countrypersons (is that the PC word?) on some basic reasons behind those unsettling, often sensuous, emotional attacks made by and against our elected and appointed government servants. I’ll start with a rhetorical question.

Justice 101, Survey of Perspectives :

When will Americans wake up to the fact that their Department of Justice is not that at all? That the JUSTICE part of the phrase was emasculated over the years, has been non-operational for a long time now. Why is that? Because it is a fully politicized institution, which follows the secret mandates, personal whims and moneyed pressures de facto trickling down from the burgeoning corruption cracking open the holy de jure facades built around the Executive Branch and the Congress.

As both these branches of government are de facto dominated - which means effectively controlled - by the policies and agenda of PACs, corporations and the material asset-rich, ‘Justice’ in the United States functions firstly for those of power and/or wealth. It must be understood that this 'justice' of which I speak is also a de facto defined justice : the working one which has come down to us in common and statute law expressly as influenced, defined or bought by those same establishment figures of wealth and power. In other words, our Department of Justice functions under precedents and laws - and in recent years by many executive orders, policies and secret fiats - expressly meant to protect the assets and corporate structures of those who have usually controlled the Executive and Congressional branches of government : the wealthy and the powerful.

Our Justice Department, therefore, does NOT effectively function - de facto, in the everyday life of people - to support a system of blind Justice assuring the legal equality of all citizens : as intended under the civil and criminal principles debated and written down by the revolutionary framers of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Of course, as the FBI is controlled by Justice it, too, is politicized. A federal police force staffed by men held together by an emasculating camaraderie symbolized by the mythical monkey principle : seeing, hearing and speaking no evil. All that evil perceived within and around your government, that is. Most are moral cowards afraid of stepping out of line, of 'making waves', of standing out as not 'getting with the program'. Afraid of the ultimate punishment meted out by their righteous superiors : total ostracism from American crime-stopper fun and game heroics by being sent to vegetate in Helena, Montana.

The few remaining men who these days still begin in the Bureau with real ethics and moral courage have four choices : resign, or become a whistle blower, or attempt to retain some traits of objectively honest thinking and moral turpitude while in danger of being cloistered to the boondocks where there are no waves to be made; or, choice four, the common and preferred path, sneaking away from any ethically based decision making : to simmer slowly in frustration and anger as you relinquish most loyalty to what you were brought up to believe America should stand for and actually be..., as you surrender your remaining personal integrity to the selfish excuse of career protection, and the slightly grander excuse of materially well-supporting a family above ALL other values.

Justice 102, Public Integrity :

Or as Jerry McDowell Esquire, the then Chief of the Public Integrity Section of Justice (3^rd highest slot), rabidly told me in October, 1981 in front of the J. Edgar Hoover Building after a disagreeable final negotiating session, "Richard, you may want to reform America but I DO NOT!"

That was McDowell's response to an offer I had detailed to his office over several days, an offer made by one of the most influential New Jersey State political figures, an offer giving the Public Integrity of the Justice Department an extraordinary coup towards achieving some real justice in part of America : this top political insider, a big-time Teamster's lawyer, former State Senator and Democratic majority leader of the NJ Legislature, a long-term Justice Department corruption target, was now willing not only to ‘turn State’s evidence’ but, far more importantly, to continue his criminal associations in-place, secretly, with full Justice Department control as he collected further evidence on over sixty highly important and still active white-collar criminals in the metropolitan New York region.

Namely : numerous lawyers, Mafioso, State and Federal politicians, bankers, Wall Street and foreign financiers, offshore criminal conspirators, right down to Police Chiefs and mayors. All criminals involved over many years in large-scale fraud, extortion, bribery, counterfeiting, larceny, robbery and other criminal conspiracies raping the public trust.

To this well planned, carefully laid out, documented offer, McDowell, President Reagan's Chief of Public Integrity, had angrily replied, "Richard, you may want to reform America but I DO NOT!"

"But Jerry," naively said I, "you are the highest US official on all matters concerning the conduct of public officials, from the smallest village to the highest levels of the Federal government. If you don’t want to handle this offer, who will?"

