by John Kaminski
www.JohnKaminski.com
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
— two quotes from Thomas Jefferson.
Have you noticed? America is on the wrong side of every conflict in the world.
America encourages slavery and economic exploitation, and opposes individual rights and people’s self determination — everywhere in the world. And now, with its new hardcore police-state laws, even in America itself.
No more the land of the free and home of the brave. That’s long gone. Now it’s the land of the financially pulverized and the home of grotesquely overpaid executroids who will say anything for the right price. Lie to anyone, friend or foe. Betray anyone for those thirty pieces of silver. Bribe other countries in order to get them to do things that everybody realizes are wrong. Poison its own soldiers because somebody makes billions getting rid of nuclear waste. Even kill a lot of its own citizens with medicines that are never tested, and protect the vicious felons who distribute these poisons from shattered parents mourning their dead children. Judasland, that’s the America we have now.
Americans don’t tell the truth to anyone, least of all themselves. And I direct this at not just the government, but also at the American people.
Y’know, it’s easy to say we’ve been victimized by bad schools and coma-inducing TV, disgustingly manipulative movies, and a climate of elitist intolerance reflected in one-sided media versions of history.
It’s one thing to be deceived, but it’s quite another not to have seen all these crimes that have happened right in front our eyes since the Kennedy assassination. I mean: How stupid are we?
How stupid are we to believe that on one day in 2001, we had no air defenses for the entire Northeast region of the country? And that just happened to be the day when “terrorists” decided to fly four big jetliners into national landmarks. As Gerard Holmgren so eloquently said recently, how stupid are we to believe a conspiracy theory as far-fetched as that, one that was engineered by disaffected Arabs in a cave? See http://www.911-strike.com/debunking.htm
So, yes, we can keep blaming our bad luck and lack of attention to political reality, but let’s not forget to blame ourselves in all this. And blame ourselves right now for not already having stopped an entire Congress intent on covering up the most important event of our lives, and then timidly approving the wars of our new dictator who seeks to keep the population deceived with one murderous escapade after another.
How stupid are we to believe all of it? Or any of it?
How stupid are we not to know the stock market crashed months ago and is being propped up by the Plunge Protection Team?
How stupid are we not to know that nothing the Bush Administration says remotely resembles an honest assessment of conditions in the world. All those satanic shills say is designed to ease their task of stealing money from people everywhere.
Recently many high profile Americans have been caught in embarrassing lies. Although the media tries to cover them as best they can, more and more people are noticing that everything the Bush administration says is a spin, and none of it is an honest recounting of actual events.
If Powell and Bush are telling lies now about reasons to invade Iraq — and getting caught at those lies regularly — how are we to know that they weren’t telling lies about the demolition of the World Trade Center, when it was considered unpatriotic to question the official version of events?
If they’re lying now, what kind of stupid do you have to be to believe they were telling the truth then? Pretty stupid, is what I’d say.
I bet it’s just hysterical when Poppy Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld get together and laugh about how efficiently they’ve ripped off the American people. Cheney can brag that Halliburton, through its Brown & Root subsidiary, had made trillions off all these frequent U.S. military deployments in which his company provides the crappy chow and the tossed-up buildings. With plenty more of those lucrative military support contracts to follow in quick succession.
North Korea. Philippines. Colombia. You pick the target.
And Bush 41 can laugh right back by bragging about how many anthrax tablets and smallpox doses his new company Bioport has foisted off on the government. It doesn’t matter that they’ll never be used by anyone with a scintilla of common sense. The deal is done and the money has been paid. If anyone actually gets the shot, well, that’s their tough luck.
For at least a century, the whole world has emulated America, presidents instead of dictators, legislatures instead of secret police. Now America has reverted to the secret police method. Woe to everyone if the world continues to follow America’s lead. With its cooked-book capitalism, where nothing is the truth and all but richest suffer, America is leading the world over a cliff, and pushing the world toward that precipice too with weapons that couldn’t be surpassed by the devil himself in their high-tech evil.
