History Is Knocking: Stop the Machine! Create a New World

History Is Knocking: Stop the Machine! Create a New World!

by Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers, Tarak Kauff, Elaine Brower article link

June 7, 2011 | CommonDreams

There comes a time when efforts to avoid the truth begin to fail, when one can no longer go about daily life and pretend that all is okay. If you are like most of us, you are experiencing this.

There comes a time when one can no longer shut out the atrocities of U.S. foreign and military policy: trade agreements that destroy farming; mass unemployment; especially among communities of color; illegal detention and torture; increasing drone attacks resulting in mass civilian deaths; and once again a President who lies the United States into another war for oil and bankers.

A time comes when one can no longer close one’s eyes to the atrocities of a U.S. domestic policy that steals from the people to add to the already hideously bursting pockets of the wealthy, that kicks people out of their homes, denies needed medical treatment and drives families into bankruptcy so that CEOs can dine on gold-lined plates in their personal jets as they travel from gated mansions to leather seats in penthouse offices.

A time comes when one cannot help but realize that the path is unsustainable and one must make a choice. History is knocking, and each of us must choose how we will answer. What do you want to say you did when history was at your door?

History is not a fairy tale you read to your children at night. It is not something someone else did in another place. History is right here and right now, in front of you. It happens before you realize what is going on. There are events that give hints, but nobody knows when the dam will burst and the flood that gushes forth will wipe clean what has gone before and create a new reality.

When the tipping point is reached, it seems at once both unexpected and completely obvious. We are nearing that tipping point in the United States. We have witnessed the Arab Spring and the blossoming of the European Summer. We ask ourselves if now we will experience the American Autumn.

People in America see that corporate power controls the political process and the media. The Forces of Greed steal our treasure and squander it on militarism and needless wars for empire. Forces of Greed render our White House, Congress and Supreme Court dysfunctional so that the denizens of these bodies regurgitate what their corporate paymasters feed them.

Our country faces crises on every front: the economy, education, jobs, the environment, health care, housing, the wealth divide, an empire stretched too thin and ready to shred. None of these crises has to exist. Just and sustainable solutions are available and known. What stands in the way of all these solutions is concentrated corporate power.

Corporatism is behind the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan in which thousands, including our own soldiers, but mostly innocent civilians—men, women and children—are maimed and killed.

Corporatism ignores majority support for improved Medicare for all and instead hands billions to the medical-industrial complex while tens of thousands suffer and die from preventable causes each year.

Corporatism prevents effective regulation of the finance industry, stands in the way of a more sustainable energy economy, resists real job creation and is at the root of the foreclosure crisis, while more families find themselves on the street with nothing.

Corporatism blocks effective action to decrease the known causes of climate chaos while the Arctic Cap melts and tornadoes rampage; some face record droughts while others face high-level flooding.

Corporatism exploits human beings and the planet for profit.

Somehow we need to realize that the situation has gone beyond critical and there is no alternative but to act and resist with resolve. Every day the runaway corporate machine moves closer to the precipice; every day, thousands more children needlessly starve or die from wars or disease. Every day, the earth itself is being raped, and all this death and destruction, for what? Bloody offerings at the altar of the god of profit! It has to stop and people of conscience and courage are the ones with the collective power to stop it.

None of us can do this alone. Even the organizations that advocate just and sustainable solutions cannot do it alone. Corporate power is tremendous. It misinforms, frightens and divides us. Our strength is in unity, in the connection that we share: our desire for a world in which humans can trust each other, can work together to create real solutions instead of hating and killing each other.

We are seeing the beauty of this unity in other parts of the world and at home. Across the country there is evidence of citizen revolt. Most only see the big demonstrations—Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, the immigrant marches—but in fact, people inAmerica are consistently in protest against austerity budgets, big business tax avoidance, rising tuition, cuts to education, foreclosures, insurance-based health care and the ongoing wars. On issue after issue there is evidence of peoplein revolt.

Now is the time to join together and unite our struggles in sustained acts of nonviolent resistance. Democracy literally means people power. Concentrated corporate capital and influence has changed the United States into a faux democracy where Americans only get to choose from two corporate-approved candidates, funded by millions in corporate donations.

The normal tools of democracy no longer work.

October 6 is the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, and the beginning of the new federal budget year—an austerity budget for everything except for war and the corporate security state. On this day, we are calling for sustained and nonviolent mass resistance in Washington, D.C. The action, Stop the Machine! Create a New World!, portends an American Tahrir Square at Freedom Plaza between the White House and Congress, a block away from the National Press Club and a few blocks from the Chamber of Commerce and K Street, the stomping ground of corporate lobbyists.

