"Bush and the Rise of Managed Democracy" chilling article by Parry.

[madfloridian]

I have nothing to add to this article. It speaks for what I am seeing now in my country.

SNIP..."Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/021205.html

SNIP..."When conservatives talk of George W. Bush’s “transformational” role in American politics, they are referring to a fundamental change they seek in the U.S. system of government in which the Republican Party will dominate for years to come and power will not really be up for grabs in general elections.

Under this vision of a “managed-democracy,” elections will still be held but a variety of techniques will ensure that no Democrat has a reasonable chance to win. Most important will be the use of sophisticated propaganda and smear tactics amplified through a vast conservative media infrastructure, aided and abetted by a compliant mainstream press.

This concept also might be called the “Putin-izing” of American politics, where one side’s dominance of media, financial resources and the ability to intimidate opponents is overwhelming – as now exists in Russia under President Vladimir Putin. Crucial to Putin’s political control is how the major Russian news media fawns over the Russian strongman, a former KGB chief."

SNIP..."In the United States, the conservative/Republican consolidation of power is not yet complete. But it appears clear that the traditional checks and balances, including the national press corps, are now so weak and compromised that they won’t present any meaningful resistance. That means new strategies must be devised and new institutions must be created if this one-party-state future is to be averted.

The rapidly expanding conservative news media already is an extraordinary powerhouse, extending from TV to newspapers to talk radio to magazines to the Internet. Nothing of a similar size exists on the left side of the U.S. political spectrum....."

[necso]

1. Print the linked article and put it on your refrigerator.

And let me make (hopefully) clear(er) my own "take" -- (most republican, libertarian) conservatives have gone along with the neocons as regards most of this program ("pogrom" also comes to mind). It is only on a few policy matters that they have serious disagreements. And if the neocons were gone tomorrow, "true" conservatives (as they fancy themselves) would use much the same means -- only with a few different faces -- to implement much of the same agenda.

Of course, even that might be better... although it would not be good.

[Tux]

2. R.I.P. U.S.A.

She was a good ole gal. We'll miss her.

[Cell Whitman]

3. Let's work on getting Parry on TV.

I was watching FOX the other day and they had this lugnut from Newsmax on there. I am thinking "what an effing horror" someone like Parry, who's stuff has been spot on since it was written and is proven to be more reliable by the day, he isn't a regular on some show; that's a crime. Think of some of the Bozoes they put on TV yapping.

As ya'll know, Parry has been telling the story a long time. He tried to get liberals to fund REAL journalism in the mid 90s, in particular, and they ignored him. Most still don't get it.

Tom Dashle recorded a greeting for the Washington Times 20th B'day party. He thanked them for kicking him and the democrats in the nuts the last 20 years...Moon gave the keynote.

Anyone have any ideas on how we push Parry?? Call, email whoever to get him on TV? Maybe he doesn't want that kind of work but they should have him on Book TV at least. Have they? Maybe I missed it???


This is from a talk Parry gave and explains why Lee Hamilton was picked for the 911 commission.

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/conspiracies/parryspeech.htm

So this was what was happening by the Summer of '86, when Barger and I finally did a story - we had 24 sources by this point - it was getting silly, you know? You know, it wasn't like two sources, or three sources, we were up to 24, and some of them named, and we did this story in June of '86 where we laid a lot of it out - we didn't have all of it, I'll grant - we didn't know about Secord's flights, but we had Rob Owen, and we had Jack Singlaub, and we had how the intermediaries were moving the weapons and so forth.

So we get to this point, and we put this story out, and finally Congress - which had been very afraid of touching this - the democrats were extremely timid - finally Lee Hamilton, who was then Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee takes our little story with the rest of the Intelligence Committee over to the White House and they sit down with Ollie North and they say, "Colonel North - we have this story that says you're doing these things which are kind of illegal, uh, what about it?" He said, "It's not true," they said "Thank you," and they went back to Capitol Hill.