As his face became red and lips tightened he took his assistant William Hendricks' arm and began to storm away in a huff. Leaving my client, David Friedland Esquire, our negotiating intermediary Brian Shaughnessy Esquire (former head of Justice’s Fraud Division in D.C.), and me standing on the sidewalk looking after his coattails.

Friedland was eventually maneuvered, and forced, into the Witness Protection Program in late 1981. But working not on the list of the criminal State, Federal and international elite he had originally offered but on lesser priorities chosen by the local Newark US Attorney, Wayne Dumont : whose own father and over twenty of their mutual friends were targets on Friedland's hit list. As happens when moral courage is killed by personal insecurities or ambition, the Department of Justice and the FBI watched and went along as Dumont's office completely compromised and screwed Friedland's substantial offer : to covertly cooperate with McDowell's Public Integrity Section out of Washington, expressly to avoid the well-known crooked State of NJ by operating, in place, on short and long-term stings against the above noted New York metropolitan area criminal elite.

After nearly three years under Justice supervision produced no important convictions (one small town mayor, an ex-teacher, was bagged), an evolution of multiple leaks and criminal cover ups by NJ State agencies and the Justice Department made Friedland fully disgusted.

Disgusted not just with Dumont's handling of his offer but also with American 'justice' itself : everything from Reagan's cabinet level scandals to sycophants at Justice Department headquarters, from his own managers at the Newark US Attorney's office down to his FBI controllers and watchdog Marshals in the Witness Protection Program. So Friedland concluded, correctly it turned out, he was going to wind up getting no quid-pro-quo for his offer. Expressly because the Federal Government had purposefully compromised every feasible major investigation to accomplish nothing of substance, nothing against any important personage, in those three years he worked under their direct supervision. That, at the end of the day, he was going to do the seven year sentence for the original bribery conviction he had bargained for by offering all his criminal information, contacts and services in the first place.

So, while serving the government under Justice Department and FBI supervision, Friedland made his escape out of the Witness Protection Program after doing a final $20,000,000 plus pension fund fraud together with Teamster's Union officials. A major crime accomplished as the FBI and US Marshals protected him, he subsequently faked his drowning death while scuba diving off his boat in the Bahamas to flee overseas in September, 1985. Surfacing two and a half months later in Europe, he gave newspaper interviews and sent tapes back to Shaughnessy Esquire claiming fear for his life, blaming the Justice Department for corruptly handling his offer. Soon he became one of the top Federal "Most Wanted" international criminals, searched for everywhere by Interpol as he traveled on several passports throughout the Americas, Europe, the near and Far East for over two years.

All the corrupt political officials, and other ‘bad and wise guys’, Friedland was willing to expose naturally continued their traditional criminal activities and political payoffs. In 1987 he was ratted on by an indigenous associate in the Maldives, Indian Ocean islands southwest of India, while running scuba diving schools. Claiming last minute exemption from extradition by wont of having converted to Islam did not save him from being sent back to the justice-rendering Executive Branch, and the honorable State of New Jersey. He received an extra fifteen years for the pension fund fraud, to be served concurrently with the original seven year sentence he believed could be negotiated by offering up so many big players.

Plutocracy I00, Free Market Law :

The moral of this tale : Reagan, the actor elected on advertisements modeling him as America’s "Law Enforcement President", once in power had fully emasculated his Justice Department soon after moving into the White House by promptly passing the word down to his justice lawyers and their FBI investigators: you all work for The President, personally. NOT for the welfare of the American commonweal or the vast majority of its people. Therefore, any contemplated investigation, arrest or prosecution of politicians must be cleared by the designated higher authority, ending in the White House. Equally so for the wealthy friends, contributors and PACs capable of buying said politicians and their protective legal shield.

To sum : whoever arrives at a financial level sufficient to wheel and deal with either the White House or Congress can become exempted from the law. Or, if necessary, the already loophole-filled laws can be further purchased or individually sterilized if the potential profit goals of the briber become goals shared with his political allies. Sharing power and profits, that favorite Washington homespun morality of manners among the briber and the bribed, was now endemic.