America stands for total corporate control with no discussion and no dissension, and against meaningful self-expression and common sense ways to ease the burdens of the less fortunate. Virtually no members of Congress oppose open U.S. aggression in dozens of foreign countries. And neither, for that matter, do many foreign leaders, our erstwhile allies, most of whom are on the U.S. bribery payroll.
And America is raising its children in this manner, too, which is why you see so few kids at peace demonstrations compared to the number of people with white hair. Something to look forward to — a totally robotized next generation. But this is far from the most disturbing trend in America today.
More importantly, America is against saving the environment, preferring instead to just trash it and then try to make even more money off the cleanup. Focused totally on the bottom line, America practices poisoning the oceans and the jungles of the world on the theory that these places are far away and don’t pertain directly to immediate profits.
But almost all of these so-called leaders and a disturbing percentage of the general population applaud these empty lies America uses to ravage the planet. They listen to the TV fascists and believe what they hear. They see themselves getting richer from these selfish, shortsighted policies, without realizing they are becoming immensely poorer.
Most of the rest of the world is beginning to realize that America is against what is morally right and sociologically sound, and in favor of what benefits its rich controllers at the expense of the poor, no matter how many people these policies kill. In fact, since it happens in so many countries, America seems to prefer policies that kill a lot of people.
Roll that over in your mind. America prefers killing large numbers of people, the more different ways the better.
Afghanistan: 10,000 dead and more dying every day from incredibly high levels of radioactivity that almost certainly came from the U.S. use of nuclear weapons, which of course nobody will admit using. All of those people were, of course, innocent of anything except trying to eke out a hardscrabble living in a spot where a bunkerbuster bomb happened to be dropped.
Iraq: 1.5 million dead in 10 years from illegal bombing by the U.S. and Britain, but the truly heartrending part is all the children that have needlessly died because sadistic sanctions kept basic medicines from doctors treating kids with very ordinary illnesses. It is for this most Americans deserve to go straight to hell.
Colombia: Now they drop the poison rain to get the peasants to move off land that American corporations want to develop, a fine climax to 30 years of war America has waged through its proxy goons while nobody in the U.S. noticed.
Remember: America has armed troops in 40 different countries, and all this horrific stuff is going on there, too. How many Guatemalan peasants are buried in the mud of unmarked graves because American corporations wanted to prevent a “Communist” threat?
Remember: Bush set up a secret government and didn’t even bother to tell the Democrats. And now he laughs at millions of people opposing his policies in the streets, and calls them “a focus group” not to be trusted.
America insists upon one set of permissive rules for itself, and another set of restrictive rules for everybody else, which is why it refuses to allow itself to be ruled by the auspices of any world court. This is clearly a racist elitism, a plantation mentality, a neverending extension of the continuing colonialist rape of the world.
America looks down its nose at the rest of the world. Any legitimately unbiased world court would find America guilty of innumerable counts of tyranny in a heartbeat. In fact, the list of indictable offenses, acts of aggression, extortion, espionage, violations of the Geneva Accords and crimes against humanity would probably occupy such a world court indefinitely into the foreseeable future.
That day will come. When the playing field of the world gets leveled, as it inevitably will, America faces and endless succession of war crimes charges in just about every country on earth, from rapes in Okinawa to mass murder by smallpox injection in the Congo.
Which is just what Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed was saying the other day at the summit of Non-Aligned Nations in Kuala Lumpur:
“[The] uncertainties of today’s world are due not to ‘a clash of civilizations’ between the West and Islam, but to a revival of the old European trait of wanting to dominate the world. The expression of this trait invariably involves injustices and oppression of people of other ethnic origins and colours. It is no longer just a war against terrorism. It is, in fact, a war to dominate the world.”
How many Americans have asked: What right does America have to say other countries may not have weapons to defend themselves equal to what America has? Did some God appoint America to rule the world? Are we to believe the black quisling Condoleezza Rice when she says America has the best interests of the world at heart?
Many Asians, wrote journalist Andre Vltchek, feel that it is not just the UN that Bush threatens to make irrelevant. It is the entire world that is not white, the entire world that strives to remain culturally different and opposes the world order and one-way globalisation.
