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Local News & Opinion
09.25 State Elections Boards Seeks Volunteers to Help Process Unprecedented Number of Voter Applications Travel
Books, Arts & Education
09.18 Reviewing Danny Schechter's "Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal" Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
09.30 To Joe Biden: Time for Confession 09.28 Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama 09.26 Bailout Package Must be Transparent to the American People 09.18 Possible $2 Million Donation to Support Md. Slots Sends Wrong Message Health & Environment
Media Watching
10.11 Censored News Stories in US Highlighted by Academic Research Group 10.11 Without a Trace: The Smokeless Gun of Flagrant Election Fixing 10.10 Ayers = Keating? 10.02 Project Censored's Media Democracy Advocacy 09.23 Satire: Louella Reads the Baltimore Sun 09.22 CBS Cheats on Tax Coverage 09.10 Post's Post-Convention 'Balancing' Act 09.10 McCain/Palin Campaign Relies on Lazy Thinking and Prejudice to Win 09.10 The Rising Cost of the Iraq 'Surge' US Politics, Policy & Culture
10.09 McCain-Palin Put 'Country Last' 10.07 GOP Judges Aid White House Cover-up 10.07 Voting the Fate of the Nation 10.07 Alaska GOP's Last-Ditch Palin Defense 10.07 Election '08: Here Comes the Sludge 10.02 John McCain v. The Truth 10.02 Drinking at the Public Fountain 10.01 Who won the Mississippi debate? Obama—but for different reasons than you think 09.30 The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust 09.29 The Resurrectionists: Beltway's Big Money Cultists Bail Out the Dead 09.29 We Have the Money 09.27 Debate Evades Dark Realities 09.26 Alaskan Officials Allege Palin Cover-up 09.24 Don’t Worry, Be Happy 09.24 Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan 09.24 Hey, Government! How About Calling on Us? 09.23 Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen 09.22 The Evolution of John McCain 09.21 Palin's 'Troopergate' Battle Rages 09.19 Burning the First Amendment 09.15 Subverting Democracy Through Electoral Fraud 09.15 Military Industrial Complex 2.0 09.13 Acceptable Sacrifice: For the Right to Endorse 09.13 Why More Soldiers from Alaska? 09.12 Experience is Over-Rated 09.10 Obama Must Call for Palin's Removal from the Ticket 09.10 9/11 Plus Seven 09.10 Palin's Strange Probe of a Trooper 09.10 Dear Democrats: Integrity Won’t Win this Election US High Crimes
10.09 The Surge That Failed 10.08 The Orwellosphere: Anglo-American Drive to 'Total Security State' Rolls On 10.08 Justice for Yemini Sheik 10.06 The Wounded Shark: 'Good War' Lost, But the Imperial Project Goes On 10.02 U.S. Army Troops To Serve As U.S. Policemen? 09.25 Life on the Ledge 09.16 "Awakening" Into Nightmare: Seeding More Sectarian War in Iraq Economics & Business
10.06 Thinking About Treason 10.06 The Fleecing of America 10.03 Can a bailout succeed? 10.02 Empire of Greed 10.02 No Surprise in the Senate Bailout Vote 10.02 How Wall Street Can Bail Itself Out Without Destroying The Dollar 10.02 The Specter of Wall Street 10.01 We Need to Demand Hearings! 09.30 Surprise! Congress Listened to the Voting Public! 09.29 Thinking About Gyrations 09.29 Grand Theft America 09.26 Seizing America by Withholding the Mother’s Milk of Politics 09.26 Framing the $700 Billion Question 09.26 Bail Out NO, Buy Out YES 09.26 Just Say "No" to Any Immediate Bailout 09.26 Has Deregulation Sired Fascism? 09.25 Don't Fuel the Fire: Fire the Arsonists 09.25 America Pays the Piper, Big Time 09.24 Just Thinking Aloud Here 09.23 What Nobody's Saying: The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar 09.22 Thinking About Escalations 09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits 09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits 09.17 Creative Destruction: The Solid Core Behind the Financial Crisis 09.16 You Can't Feel Blue About the Economy If You Want To. There Are No Blue Chips Anymore 09.15 Thinking About Spotlights 09.15 U.S. Economy—Temporary Respite, Permanent Decline International
10.10 Another Israeli West Bank Land Grab Scheme 09.26 Annals of Liberation: Sex is Death in a Darkened Land 09.25 New Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela 09.22 Remembering Edward Said Five Years On 09.20 Filter Tips: Distortion and Demonization on the Iran Beat 09.11 Wall Street and Washington We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Some democracy, AmericaThe American President is selling a product that America does not have.it is now plain for all to see that misrepresentative government and corporatism has oppressed American citizenry to the extent that their democracy has become nothing more than a corporate theocracy, a fascist feudal state in which “the serfs” serve the corporate state as voiceless workers, voracious consumers, submissive citizens and pliant subjects.