What our society has advanced to by the end of this "American Century" of muscled global power is, bottom-line, merely a highly sophisticated Federal version of New York City's old Tammany Hall - that pre-Depression, pre-economic implosion of selfishness built on laissez-faire capitalism. That World War II causing corruption which, bottom-line, also progressively led to the post-war emasculation of the American worker, their productive equity, their unions and their previously advancing middle-class share of the US apple pie.

In other words, the long-running post-war control of American 'Justice' by the powerful and wealthy had rapidly matured during the Reagan and Bush autocracies, to now go well beyond an established Oligarchy..., with a final clean cut of the influence buying sword wielded by America’s latest and final aristocracy, the Transnational Offshore corporate elite.

 Yet this corporate maturation continues unabated today, totally indifferent to political party, as hundreds-of-millions of dollars in PAC money and Offshore bribes from the likes of the Military Industrial Complex, China's Corporate Army and the Indonesian thieves who asset-stripped their country into collapse (to name only three blatant examples) are ignored and covered up by Democrats and Republicans alike. So to protect each other, insuring their competitive prerogatives to further dispense and receive Corporate Welfare, legally and illegally. Most of this type of activity used to be called bribery but now it is considered a form of trickle-up 'democracy', where corporate 'persons' have far greater public rights, and secret powers, than individual citizen 'persons' to pay-off their local politicians.

Thusly America has matured into a de facto Plutocracy - wealthy chartered corporate 'persons' macro-managing our de jure Democracy - as these 'persons', either singular or associative, practice their 'local' influence buying. Changed from Tammany Hall days, though, these often anonymous persons begin their power buying sprees at the highest levels in Washington.

The two most basic foundations for a democracy to function with real justice - that is, to de facto function as such, as opposed to merely exist de jure as such - are : 1) honestly distinct and free electoral choices, and 2) an objectively educated, politically informed public. Now that there is virtually no distinction between the extensive corruption controlling the Democrats and that controlling the Republicans, America no longer is a de facto working democracy. We are left with only an educated public to protect us internally from rotting into an even more corrupt, unjust democracy.

As our schools disfavor courses in History, Geography and Social Studies - in favor of gearing up of students for money-making in a job market with less choices and little advanced training - it is an acknowledged scandal citizens are comparatively ignorant of our political processes, either as de jure designed or as de facto functioning. The result is that they have come to rely on TV and newspapers to be informed citizens. Yet the media is heavily influenced, or outright controlled, by conglomerates and corporations. Might it be that a bad civics education, greed-slanted information overload and one government scandal after another has produced a malignant combination of ignorance and deep cynicism? And are these the principal reasons why only somewhere over twenty percent of qualified adults usually vote in major elections?

As bought politicians competitively reveal opposing party hypocrisy, lies, burglary and fornication to mesmerize the public's attention span, as they act with bravado anger hiding behind false patriotism, as they send spooks and troops around the world chastising ideologically or economically created foreign devils like Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Allende, Ortega, Qaddafi and Sadaam..., are they performing on stage like this in order to educate the public in democracy or safeguard our shores? Or does all this have to do with the dumbing of US and the closing of the American mind. Does it have to do with corporate-owned politicians organizing macho melodramas and patriotic costumed fights just to keep citizens preoccupied with trivia, diverting the people from the really serious government corruption causing the wealth of the nation to disappear into anonymous accounts?

If guarding our democracy finally is the responsibility of an educated public, first let's try to understand better that two year media spectacle just played out to hypnotize the public away from the bribes given their highest leaders by PACs, corporate and foreign insiders. It is only the most recent, though possibly the most enlightening, example of how the American system of justice does not honestly work for the commonweal and has corrupted our de jure democracy into a de facto plutocracy.

A terse history : our Congressional leadership, entertaining voyeurs massed by TV screens and reading multinational corporate-controlled newspapers, publicly has the President investigated for nothing more serious than the private sex games engaged in by most pimply teenagers and many post-pubescent, ego-tripping college students. As the first results did not seem to arouse much indignation due to the very commonness of the crimes exposed, the investigation extended to pre-election acts, developing into melodramas and soap operas meant for leisurely, childish attention spans. Soap operas filled with the same lies, obstructions, fabrications and maneuvers commonly used by our very best lawyers - on both sides and at all levels of our justice systems - playing out tens-of-thousands of daily civil and criminal cases throughout the country.