How could it be that a country that made its reputation on democracy and individual liberties is now an inflexible totalitarian system bent on bringing every person on earth under its oppressive fist, either through irresistible bribes to corrupt leaders, outright invasions, or the imposition of devastating financial shackles through that economic shell game known as the International Monetary Fund?
It’s a simple answer, really.
America has never been a legitimate democracy and is not one now. From many of the founding fathers who argued against unbridled democracy during a time where less than a quarter of its citizens were authorized to cast a vote, through two centuries of continuing consolidation of power by corporate interests, the legends that anyone can rise to be president or that the U.S. is a real system of one person/one vote have been exposed as populist myths, imbedded in an entire curriculum of myths that have led the populace to believe that America is an honest and just nation.
For many years, to those in other countries under the yoke of barbaric dictators, the U.S. seemed — from far away — to LOOK like a democratic system, with all its ceremonial rituals of supposedly representative government, with its Constitution and Bill of Rights. But a closer look — for most, limited to the writings of many poorly publicized and little known social critics — has always revealed a superficial democratic sideshow masking the same inhumane system of bribery and extortion that rules all nations.
Now, once again, the world is being shown the real deal.
Once known as the world’s greatest democracy, America still pretends to preach a gospel of freedom, but look at its allies: blatant tyrannies which survive on American payoffs and rob and kill their own people. These police state allies are always headed by puppet dictators who are approved and appointed by American business interests. Just look at proposed U.S. plans for a future Iraqi “democracy,” to be temporarily headed by a former American general. Most Americans can’t even recall the number of times the U.S. has tinkered with Iraqi “democracy” in the past.
It’s easy to see all this if you just look, but the vast majority of American choose not to.
You simply have to observe how America must bribe its so-called allies to get them to go along with repressive policies. America thinks it can buy its friends. What a horrible price we shall all pay for this in the future. Imagine the resentment building in every corner of the globe as people realize they are not allowed to think for themselves in order to continue receiving pathetic pittances of America’s trickle down largesse. Ask the once-middle-class families now living in the streets of Argentina about this.
America attempted to solve the crisis in the Middle East by giving billions of dollars to Egypt in exchange for a promise not to invade Israel. The majority of Egyptians disagree with this policy, but Egypt’s leaders have instituted a police state that prevents people from expressing their own beliefs. America funnels trillions to Saudi Arabia while a majority of that country’s citizens chafe under an inflexible, capricious dictatorship that spends a lot of money in Monte Carlo.
This is the kind of “democracy” the U.S. now wishes to inflict on Iraq. America wants to create another flunkie regime to do its bidding, another fake democracy to advance the anti-democratic cause of American banks and oil companies. Just like the fake democracy in America.
America has bombed Iraq for 13 years and claimed it is not at war. Now, it prepares to obliterate the entire population of that country simply to steal oil fields and provide a better supply of water for Israel. And to gain a staging area for invasions of other countries.
America enthusiastically endorses the genocide of the Palestinian people knowing full well Israel is an illegal entity forced on the indigenous inhabitants against their will, just like many other Mideast nation-states.
America is now ready to invade Colombia after supporting the destruction of the people for three decades so it can better control the importation of oil and cocaine. This aggression will likely explode over the borders into neighboring countries.
America uses business executives to bribe the people of Venezuela to overthrow their own democratically elected government, and claims it is advocating democracy.
America continues to support corporate-connected dictators in most Central American countries, and resorts to mass murder when popular movements agitate for justice for poor people. America is so proud of this longstanding colonialist policy that it promoted one of the chief executors of this strategy, John Negroponte, to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, sending a message to the whole world that it intends to treat all other countries just like Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador: either accept corporate control over your slavery or you’ll wind up face down in the mud.
America is sending troops to the Philippines to suppress a popular uprising that seeks democratic control over a corrupt government that is totally subservient to U.S. business interests. No wonder Muslim idealists want to get rid of it.
America even manages to make the Taliban look good. The fundamentalist Muslim fanatics had all but wiped out poppy production, but now, thanks to the new American-backed government, under the tutelage of new Republican DEA chief Asa Hutchinson, it’s thriving and Afghanistan now the world’s No. 1 producer of heroin that finds its way to the streets of Europe.
