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DOES
HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF? Copyright © 2001, Aldo Vidali. NOTICE: Permission to reprint this article in its entirety, including this notice, is granted by the author. On September 11, 2001, seventy-one years after the Berlin Reichstag fire that Hitler exploited to make himself supreme dictator of Germany, a heart-rending human tragedy struck the United States. More than six thousand people died suddenly in an inferno of flames and wreckage of the most prestigious building of international capitalism: the World Trade Center in New York City. Where was our multi-billion dollar national security system? Dare we ask? How can one explain that no Air Force defense occurred after the first and then the second plane hit the most prominent target in the financial capital of the world? An F-16 could have scrambled from about 20 miles away and saved the Pentagon from the third attack that followed over 44 minutes later. Instead the third plane struck the headquarters of America's military might without a single shot fired or even so much as a warning beep to evacuate personnel from the buildings. The fourth plane, another 30 minutes later, was most likely shot down, however the Defense Department will not admit it, for who knows what astronomical financial and political liability the Government would incur for shooting down a civilian airliner. The official fairy tale of heroic passengers fighting the hijackers is not credible. The plane went down at a 90 degree angle. The Government did not release the voice recorder from the cockpit and a piece of the plane was found two miles away from the point of impact. "Elementary !" would say Sherlock Holmes, but then our "free" press,so called, is not allowed to get it or deduct from the most rudimentary of facts. Is the knee-jerk reaction of this illegitimate administration to a tragic terrorist act in 2001 going to become the opportunity for the rise of a second fascist dictatorship in this world? Will a new kind of warmongering toll the bell for the death of the Bill of Rights and the destruction of civil liberties and human rights just as the post Reichstag Nazi rhetoric caused in 1933 Germany? Does history repeat itself? Let us observe the similarities to events in 1933 and the unfolding anti-democratic events of 2000 and 2001. Seven decades ago Adolf Hitler abused democracy to establish his dictatorship. To do this he sought a Nazi majority in the Reichstag to rubber stamp whatever laws the big corporations financing him desired. George Bush, in Election 2000, abused democracy to usurp the Presidency by deceit and sought the support of a majority of goose-stepping neo-fascist Republicans in Congress to rubber stamp everything his corporate sponsors desired as payback for financing him (witness the colossal tax cut for the rich, corporate favors, and the anti-labor and anti-environmental laws of the first year of his illegal administration). To become dictator, Hitler manipulated President Hindenburg into dissolving the Reichstag and calling for new elections. To hijack the Presidency, George Bush manipulated five corrupt Supreme Court Justices into destroying our 225-year Constitutional tradition of democratic elections by denying the People their fundamental right of having all votes counted. George Bush's hypocrisy will become proverbial when Americans realize that this scoundrel contested the constitutionality of a vote-counting procedure he signed into law in Texas! In 1933 Germany law enforcement officials were replaced by Nazi SA and SS troopers. Anybody harassed, arrested, beaten, or even murdered by these criminals suddenly had no one to turn to for help. Immediately after his scandalous inauguration, Bush installed a gang of neo-fascists zealots into most cabinet positions. He appointed to the Department of Justice a fanatic who believes that the assassination of Lincoln was a "good thing" and entrusted the Department of Interior to an antienvironment, pro-chemical corporation politician. Result? A veritable mob of corporate minions is now in charge of every aspect of our national life (to see who they are, go to http://www.gore2004us.com/2004bushcabinet.html). The stench of corruption and tyranny since January 2001 turned Washington into a disgusting sewer. The treasury was robbed for the benefit of the rich, the surplus squandered, and our foreign policy reverted to a truculent cold-war posture, telling the world that the growling American Gorilla was going to call all the shots unilaterally, like it or not. Israel was left to its own devices so that bloodshed and terrorism flourished once again.
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