So what we received, bottom line, was a political circus, lessons in pure political hypocrisy, educating US about : all those naively common, morally Victorian-like excuses, lies and cover-ups thrown out on the public stage when any elite open marriage relationship hits the press after the 2^nd lady, or the 3^rd or 4^th - or et. al. as with Clinton - wakes up to her questionable future prospects, and yells foul.

That, my dear fellow-citizens, is only the most current, popular example of how the Federal 'justice' system in the US functions to 'educate' you by diversion and deception, amusing you away from massive bribery of the Democratic party by playing out cliche sex scandals and cover-ups. Analogous to the Friedland case, where it was the White House who ordered that same system of 'justice' to create diversions and deceptions in order to compromise and ignore some of the most serious politically arranged criminality in the country. Taken together, these examples combine to demonstrate why our justice systems are NOT democratic, do NOT work on your behalf, do NOT protect or enhance the American commonweal. Do NOT work for your personal peace of mind or for the equity and safety of any group of Americans other than those who can buy influence. Does NOT work at the higher levels of profit for anyone other than those who can afford to purchase the biggest slices of the American pie.

This sums why America has an unjust system of justice : your officials work for you but NOT on your behalf. You, the public, really do pay them hard-earned cash but in reality they are chosen, nominated and elected by PACs, corporations and the wealthy that have the surplus cash to buy the electoral process. A purchase subsequently repaid by the politicians to their controllers through legal and illegal favors.

And Ken Starr, going on so long, so tenaciously chasing that sad criminal Billie Boy Clinton for all the wrong moral vindictiveness - yet so astutely designed for all the right smoke-screening political reasons - well serves to definitively prove justice has only become more and more unjust and iniquitous in America. Particularly since a sunny fall 1981 day in front of that illustrious building named after the Honorable J. Edgar Hoover Esquire, when Gerry McDowell Esquire yelled at me, "Richard, you may want to reform America but I DO NOT!". And then more clearly explained what he meant by adding, "We’ve got the word, straight from the White House, ‘No more ABSCAMs!’ ".

You, America, with Clinton as with Reagan and others of their dishonest ilk - whether called Republicans or Democrats is now quite irrelevant - are simply being conned, conned by just another ostentatiously Church-going, sky-praying, whining confessional patsy for big Corporate America. Moreover, as all the polls vividly show, you are quite blissful in your ignorance, happy to allow big money to put Billie-boy macho types in-place, and leave them there whatever injustices they perpetrate. Whether invading and bombing innocent countries, stealing resources and running drugs, doing burglaries and wiretapping, continuous cover-ups and perjuries, even threatening and murdering witnesses; or sadly renting out national bedrooms, taking international bribes from supposed 'enemies' like China or supposed 'friends' like Israel, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Even making an international joke out of America by interning Valentine kisses, presents and sterile blowjobs concurrently with forming, signing and interpreting the laws of the land and those elite executive policies controlling your ordained pursuit of happiness.

Still you continue resting, uncomfortable in your guts, before TVs, being fattened and drugged by media controllers, ignoring or uncaring about the degradation of the moral and statutory laws of your country, of your national ethos, half asleep to the negative effects of all of this cheap theater on your own children and grandchildren. Ignoring the commonweal crumbling around your media-filled ears as you rest materially well indebted to exorbitant plastic buying. Marveling at new foreign made gadgets surrounding your overstuffed armchairs as your only modern icons, billionaire business, sports, media and Hollywood heroes, vicariously excite and consume you with profiteering muscle flexing.

The multiple-tiered justice systems in America actually control our National Security, which itself has two levels, each defining the public's safety : the International level, labeled the Department of Defense (more accurately, Exterior War Ministry), to be best defined and judged by its budget of over $350,000,000,000 (due to outright lies, covert funding and hidden Offshore operations the exact figure is unknown to any one person, including the President); and the National level, labeled the Department of Justice (more accurately, Interior War Ministry), to be best defined and judged by its budget of over $550,000,000,000.