President Bush is in Europe flaunting, in a hard sell pitch, his brand of democracy to the world at large and to Russia in particular. He is known to have said: “We believe that the voice of the people ought to be determining policy, because we believe in democracy.”That, ladies and gentlemen, is as fallacious a statement as any that the President of United States has been giving since he took over the reins of his great country. Fallacious too because the American President is selling a product that America does not have.
The President’s statement is fallacious because corporate corruption of American politicians and government has shredded to bits whatever semblance of democracy America was left with. Fallacious too because instead of having democracy in the decision making institutions of America it is rather the fine art of corporate corruption that now stands democratized and institutionalized with all now having a chance at equal opportunity corruption. All it takes is money. Corporate corruption in America is now at a stage where it has become a bipartisan, open, and legal practice with Americans finally coming to accept it as a status quo, an integral part of a dollar-driven, cheating culture. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because it is now plain for all to see that misrepresentative government and corporatism has oppressed American citizenry to the extent that their democracy has become nothing more than a corporate theocracy, a fascist feudal state in which “the serfs” serve the corporate state as voiceless workers, voracious consumers, submissive citizens and pliant subjects. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because the immoral alliance that he and his predecessors have been having with dictators the world over runs exactly counter to the false pledges of democracy to their subjects. Fallacious too because those who cosset ruling tyrants cannot advocate for themselves the exclusive privilege of bringing democracy to the oppressed. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because despite the fact that for all his internal and foreign misadventures, from social issues to Iraq war, the support of American masses having decidedly moved from a trusting to a distrusting majority, he presses on stubbornly. Fallacious because while clinging doggedly to his disastrous policies, he is known to have called himself ‘the decider’ on more than one occasion. Fallacious too because despite the aforementioned fact, there is not one single institution in that ‘mother of all democracies’ that can help loosen the death like grip of the yellow fangs of his administration from the jugular of its unfortunate victims. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because contrary to its democratic plumage, his own party’s strategy is now out in the open. And that is a Republican Party that permanently runs the United States and a United States that permanently runs the world. Fallacious too because the severely mauled, but still breathing, democratic opposition has so far miserably failed to nip in the bud this wicked vision of a one-party global empire. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because he has had real laws passed at home that have torn bomb-size holes in the Bill of Rights, set into motion an actual shift of American judiciary toward the radical right and has so fused his government with corporations, the military, portions of the media and a hugely expanded secret police apparatus that now it scares the living daylights out of common Americans. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because the world can see his quisling lackeys overseeing his experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq about to roll in dust and his ally in Pakistan looking with stunning disbelief at the shifting sands of national opinion beneath his feet. Fallacious too because had his vision of democracy bore even a scrap of resemblance to the original idea, his friends in these countries would have been elevated to prophet hood by the innocent masses of these countries. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because we the world can see that for us at least, American democracy has boiled down to nothing more than that of a lynch mob who vote on the fate of their victims even as the rope is being readied to carry out the inevitable verdict. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because American democracy is not only not a democracy; it is in fact the exact opposite...a ‘minocracy’. He is trying to sell to the world a system in which if only 60% of the people bother to cast their vote, in a majority system with two parties, 31% of the electorate can impose its will on the remaining 69%; and with three parties competing, 21% of the people could rule a country through an appointed elite. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. The President’s statement is fallacious because American democracy has actually translated itself into vesting the incredible amount of the power of the President of United States into a mediocrity like the incumbent President with disastrous results for America and the world at large. Fallacious because mediocrity has now become the rule and unlimited irresponsibility one of the privileges associated with his kind of totalitarian democracy. Fallacious too because with the justification of a popular mandate, a third-rate politician has been given the licence to squander resources and bringing chaos into the world without the fear of being held accountable for it. The American President is selling a product that America does not have. Some democracy, America. Copyright 2007 by Anwaar Hussain. The writer, a former officer of the Pakistan Air Force, is now based in the United Arab Emirates. This story is published in the Chronicle with permission of the author. Mr. Hussain may be reached by email at eagleeye@emirates.net.ae.
Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on June 6, 2007. |
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