You can’t argue that these international intrigues are necessary for America’s economic survival when $4.5 TRILLION has gone missing from the federal coffers in Washington in just the last two years with no explanation. The basic situation in Washington is that a cabal of petronazis has managed to change all the laws in order to facilitate the greatest robbery in human history, which is now underway.
I could go on, of course, but the questions I get most are: What to do? Unfortunately, I keep coming with what not to do.
Don’t send petitions to your elected representatives. Most of them are involved in the robbery, and have no interest in liberating American citizens from corporate totalitarianism because they’re making too much money taking bribes. Even many of the ones who say they do really don’t; they’re just placating voters. Ask the people who write letters to phony shills like John Kerry and Diane Feinstein; they never get an answer that isn’t some kind of vacuous form letter.
Impeachment attempts? Give me a break. Same deal. Virtually the entire Congress is on the take. Were any congressperson to back an impeachment, he or she would be jeopardizing their own criminal income from the corporate conspiracy. When the day of retribution comes, all elected representatives and senators who either voted for the Patriot Act or took contributions from Enron should automatically be thrown in jail, and held indefinitely under terms of the Patriot Act for consorting with known terrorists (in this case, George W. Bush and Kenneth Lay).
Still, in thousands of e-mails, that big question keeps coming: What will we do to keep from becoming residents of Camp Ashcroft?
Well, here’s your answer.
Overthrow the government — NOW.
We must overthrow the government. There is no other choice. Nothing else will work. Could it be more obvious?
We can’t use violence, because real humans would be crushed by all the hellish weapons arrayed against the entire world by the military industrial complex that has stolen all our money and erased all our rights under the Constitution.
Besides, it is illegal under what’s left of the Constitution to advocate the VIOLENT overthrow of the government. And I would never dream of advocating any such thing.
It is, however, patently legal and indeed our patriotic duty to advocate the peaceful overthrow of the government.
We have to overthrow the government, just like Jefferson said, in a fit of moral outrage, using every bit of our wits and our influence to put these people who are in the process of destroying everything we hold dear in jail. For a long time, if not forever.
We must demand the president and his evil entourage resign and present themselves for criminal indictments before a newly constituted citizens court that is not influenced by the big bucks of big business.
We need to restore America to the republic it was designed to be and the democracy it claims to be.
What?! Are you going to wait for the next election? The elections are all fixed by electronic voting machines and corporate media that actually change the way people think.
The Congress must resign as well, and most of them are eligible for indictment, too. Anyone who voted for the first Patriot Act without reading must be charged with treason, for destroying our rights without cause, and anyone who has ever taken a campaign contribution from Enron (or any of a host of other criminal corporations) must be charged with corruption and receiving stolen property, namely, the people’s money.
And of course the entire judiciary must resign, and a new judiciary reappointed by the new government.
All this doesn’t have to happen all at once. That would probably be unworkable.
Somebody else can figure out how to conduct new elections — without the electoral college — later. The first thing to be done is to remove the cancer immediately, before it’s too late. There are enough responsible people in America to decide democratically what kind of interim administration should coordinate a transitional government until new elections can be called.
There are also a very few responsible existing legislators like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich who can help facilitate the transition.
There are those who would protest that this is too radical an idea, too big to be considered, too shocking to ever gain a hold in the popular imagination. But I submit there is nothing else to be done. We must demand they resign and make it stick. Otherwise, we are lost. Because there is no fixing this corrupt system. And to not fix it is to throw away the future of the human species.
This is a preposterous idea, you undoubtedly sputter and fume. How could it possibly work, you inquire incredulously?
Here’s how.
Twenty million people converge on Washington and demand the resignation of the entire government, that’s how. I’d like it to be on July 4, 2003, but it can’t be, because all those phony politicos are out of town fishing or in Vegas gambling our money away, or wherever.
We have to catch them actually in Washington, Congress in session, President in the White House, Cheney in his bunker or wherever he actually hangs out. Responsible representatives must serve them with subpoenas and arrest warrants.