To clarify, the former is composed of all military, police, intelligence, propaganda, diplomatic and economic systems designed to impose the corporate American Way on overseas peoples; the latter is composed of all military, police, intelligence, propaganda, economic, prosecution, court and prison systems to impose the corporate American Way on domestic residents. In reality, said expenditures, and the well over six million people (including two million domestic prisoners and US hired foreigners but NOT including workers in non-government domestic security companies or US paid foreign security forces) involved in the functioning of all these security services summarize the attempts of our leaders to define and impose an American version of international 'justice' on foreigners and a national version of domestic 'justice' on residents and citizens of the US. The total annual cost for assuring both these levels of justice function as designed by those who control Washington is paid by the American taxpayers, and represents somewhere over fifty-percent of a Federal Budget of some $1.7 trillion.

That estimate of $900,000,000,000 in combined annual Defense and Justice budgets, the more embarrassing secrets about which are hidden due to "National Security" excuses, protects us from foreign 'enemies' with high-tech aircraft, ships, missiles, bombs and electronic surveillance; and protects us from domestic 'enemies' with multitudes of laws, police and electronic surveillance systems. Yet almost none of this vast budget for security personnel and their push-button toys is in any way a defense against the most serious attack against America for some years now : the corporate wealthy and powerful rotting out democracy from within by way of corruption. As history well demonstrates, such self-perpetuating "National Security" systems comprising external war plans and internal control plans in the service of a small elite are, in reality, a de facto Plutocracy. Most often causing and resulting in overseas economic aggressions and domestic economic divisions. Assuring an economic elitism wherein a miniscule class of Haves control many classes of Have-nots.

For all these hundreds-of-billions of dollars budgeted in the name of justice, spent to define what we are told are the requirements for our overseas and domestic 'National Security, we should wonder exactly what benefits have trickled down to us as global citizens? Is it overseas friendliness, that which makes America the only country in the world - disregarding the wagon-encircled state of Israel - with embassies, consulates, cultural and information centers, plus over 160 military and intelligence facilities, looking and acting like armed fortresses ready for enemy assault? Is it mutual trust at home, that which requires our government buildings, military camps, police facilities, court houses and prisons, over 25,000 such facilities, to be designed for high security, with paranoid defenses arranged against its own citizens and residents? From a street cordoned, blockaded, missile protected White House, to a 40,000 police force protected, compound-minded, chain-linked secured Mayor Giuliani, our paranoid public servants live and work within Police State rules of public engagement typical of the classical period Mediterranean city-state Tyrants : suspicious of those who disagree with their policies, wary of demands for accountability and afraid of the intentions of the masses they rule. Nervous about those who pay the bills but open and friendly with those who pay millions into each political campaign. Using fascist type police tactics against street manifestations, civil disobedience and any street offenses, they conveniently do not see or smile benignly at white collar financial felonies, unless too scandalous late to be quickly contained. While the transnational corporate Mafia unjustly exploit the remaining wealth of a America and asset-strip foreign resources.

Is it that America is now a matured corporate Plutocracy, at the height of bribing its way to even vaster accumulations of unaccountable wealth, the reason why we have generated far more fear and anger, actual hate, among some peoples than have any of our old communist foes, the Soviets, China, Vietnam or still-evil Cuba? Why do we, the loudest exponent of individual liberty and free-market Capitalism have so many enemies overseas and cynical, criminal minded citizens at home? Moreover, exactly why does America have to possess the largest private security industry in the world? One with a total industry income and larger quantity of personnel than about 85% of the countries of the world possess for their military defense and police forces? Is it perhaps that Washington and its corporate controllers have been lying to us about why we have more foreign enemies and domestic criminals than any other country? Lying about our National Security systems promoting justice for us and protection from nasty foreigners while they actually protect and enhance the incomes of the wealthy.

Those who read history realize and understand that since its founding America has never once been in any true 'National Security' danger from external attack. Even that one possibly serious incident, the Cuban Missile Crisis, is now questioned by historians as to the reality of the actual threat posed to America. It has also been shown, from recent studies of US and Soviet documents, that the Cold War was a finely tuned piece of theater orchestrated from 1946 onwards by politicians and that Military Industrial Complex feebly, belatedly, warned about by President Eisenhower in his 1961 departure speech.