And I get a call from one of Hamilton's aides, and he told me, he said - I'll never forget this, because it was probably my worst moment in the whole Iran Contra Scandal - I get this call from a Democratic aide who tells me that Lee Hamilton has looked into my story, and he had a choice between believing these honorable men at the White House or my sources and it wasn't a close call.
_________

George H.W. Bush speaking before the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU) which is the Unification Church after they changed their name. Bush helps Moon with his "credibility" gap:






Here's an outline of what happened:

http://cellwhitman.blogspot.com/

[madfloridian]

4. The chill is getting chillier.

No way to verify anything. Terrible.

SNIP..."So we get to this point, and we put this story out, and finally Congress - which had been very afraid of touching this - the democrats were extremely timid - finally Lee Hamilton, who was then Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee takes our little story with the rest of the Intelligence Committee over to the White House and they sit down with Ollie North and they say, "Colonel North - we have this story that says you're doing these things which are kind of illegal, uh, what about it?" He said, "It's not true," they said "Thank you," and they went back to Capitol Hill.

And I get a call from one of Hamilton's aides, and he told me, he said - I'll never forget this, because it was probably my worst moment in the whole Iran Contra Scandal - I get this call from a Democratic aide who tells me that Lee Hamilton has looked into my story, and he had a choice between believing these honorable men at the White House or my sources and it wasn't a close call...."

[Cell Whitman]

5. A Brief History of Consortiumnews.com

Parry keeps gaining in credibilty...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/122104.html

A Brief History of Consortiumnews.com

Also in 2003, author Kevin Phillips cited the investigative work of Consortiumnews.com in his seminal book on the Bush family, American Dynasty. Phillips took note of our investigative series that examined the elder George Bush's role in alleged Republican dirty tricks during the 1980 campaign.

[madfloridian]

6. And your link leads to this story about Colin Powell and Ron Kovic.

I never heard this before.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/121700a.html
SNIP..."The voice from the back of the room suddenly broke in, an accusatory voice belonging to the man in the wheelchair. "You didn't tell the truth about the war in the Gulf, general," the man shouted.

Powell first tried to ignore the interruption, but the man persisted, hectoring Powell about the tens of thousands of civilian dead in the wars in Panama and Iraq, conflicts that brought Powell his national fame. Finally, Powell responded with a patronizing tone, but he called the dissenter by name.

"Hi, Ron, how are you? Excuse me, let me answer one question if I may."

"But why don't you tell them, why don't you tell them why--"

"The fact of the matter is--"

"My Lai--"

"I think the American people are reflecting on me the glory that really belongs to those troops," Powell continued, brushing aside the interruption.

Then, Ron Kovic's voice could be heard only in snippets beneath Powell's amplified voice. "General, let me speak--"

[wuushew]

7. kick

:kick:

[Cell Whitman]

8. FYI: Here are 4 hours of interviews with Parry

here are some interviews with Parry. Iran Contra, BCCI, October Surprise, Gary Webb, Moon and much more...

http://wfmu.org/playlists/DX

November 23, 2004: FTR #485: Interview with Robert Parry and Lucy Komisar

December 14, 2004: FTR #489: An Interview with Robert Parry

December 21, 2004: FTR #490: Second Interview with Robert Parry

December 28, 2004: FTR # #491: Another Interview with Robert Parry

[Jacobin]

9. An excellent description of what is/will be happening

Too bad it won't be reported anywhere, since the media is now complicit

[chlamor]

10. US Managed Democracy is Being Exported to....

Many places particularly into Eastern Europe. An excellent article written by J. Mowatt titled
Washington's New World Order "Democratization" Template describes the details. That article can be found at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html, here are a few snippets:
"The U.S. government and allied forces' year-end installation of Victor Yushchenko as President of Ukraine have completed the field-testing of the "Post Modern Coup". Employing and fine-tuning the same sophisticated techniques used in Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003 (and unsuccessfully in Belarus in 2001), it is widely expected that the United States will attempt to apply the same methods throughout the former Soviet Union.
The method employed is usefully described by The Guardian's Ian Traynor in a November 26, 2004 article entitled "US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev," during the first phase of the coup:

"With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory - whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev."

The campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes.
Funded and organized by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organizations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organized a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.
The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's election.
As in these early operations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its primary arms, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI), played a central role. The NED was established by the Reagan Administration in 1983, to do overtly, what the CIA had done covertly, in the words of one its legislative drafters, Allen Weinstein.