Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism

Excellent read, follow the link for all fourteen.

FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, wrote an article about fascism which appeared in Free Inquiry magazine, a journal of humanist thought. Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile). He found the regimes all had 14 things in common, and he calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The article is titled “Fascism Anyone?,” and appears in Free Inquiry’s Spring 2003 issue on page 20.The 14 characteristics are:

1.. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2.. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to ‘look the other way’ of even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3.. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe; racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists; terrorists, etc.

4.. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM

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Indian cops go bananas over necklace thief | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Swallow the evidence!  40 bananas and it still hasn’t come out.  Next up, the rubber gloves.

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) – Indian police forced a thief to gobble down 40 bananas in a few hours, hoping they would force him to excrete a gold necklace he had snatched and swallowed.Sheikh Mohsin, 35, grabbed the 45,000-rupee (546 pounds) necklace from a woman in the eastern city of Kolkata on Friday and popped it into his mouth when police and local residents caught him.

Indian cops go bananas over necklace thief | Oddly Enough | Reuters

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Tags: weird

Kevin Smith Owns a Heckler

He’s at Comicon, so the wierdo’s will come out. This is a great example of why geeks shouldn’t try to pimp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou2mVnElp6c

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Google Wants

Posting a suggestion to Google seems rather tough to do. I can’t find a product suggestion link at Google or in the Labs. One product I am surprised they have not developed is a document summarizer. I’ve used Copernic’s before, but I refuse to pay the $80 registration fee for personal use. Surfing the web, I often come across long documents and I want to just get the key the concepts out of the document. Copernic Summarizer does this task very well. Google already has the logic created, just no interface to use it. Identifying concepts of a document is part of Google’s algorithm. So I post the request here. I think it would be a great addition to Google Docs.

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Tags: google, copernic, productivity, summarizer