An impressive array of people have already signed on. Among them: Ann Wright, Baldemar Velasquez, Ben Manski, Brian Becker, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Chris Hedges, Cornel West, David Swanson, Debra Sweet, Diane Wilson, Glen Ford, Jane Hamsher, Jodie Evans, Leah Bolger, Medea Benjamin, Mike Ferner, Larry Pinkney, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Rosa Clemente, Steffie Woolhandler, Ted Rall, The YES Men. (Google them, if you don't know them, each is an impressive leader.)

We know however, that it is not leaders who make change, but people united who insist on change that will succeed!

We are at a turning point. History is knocking. It is time for each of us to decide whether we can remain silent and thus allow the destruction of our planet or join in solidarity to create the future we envision of peace, justice and equality.

Here are three steps you can take right now to create the momentum that leads to a historical breakthrough:

1. Sign the pledge at www.October2011.org and say why you’re coming.

2. Spread the word by forwarding this newsletter to everyone you know, posting www.October2011.org on your Facebook page and sending it out on Twitter.

3. Reach out to organizations that should be involved and tell them to join the campaign.

It is time to turn the Arab Spring into the American Autumn and begin a movement to remove corporate power and militarism from control of our government.

Ending corporatism and militarism is the transformative issue of our era.

You can be part of a great moment in history—don’t miss the opportunity, answer the call.

Questions? Info@October2011.org.

Kevin Zeese is co-founder of Voters for Peace and directs Come Home America.

Dr. Margaret Flowers is a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program and a pediatrician based in Baltimore. She is also a board member of Healthcare-Now. She can reached by email at: margaret@pnhp.org

Tarak Kauff leads the Veterans For Peace direct action program.

Elaine Brower is a military mom and a leader of World Can't Wait.

CommonDreams home page

History Is Knocking: Stop the Machine! Create a New World

Personal Secession - The Way to Freedom

Personal Secession – The Way to Freedom

by Michael S. Rozeff article link

June 6, 2011 | LewRockwell

Certain people and groups in California want to ban male circumcision, and they are getting measures placed on local ballots for voting.

In Louisiana, there is some sort of law about the teaching of the creation of man in the public schools that has people who dislike that law all riled up and seeking repeal.

Women in Egypt are bitterly divided between those who favor sharia law for Egypt and those who favor secular law.

The State of Arizona has a law that legalizes medical marijuana. The Governor is suing the Stateof Arizona against this law because it conflicts with federal law.

President Bush "launched missiles and bombs at targets in Iraq" in March of 2003, an action of which 25 percent of Americans disapproved at the time. That figure rose to 53 percent within 8 months.

What do the above items have in common?

They all involve laws approved of by some and disapproved of by others. In all cases, there are winners and losers. The winners get their favorite laws passed. The losers have to obey.

In all cases, the losers have no choice.

You can’t smoke in a bar. You must use a bicycle helmet. You cannot use an incandescent light bulb. You cannot place phosphates in soap. You must use a front-loading washing machine. Your shower cannot pump at above a specified rate. Your toilet cannot go above a specified number of gallons. You must pay taxes for government programs. You must accept Federal Reserve Notes in payments. A bank must report cash transactions over a specified size. You cannot buy marijuana. You cannot simply buy a gun.

If circumcision is banned in San Francisco, those who want to circumcise their babies will have to go elsewhere. In Louisiana, the public schools, and maybe even private schools who can’t find an exemption on some grounds, will teach what the legislature tells them to teach. In Egypt, either sharia law will be in or it will be out, for everyone. In the individual states, either they will be allowed to pass medical marijuana laws or else the federal law will be the rule. Clinton, Bush, and Obama and the Congress will launch their missiles wherever they please even if large numbers of Americans disapprove, and they will extract the resources to do this in the form of taxes whether you like it or not.

These examples all involve voting and democracies, but the same division between winners and losers occurs in other forms of government such as monarchies and dictatorships.

They all have in common that there are always groups of people who want to impose their views on everyone. They all have in common that every such group aims to use government as the instrument to fulfill their ardent desires.

I feel sorry for the human race. The thinking and emotional makeup of most people are so impoverished that they cannot find a way to live without imposing their views on as many other people as they can. It is not enough for them to preach their views. They feel they have to pass a law or somehow use the government to make everyone else conform to their wishes.

I felt sadness when I read about the woman pushing for a circumcision law. It doesn’t matter what her reasons are. Everyone always comes up with reasons. Bush had his reasons. Obama has his reasons. The Louisiana legislators had their reasons. I’m not debating the reasons or the substance of any of these many debates. I’m not interested in choosing up sides.

I feel sad because the desire to pass a law and impose one’s own views on everyone else is, to my way of thinking, so stupid, so ignorant, so limited in vision, so immoral, so anti-human, so devoid of understanding, so unloving, so distorted, so anti-freedom, so anti-voluntaristic, so anti-individual, so unreasonable, so intolerant, and so against the person.