A Cold War the final purpose of which was to maintain definitively the predominant military hegemony developed by the US during World War II. A Cold War waged NOT to stop Communism from attacking our shores, as we were constantly propagandized and made to fear, but to contain a Communism that was threatening our corporations from extending US economic hegemony over The Americas to as far worldwide as US military-supported muscle would permit. Even those political tyrannies in sundry countries which our National Security apparatus lumped together into the 'Communist Threat' - later Reagan-ized into the "Evil Empire" - never had, either individually or collectively, any real capability, or viable opportunity, or even sustainable self-interest, in attacking America physically or seriously threatening our global military and economic preeminence.

Yet similar to Watergate and Irangate, the Contras, invasions of Panama, Grenada, Haiti and the Dominican Republic - as with that most professional oil and armaments sting we orchestrated against the oppressively naive Sadaam Hussein, cinema-ized as 'Desert Storm' - the Victorian antics of the Monicagate boys is a machismo theater that has the gated communities-of-mind in America fully media-ized. Absorbing ever more immature anecdotes focusing on personal moral scandals, the public lets their minds become narrowed downwards. Further stuffed with malignant trivia as their already short attention span is dragged through more slime - while their politicians continue unchallenged their ubiquitous malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance. Politicians morally censured, occasionally, for dipping hands in petty-cash boxes or under skirts, or for substance influence becoming too public, while never condemned for the near total absence of any true ethical code regulating their most important actions on behalf of the Nation.

IF we can raise up our minds to question the decline of domestic moral codes and our international reputation at the end of The American Century, IF we can wonder at how these domestic and international degradations have corrupted our national ethos, perhaps we shall come to understand there is one principal institutional failure at the crux of any objective explanation : a profit-centered, corporate yielding system of Justice in America.

A system of justice that serves the narrow, personal interests of a minute number of politically entrenched, powerful and wealthy, cosmopolitan 'persons' controlling Transnational Corporations.

America's countryside militias fervently and honestly believe our Federal and State systems of Justice are grossly corrupted, that they degrade and threaten individual freedom and true democracy for the majority of Americans. There is a 'common sense' foundation for such beliefs, justice stories that have built fears into these gut reactions. However, what this parochial perspective fails to understand is that many countries now view America's forcing of its post-World War II Laissez Faire business ethos down foreign throats with similar fears and angers as the militias. That many foreigners see corporate America as a modern Tyrant, one aggressively exporting the above-described domestic systems of corrupted Justice expressly to exploit and control the world economy via its "National Security" version of a New World Order and its laissez faire version of global Free Market Capitalism.

Justice systems promoting 'National Security' as the principal excuse for economically exploitative and usually illegal police, intelligence and military muscle backing up a vast array of 'Free Market' Transnational corporate profiteering. Profiteering actively debasing freedom and democracy in resource-rich or strategically located weaker countries overseas. While also, bottom line, concurrently exploiting the vast majority of Americans for the benefit of corporate wealth and power.

Thusly our present system of 'justice' makes untold enemies out of old and new friends overseas. While at home it is just like a bad apple, from the center internally rotting out the last remnants of America's de facto democracy.

The dumbing of US and the closing of the American mind is being accomplished de facto through corporate and politically controlled institutions, such as the media and education. This is not unlike, bottom line, the same objectives achieved by the Nazis using more straight-forward de jure methods first to control and exploit their domestic front, later to export those lessons plus torture and murder to 'inferiors' anywhere. The basic difference is methods used. Whereas the US constitutional system prevents the enactment of most Nazi-like de jure means to legislate unjust inequities and blatant iniquities, corporate control of government in America is being achieved by the slower de facto method of tricking the majority of the people into believing their de jure democracy actually functions as such. In comparison, the Nazis were quicker, notably more forthright, in moving from democracy to fascism simply by overnight changing laws and regulations emasculating those remnants of the nascent democracy - always fragile in any form - established by the 1919 Weimar Republic.