We have to mob our nation’s capital with so many people that they will have no alternative but to step down.
And there has to be so many people that they can’t even contemplate arresting anyone. I mean, where are you going to detain 20 million people.
Why 20 million? I don’t know the right number, but I know one million isn’t enough, because there have been several million-person gatherings — Farrakhan’s, the Moms, the Christian guys — and they barely elicited a ripple from the establishment.
So it has to be a number that will be absolutely impossible to ignore. Twenty million, I figure, should do it.
Where would everyone stay? And what would they eat? I submit the African-American community will take us in, assist us, lead us in strategically positioning ourselves all over Washington so that the disgusting perps can’t get away. Plus, with such an outpouring of people from all over America, I believe the cops would come over to our side, the side of the people, against the side of the tyrants. After all, cops really aren’t tyrants; they’re people too.
It’s not impossible. Hell, there are 20 million people in metropolitan New York; there have to be 50 million in the greater Northeast alone. But if this thing were really to come down, people would come from everywhere. The U.S. population is 290 million. Hell, 20 million is less than 10 percent, but I think it would be enough to get their attention, shut down the entire Northeast Corridor and force the corrupt sociopaths to call it quits.
The reason I think this will actually work is the makeup of people I’ve seen at protests all across the land. The protests have not consisted of a single age, ethnic or religious group; not a single race or political splinter group. There has been a tremendous cross-section of the American population, and I think this augurs positively for 20 million to come to Washington and simply demand that the criminals step down and submit to the charges of people’s warrants for treason and obstruction of justice, among many others.
Can we get 20 million? Maybe not. However, as conditions continue to deteriorate in this country and more people find themselves kicked to the curb after the stock market really crashes, I think it’s realistic to expect this many people to want to participate.
If we can’t get 20 million, maybe 10 million will do. And if we can’t get enough to keep the cops from locking up all of us, well, then there was never any hope anyway. We might as well be arrested on the streets of Washington as wait in our homes for them to come and get us.
We use their own disgusting labels against them, categorizing politicians like they’re now segregating airline passengers into red, yellow, and green classes. The green ones get to help us, the yellow ones get subpoenas and the red ones go right to jail. We should let that fabulous class of black rappers, who have been righteously commenting for so long on the infernos that are our cities, do the categorizing.
Among the provisions in this operation to be designed would be a one-step lockup process, much like they use for illegal immigrant roundups, that would funnel the most egregious governmental criminals right into a holding cell for a little diesel therapy. This group, of course, would include the president and his cabinet.
All of these people need to be held under the provisions of the Patriot Act, for which they themselves voted, which would deny them bond, access to counsel, or family visits, until an investigation into their crimes was completed. Yes, that could take a long time.
Think a revolution of unbridled moral outrage, really the only response that is called for by caring humans in our present situation.
So, people have asked me what to do. This is what we must do.
And we need to do it while we still can, because if they pass many laws like the two Patriot Acts, the opportunity to do it will be gone forever.
Let me ask you one question. Have you considered what will happen if we don’t do this? As dangerous as this idea is, it’s more dangerous not to do. They’re already picking off people one at a time. A lawyer in New Mexico gets busted for saying in a chatroom that Bush is out of control.
A guy in a bar in South Dakota gets three years in jail for telling a joke about a burning Bush.
Those people languishing in Guantanamo for two years had nothing to do with the Taliban and were rounded up by Pakistani police on a bounty system so Rumsfeld could feel like a tough guy keeping innocent people in jail without having to bring them to trial.
The long ago words of Ben Franklin are appropriate here:
“We either all hang together or we all hang separately.”
That’s the way it is in a revolution.
As it stands now, America has no respect for anybody or anything, human or holy. America doesn’t even respect itself, because it’s too busy screwing people to steal their money and their resources.
The sad fact is — one which we will learn to our peril if not ultimate destruction — is that you can’t respect yourself if you don’t respect everybody else. So it’s obvious America doesn’t even respect itself anymore, because it sure doesn’t respect anybody else in the world.
America is at war with the entire world. And most Americans choose not to believe it, even though it’s happening right in front of their eyes. And as we speak, Americans are becoming the real victims of a tyranny they have permitted to grow to truly ominous proportions.
