Dominating New Egyptian Parliament, Muslim Brotherhood Controls that Body’s House Speaker

COMMENT: Hav­ing gained 45 % of the seats in the new Egypt­ian par­lia­ment, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has now maneu­vered the sec­re­tary gen­eral of its Free­dom and Jus­tice Party into the posi­tion of house speaker.
Por­trayed as “mod­er­ate,” the Broth­er­hood is, of course, noth­ing of the sort.  Allied with the Axis in World War II, the [...]

Reflections on S & P’s Downgrade of European Debt (Except for Germany’s): Pushing “Austerereich”

COMMENT: Stan­dard & Poor’s recent down­grade of euro­zone coun­tries’ credit rat­ings leaves us with much to ponder:

Germany’s credit rat­ing remained at triple-A.
The McGraw family–owners of S & P–are decades-long power elite asso­ciates of the Bush fam­ily.
As noted by Paul Krug­man (and the vig­i­lant “ter­rafractyl”)  S & P’s own analy­sis warns that the “con­tin­ued austerity” [...]

Pictures Worth a Thousand Words: “If I Had a Hammer . . . ”

COMMENT: The Euro­zone cri­sis and the advance of fas­cism in its afflicted nations has afforded us some telling imagery. Mus­solini took the name for his “Cor­po­rate State” from the fascis–a bun­dle of rods bound together with an axe head joined to it.
In the wake of the for­ma­tion of the pro­vi­sional gov­ern­ment in Greece, we [...]

Fascism and the Dangers of Economic Concentration

A 1980 broad­cast high­lights eco­nomic con­cen­tra­tion and its his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship to fas­cism. The issue of the “1%” ver­sus the “99%” is not new.

Daily Mail [UK]: Will 2012 Be the New 1932?

COMMENT: As things dete­ri­o­rate, a grow­ing num­ber of voices are echo­ing a warn­ing I’ve sounded for decades.
In the arti­cle below, Dominic Sand­brook notes that the col­lapse of the global econ­omy dur­ing the Great Depres­sion drove the des­per­ate into the arms of polit­i­cal extrem­ism.
Not­ing the inabil­ity of the feck­less coali­tion gov­ern­ment in Britain to [...]

Depression and Fascism: Krugman’s Analysis

COMMENT: Although he insists on refrain­ing from using the “F” word for what is tran­spir­ing in Europe, Nobel Prize-winning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man has noted in a New York Times col­umn that the “aus­ter­ity” mea­sures cham­pi­oned by Ger­many (and also the GOP in the U.S.) and being cur­rently imple­mented, are dri­ving for­ward extreme right pol­i­tics in [...]

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, er . . . Democracy. Not With a Bang, but a Whimper!

COMMENT: As noted by blog­ger David Sea­mon, the demise of Amer­i­can democ­racy took place amid the volu­mi­nous, flat­u­lant pon­tif­i­ca­tion of U.S. media pun­dits, a pro­found dis­trac­tion in the event.
With very lit­tle notice from politi­cial or media insti­tu­tions and/or indi­vid­u­als, the National Defense Autho­riza­tion Act has incor­po­rated some fea­tures that would allow the vir­tual elim­i­na­tion of civil [...]

Behind the “Merkozy” Phenomenon: German Domination of Corporate France

COMMENT: Dur­ing the euro­zone debt cri­sis, France and Ger­many have jointly announced/proposed var­i­ous ele­ments of solu­tion, with state­ments care­fully crafted to shape the actions as best for all par­ties involved and deriv­ing from mutual inter­ests.
Yet, the media have rec­og­nized that the solu­tion will be a “Europa Ger­man­ica,” with Ger­man polit­i­cal and eco­nomic will [...]

Au Revoir to European Democracy: “A Calm Judgement of Business Necessity”

COMMENT: View­ing events in Europe brings to mind the clos­ing words of James Stew­art Martin’s All Hon­or­able Men. Qui­etly, the Euro­zone debt cri­sis has brought about an orderly tran­si­tion to the “calm judge­ment of busi­ness neces­sity” with which Mar­tin closed his book.
As Greece and Italy have seen gov­ern­ments appointed by the Ger­man dom­i­nated “tech­noc­racy” with [...]

Putting the “Hammer” Down in Greece: More about Fascists in the New Government

COMMENT: From Mark Ames comes an impor­tant new post, sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion about fas­cists in the new Greek gov­ern­ment. Recall that Greece was under the rule of a fas­cist junta that came to power in 1967. Makis “Ham­mer” Voridis, the cur­rent min­is­ter of  “Infra­struc­ture, Trans­port and Net­works” in the Greek Gov­ern­ment, is a doc­tri­naire fas­cist and [...]