This de facto corporate control of America by trickery and fraud rather than force is necessarily a much slower process, for it works through undermining the de jure constitutional system by gradually changing numerous minor laws, regulations, codes and procedures. Gradually because said changes must never become evident enough to awaken the majority of the public to their slow loss of rights, to the increasingly plastic nature of their physical and mental nourishment; most importantly, never evident enough to allow them to comprehend the sophisticated means government and media use to convince them their democracy is still healthy. They must never awaken enough to clearly perceive how efficiently their controllers fabricate this grandest of illusions, that America has the best democracy in the world. They must sleep through this neurosis by way of illusion after illusion that everyone wants to live in America, if they could, because life in America offers Arcadian levels of money, democracy and, of course, God's approval. These three illusions are the media and government products distributed sufficiently to dose citizens, to save them from national delusion. Fed these illusions most of the 85 percent majority is not allowed to deteriorate from neurotic behavior into sociopath or psychotic behavior. Such behavior creates national delusions threatening the wealth of the elite rulers, therefore it is most important to maintain a state of balanced ignorance and illusion. For this delicate neurotic state not descend into delusion and anarchy poor public educational systems and foreign 'devils' threatening America are created : an education to dull 'common sense' and periodic foreign devils to release repressed Fourth of July and Biblical frustrations whenever economic crises or foreign criminality raises embarrassing questions.

Another basic difference between Nazi fascism and the Corporate kind is that the former was based on power exercised through a race-based aristocracy and the latter is based on power exercised through a money-based aristocracy. The former is a race Plutocracy, the latter is a wealth Plutocracy. On final analysis, whether that Plutocracy of a few with racial superiority complexes and calling themselves Nazis use de jure techniques to control many people, or that Plutocracy of a few with monetary superiority complexes and calling themselves Corporations use de facto techniques to control many people, is irrelevant when the end result in both cases is autocracy rather than democracy. Although the former marches faster than the latter, whether corrupted elitism is based on race or keeping the trains running on time or wealth defending against sundry illusions of a foreign Satan and his 'Evil Empire', the end result for the majority of the people - even when tranquilized by advertising and fattened by consumerism - is the same : Tyranny, a form of dictatorship where the few convince the many to commit shameful and inhumane acts against their neighbors.

Prognostication : America's de-facto Plutocracy is becoming more powerful by commercial exploitation of the weak domestic 'middle class' and the weak overseas Third World. In both cases they are creating enemies. The bottom marginalized poor to middle classes are already well controlled by handouts and hardships built on top of bad education and hopelessness; while the upper 10-15% earning the best incomes slave contentedly, needing no controls other than their acquisitive habit of defining personal security by grabbing as much of the pie without being audited or indicted; or if indicted avoiding going to jail. It is this latter spoiled group which is politically catered to, for it is their electoral activism making America's de jure systems appear to be a working de facto democracy. 'Appear working' simply because that 10-15% upper class contentedly vote for the PAC selected, corporate-controlled President and Congress who pass, or avoid enforcing, all those laws and regulations which maintain the inequalities and iniquities favoring the Plutocracy.

The second way the Plutocracy will strengthen is by the use - either legal or illegal, as may be needed - of the securely well rewarded - i.e. paid, medicated and pensioned - mercenary police and military forces trained and coordinated to prevent or suppress any conceivable discontent from the 85% middle, marginal and poor. These several millions of combined state and federal security and military forces are backed by the various specialized federal police and intelligence agencies, the most important of which are : the NSA, CIA, DIA (now bigger and even sneakier than CIA), NRO, FBI, INS and over twenty other investigative and police forces in the Justice, Treasury and War Departments run by the Executive Branch through the Cabinet and coordinated by the National Committees of the Republican and Democratic parties.