It’s time to do something about it. Although massive logistical problems and ad hoc legal procedures need to be developed, this would work, I think. And Thomas Jefferson would like it a lot.
John Kaminski <skylax@comcast.net> is a writer who lives on the coast of Florida and believes in an America that guarantees liberty and justice for all, not just for those with the right fascist political connections and enough money to buy their way out of trouble and still get good government jobs.
His new book, America’s Autopsy Report: The Internet Essays Of John Kaminski is available at JohnKaminski.com,
and also from the publisher, Dandelion Books, at http://www.dandelionbooks.net/americas_autopsy_report.html
Related pages
Civil Disobedience and Tax Resistance
Solutions: American Revolution 2
and a Humane Future of International Socialist Democracy
The social and political facts of life are exactly the opposite of the smooth-talking capitalist propaganda that is incessantly beamed at you through the mind-controlling mass-media. The televised, corporate, Disneyland version of reality is always trying to sell you the fantasy that America is basically a righteous “democracy” run by honest, God-fearin’ “elected representatives” who have “only your best interests at heart.” Meanwhile, in the hard, cold, real world, America is being run into the ground by a criminal plutocracy which ruthlessly exploits everybody else for as much as it can get away with. The plutocracy which invariably rules every capitalist society is in fact a greedy parasite of the working classes — who are the vast majority of people.
International socialist democracy is the natural next step in the world’s political evolution. Corporate capitalism is a morally degraded political dinosaur that is retarding the social and political evolution of the entire human race.
Socialism, real and fake
by Noam Chomsky
An Appeal to All Working People
This is the September 1996 election statement of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), and it’s every bit as relevant today as it was then. Although the SEP is a Marxist party, and thus hampered by the conceptual limitations of scientific materialism, this election statement is nevertheless the best primer I’ve found so far on the political, economic and moral ideals of international socialism.
A Note to the Reader in America
Only massive, non-violent civil disobedience and tax resistance have the power to bring down the most violent, predatory empire in the world today.
Know Your Enemy:
The United States Government Committed the September 11 Attacks
The Israeli Connection To 9-11
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
Neighborhood Bully: American Militarism
interview with Ramsey Clark
The CIA, Insider Trading and the World Trade Center Terror Attack
Fake Terror: the Road to Dictatorship
Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS
U.S. Government Domestic Oppression
Terrorism Begins At Home: Police Brutality in America
America’s Techno-Fascist Future
Related sites
International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism!
http://www.internationalanswer.org/
“Build a united and active anti-war movement!”This site has a great deal of information for anti-war activists, including leaflets and flyers you can download.
International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org
“Information, activism and resistance to U.S. militarism, war, and corporate greed, linking with struggles against racism and oppression within the United States.”
National War Tax Resistance
Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC)
http://www.nwtrcc.org/
“The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is a coalition of groups from across the U.S., formed in 1982 to provide information and support to people involved in or considering some form of war tax resistance (WTR).
“Affiliate organizations and individual supporters are joined together in a common struggle for a more just and peaceful society. We oppose militarism and war and refuse to participate in the tax system which supports such violence.
“NWTRCC sees poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Through the redirection of our tax dollars NWTRCC members contribute directly to the struggle for peace and justice for all. NWTRCC promotes war tax resistance within the context of a broad range of nonviolent strategies for social change, and is firmly embedded in the peace movement.”
“NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals. These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the U.S. Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability. WTR actions are undertaken in accordance with each individual’s moral, religious or political conscience, and are hoped to contribute toward changing the priorities and policies of the U.S. government.”
NWTRCC makes available the book: War Tax Resistance: A Guide To Withholding Your Support From The Military
“The most comprehensive guide to war tax resistance (WTR), including philosophical and political questions, information on the federal budget, the history of WTR, personal WTR stories, methods, consequences, international WTR, WTR organizing, and more."
We The People Organization: Taxes - Showdown
http://www.givemeliberty.org/features/taxes/showdown.htm
“The federal income tax and social security tax are unconstitutional and illegal; the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the income tax amendment) never even came close to being ratified in 1913; federal income taxes are voluntary, not compulsory, and there is no law that requires citizens to file and pay federal income taxes...”