As this transpires America will seek more and more controls of the slowly awakening guts of the common man, leading to a steady diminishing of de facto democracy as a de facto fascism steadily increases (for example, Mayor Giuliani's New York is an example where this Federal process is being trickled down into a major city). Unlike the last popular movement against US overseas military fascism, our invasions of Indochina, the next popular movement will be against this domestic Corporate orchestrated Federal police fascism. The major difference is that with Indochina the Military Industrial corporations called the anti-war Press, Pupils, Pundits, Professors, Poets and the occasional Philosopher, Pinko or Liberal; whereas the currently developing popular movements against Police State tactics are being called Militias, terrorists, Cultists and Kooks. Ironically, these new anti-government dissenters are the most 'P' orientated anti- G men Americans of all, for they consider themselves true Patriots. Yes, it seems it is the militias of the silent majority who are awakening before the old Eastern Liberals and educated Pinko to the erosion of freedom and liberty in the Land of the Big PX. They may not clearly yet see it is transnational corporate 'persons' behind this takeover of their rights and freedoms, but at least they are so aware of the gravity of the changes that they were the first, and still are the only, ones taking up constitutional arms to defend themselves. As it is these transnational and Offshore corporations finally controlling the police and military these militias believe are domestic-grown fascists operating in the US, no doubt these 20^th century revolutionaries are going to need every gun they own.

If this comes to pass, America will have a second Revolution, one more like the French against the wealthy 5% aristocracy and clergy who ran France as personal fiefdoms controlling the 95% feudal labor force. Not like America's first revolution which enfranchised about 20% of the WASP population in throwing off the English yoke of aristocracy and king, leaving the remaining 80%, comprised of women, Blacks and Natives, as disenfranchised, powerless inferiors.

richard manning

Notes :

* ABSCAM : In case some of you young 'uns have not heard, this was an excellent, professionally run sting operation targeting sundry politicians, mostly Federal, being bribed for illegal favors by various businessmen, including Arabs. Beginning thanks to a whistle-blower alert, it was conducted by one of the few courageous Assistant Attorneys General at the time. Both sides, givers and takers, were caught on video with thick piles of greenbacks in their grubby hands. Most were convicted and sentenced to jail. As it was the first major sting targeting exactly where the most serious of all US corruption takes it first lessons - with the political and corporate and social elite in Washington - it was also the last ever permitted to target the criminal actions of those powerful entities.

Thereafter, politicians, corporations and the wealthy were relatively free to buy and sell anything in Washington, safe from any new ABSCAM level investigation of their crimes. Such high level stings were unacceptable to the White House and Congress, so were never again permitted by Justice as they ordered the FBI to cast their investigator eyes and ears forever downward into the grimy streets of our working class cities. They were ordered: Go after street criminals, leave the political criminals alone.

A CONCLUSION : vastly expanding White Collar criminality, the continuing crimes conceived in boardrooms and political caucuses, was only spoken of in hushed tones by our intrepid Federales, least one's career be endangered. Or he, wife and kiddies were all sent out to the furthest Helena, Montana; where to our Federal servants the schools are from hicksville, the garden clubs depress and frustrate blossoming young wives and the agent spends his time serving warrants on car thieves and child-support deadbeats fleeing across state lines, tracking internet pornographers and investigating ranchers violating video copyright laws. Dante may have forgotten to describe this earthy level of his Inferno, but it surely puts the fear of God into all narrowly educated, class distinguishing, street crime trained Federales.

PS: Maybe reading what one of our few honest patriots and heroes, Tom Paine, said about a previous crisis 220 years ago will help. His summations of the "American Crisis" are still analogous, though now, these days, our controllers are not English Royals but an American corporate royalty far more criminal, far more immoral, far more unethical, far more inhumane. After all, the English Crown catalyzed a revolution by merely being guilty of levying too many taxes on wealthy colonial businessmen without allowing for their parliamentary representation. But now all we have are representatives who have, soft and hard, prostituted themselves to get on the ballot; where, once elected and the PACs turn off the TV, our citizens know not how to sensibly judge their ethics, or when and how to throw the bums out. Two centuries after a Royal English aristocracy of kingly title holders were violently disenfranchised in America, a Corporate aristocracy now kingly reigns over a de facto Plutocracy. A Plutocracy where the vast majority of the public will be soon just as disenfranchised and unjustly treated as new world businessmen were under King George III. Unless, that is, they heed Jefferson's wise advice about necessary revolutions. Beginning one, this time around, against their own King Corporation, a revolution to secure the rights and prerogatives of not the just the WASP wealthy and powerful but ALL the people.