World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org/
WSWS: September 11 Aftermath
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/terr-us.shtml
WSWS: News & Analysis: U.S. Militarism
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/na-milit.shtml
The huge World Socialist Web Site is a great resource for thinking people. WSWS has a massive amount of information and insightful commentary. It specializes in the kind of straight talk about brutal U.S. imperialism which is absolutely unheard-of in the corporate-controlled mass-media.
The homepage is updated daily with real news and analysis from around the world. In particular right now, WSWS is one of the best sites for news and analysis of America’s current genocide and state terrorism of the people in Iraq.
Throughout the site you’ll find the kind of deeply informed, historically aware, refreshingly realistic analysis that only the experience of 154 years of international socialist struggle could make possible.
Millions of people are waking up to the fact that the corporate-owned, mainstream mass-media are lying to them. People of intelligence and conscience are turning off the boob-tube and turning on to truthful, non-corporate news sources on the Internet.
WSWS has very informative sections about the American/British state terrorism of the Afghan peoples, and the racist Israeli terrorism of the Palestinian people.
There is also an extensive number of high-quality articles about the Balkans and the U.S./NATO terror campaign against the Yugoslavian people.
Restoring Pacifica as a Democratic Forum for Independent Voices
http://www.savepacifica.net/index.htm
“Given the importance of the media in hegemonic processes, and in contesting those processes, what is happening to Pacifica, and now WBAI, should be first order business for the left. This was our only radio network, and it is being destroyed!”
— Edward S. Herman
author of The Real Terror Network
The International Office of the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee
http://www.freepeltier.org
Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.mumia2000.org
Refuse & Resist!
http://www.refuseandresist.org/altindex.html
“Refuse & Resist is the organization for everyone who refuses to go along with today’s national agenda of repression and cruelty, poverty and punishment.”
CollegeActivist.com
http://www.collegeactivist.com/
“Want to spread the word about animal rights on your campus?
“Whether you’re an individual or working with a group, whether you’re just getting started with animal rights or you’re a veteran activist, PETA’s College Action Campaign can help you speak out for animals on your campus!” (And they don’t mean frat boys.)
TV-Turnoff Network
http://www.tvturnoff.org/
“TV-Turnoff Network encourages children and adults to watch much less television in order to promote healthier lives and communities.
“TV-Turnoff Network has helped millions of Americans to break free of TV through our two primary programs, National TV-Turnoff Week and More Reading, Less TV. Our 3,000 members include teachers, parents, doctors, and others — Americans from every corner of the country and walk of life.”
Capitalism Sucks!
http://www.capitalismsucks.com/
“Experts Agree: Capitalism Sucks.”“How Do You Want to Fight Capitalism Today?”
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
Rage Activism Calendar
http://rage.protest.net/
“The United States of America was founded in revolution, a fact that we citizens choose to remember only once a year. Ever since, our nation has worked to destroy the revolutionary works of people around the globe as they struggle for freedom.
“In 1776, the U.S. was born half-formed, and today the American Revolution is still only half-finished. Soldiers in the late 1700s fought successfully to free all Americans from a British yoke, but neglected to free themselves from their home-grown dictators...”
The “stars ’n’ bars”...
The stars symbolize the Hollywood/news-media propaganda machine which relentlessly and pervasively sells us the fantasy that we live in a “democracy” where our “elected” government leaders have only our best interests at heart.
The fact that this is a fantasy is demonstrated by another thing the stars in the American flag symbolize — what real people see when the criminal pigs smash their police batons down on real people’s heads because they dared to exercise their Constitutional right to freedom of speech and assembly.
The bars in the American flag represent where the pigs then drag real people off to after the pigs have assaulted them for having a moral conscience. Then behind the bloody bars, out of view of the corporate McNews cameras, the uniformed, badge-wearing criminals further entertain themselves by beating and torturing people at their leisure.
$
$
Well, it’s high time for all decent, freedom-loving people in America to liberate ourselves — finish what the first American Revolution merely started. We The People must defend ourselves and each other, and throw the criminal cops behind bars where they belong. In fact it’s long past time to overthrow the entire, crooked corporate capitalist system — and replace it with a democracy.
Revolution 2
is long overdue!
Bibliography
War Tax Resistance:
A Guide To Withholding Your Support From The Military
Available from the
National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
“The most comprehensive guide to war tax resistance (WTR), including philosophical and political questions, information on the federal budget, the history of WTR, personal WTR stories, methods, consequences, international WTR, WTR organizing, and more.”
Body of Secrets:
Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency
by James Bamford
In 1962, U.S. military leaders had a top-secret plan for committing terrorist attacks on Americans in Miami and Washington D.C., while blaming Cuba. Codenamed “Operation Northwoods”, the plan was intended to provide the propaganda necessary to create popular support for an invasion of Cuba.
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti
“The history of imperialism is also, however, a history of resistance, struggle, and achievement; Against Empire offers compelling alternatives for progressive change.” .... “Precise, rational ways to transform public policy to build democratic institutions.”
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
Nonviolent Resistance
(Satyagraha)
by Mohandas K. Gandhi
Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-41606-2
Mahatma Gandhi was the leader of India’s great movement of independence from the bloodsucking British Empire, a liberation which was accomplished by means of nonviolent revolution in spite of the British massacres of Indian people. Gandhi and his followers thus gained the deep respect and admiration of millions of people around the world for their disciplined adherence to the policy of passive resistance, and his ideas were a driving force behind the American civil-rights movement.
This volume focuses on Gandhi’s vision of Satyagraha, whereby one appeals to reason and conscience and puts an end to evil by converting the evil-doer. The book begins with an explanation of the principles of Satyagraha and proceeds with detailed discussions of the self-training and courage necessary for it. Includes discussion of the use and effectiveness of such techniques as non-payment of fines and taxes, social boycotts, fasting, sympathetic strikes, and other forms of non-cooperation.
Autobiography:
The Story of My Experiments with Truth
by Mohandas K. Gandhi
Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-24593-4
“Personal account of the life of the man who freed India from colonization through the Satyagraha (nonviolent protest) movement. His early boyhood life, legal studies, purification, and the ultimate salvation of his homeland are carefully recounted in this inspiring and critical work of insurmountable importance.”
Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti
The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee
Rogue State:
A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
by William Blum
Killing Hope:
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WWII
by William Blum
The Fire This Time:
U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf
by Ramsey Clark
Desert Slaughter:
The Imperialist War Against Iraq
by the Workers League
Pirates and Emperors, Old and New:
International Terrorism in the Real World
by Noam Chomsky
The Real Terror Network:
Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
by Edward S. Herman
Western State Terrorism
Alexander George, editor; essays by Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Gerry O’Sullivan and others
Apocalypse 1945:
The Destruction of Dresden
by David Irving
A People’s History of the United States:
1492 — Present
by Howard Zinn
Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don’t Want You to See
by David McGowan
101 Things To Do ’Til The Revolution
by Claire Wolf
“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
“The ideal citizen of a tyrannical state is the man or woman who bows in silent obedience in exchange for the status of a well-cared-for herd animal. Thinking people become the tyrant’s worst enemies.
“Before their thunder roars, there is a period of anticipation, in which more occurs than the literal-minded tyrant can ever understand. A few overt acts of sedition shatter the heavy peace. But the greater force, unrecognized, rolls forward in near silence, as millions of individuals quietly withdraw their consent from the state. The pundits call it apathy. They could not be more wrong.
“That time is now. And we are those people.
“This book is dedicated to you, the enemy of the state.”
Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet):
101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom
by Claire Wolf
“Are you... fed up with the Powers That Be encroaching on your freedom?
“Have you... tried everything — voting, peaceful protest, letter writing, petitions — and found that it just didn’t work?
“Are you... beginning to think violent rebellion might be the ultimate, dreaded answer?
“Stop! Wait! There are a lot more things you can do!”
Further bibliography:
Today’s Fascist America
“When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without a government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”
— Thomas Paine
Common Sense