Government in its present condition is a factory that constantly manufactures new kinds of ropes, manacles, gags, and handcuffs with which it binds everyone. This is what most people accept.

I am amazed, totally amazed, that people do not see or admit the contradiction between the American rhetoric of freedom and what actually goes down, and between that rhetoric and their own attempts to vote in the candidates of their choice and impose their programs on everyone else!

Through the instrument of government, there are countless groups and political parties organized with the sole purpose of making slaves out of everyone. Is this not a self-evident truth? No, it is not, because every such group and party attempts to provide reasons why its program is a good thing. They would bitterly dispute my contention that their aim is to impose slavery on everyone.

One government for all cannot coexist with freedom. They are mutually exclusive.

Let those who wish to build missiles and shoot them into Tripoli do so at their own cost and risk and for themselves only. Let those who wish to form and pay for a military that trains every nation on earth how to interdict drugs do so at their own cost and risk and for themselves only. Let those who wish to form a legislature that enacts their version of religion do so at their own cost and risk and for themselves only. Let those who wish to pass a law that forbids drug use do so for themselves only. Let those who wish to pass a law that forbids circumcision do so for themselves only. Let those who wish to tax themselves and give the proceeds away to those in need do so for themselves only. Let those who wish to guarantee medical care for all those in their group do so at their own cost and risk and for themselves only.

If we actually want freedom and not slavery, we cannot have one government for all. Freedom and one government for all are inconsistent with one another. They contradict one another. To have one government and simultaneously to have freedom is an impossibility.

To arrive at greater freedom, one has to have the freedom to remove the manacles imposed by a government that presumes to be the government for all. One has to be able to opt out of government laws. One has to be able to secede personally from a government.

Personal secession manifests one’s personal freedom to choose a government (or no government) of one’s desires, by oneself or in association with other people.

For further reading on personal secession and secession by groups, one can use a search engine. After writing the above, I searched on secession movements. One site that came up was secession.net. Their statement of principles is well worth reading. They advocate something close to personal secession, namely, community-based secession. The difference between them is trivial.

For example, this site writes

PRIMACY OF THE RIGHT TO SECEDE

"The primary political right of the individual and of political communities must be to secede from any larger political entity, whether they were born into it, were forced to join it, or voluntarily joined it. If one denies or relinquishes that right, one is little more than a slave--and no agreement to become a slave can be legally or morally binding.

Secession of individuals and communities does not have to mean war and violence. It should be a natural evolutionary feature of all political entities. Communities can form networks or confederations, since secession is accepted by both in principle. However, communities will not form "federations" which by definition do not allow secession. We will suggest practical and nonviolent means by which such separation can occur and the kinds of networks and confederations that could be created to replace oppressive nation states."

COMMUNITY-BASED SECESSION:

"In the name of nationalism, religion, ideology, tradition or "the common good," the governments of the world suppress individual liberty and individuals' control of their own communities. Special interest- corporate- state- bureaucratic- military elites worldwide tax, regulate, bully, beat, prosecute, jail and execute citizens into submission. They discriminate against, rob, ethnically cleanse and genocide members of oppressed racial/ethnic/religious/regional groups. Without government control, these elites would have little real power over individuals and communities.

The concept of individual liberty is simple: individuals should be free to do whatever they please as long as they don't harm others by using force or fraud. This is the basic ethical tenet or "golden rule" of all religions, one corrupted by layers of theology and ritual and centuries of kowtowing to political authority. Individual consent–not some nationalist, racial, religious, tribal or, ideological construct or "social contract"–is the only legitimate basis of any social, economic and political organization. However, supporting the idea and value of individual liberty is not enough to obtain liberty. We must support institutional structures that make it impossible for public or private entities to crush individual liberty."

Contrast personal secession with the U.S. government’s notions of "security" and "democracy" and "welfare" for all of America. The U.S. vision is actually a highly limited vision that pretends to be a universal vision. Its thrust is to the common and general. It is certainly a monopolistic vision. Ultimately, it is a static and one-sided totalitarian vision. A totalitarian vision within the United States is continually being enacted and made real. It is not that of Orwell or Huxley although some of their elements are present. At present it is a suffocating and deadening vision in which political correctness holds sway and in which government makes countless rules that control many aspects of life, while allowing outlets in certain directions that vent the pressures. The government’s vision is of oneness, sameness, monotony, regularity, perfect safety and security, regimentation, and boredom. It crushes the personal and the individual.

The U.S. government is even making strenuous efforts to promote this vision in foreign governments.

Democracy is not freedom. It is the suppression of freedom. This takes different forms in different countries. In America, the current obsession is with security and safety in every aspect of life. The government intrudes everywhere with these as its rationales. This is the American totalitarianism.

Personal secession allows for multiple visions of life and living. It allows for dynamism, creativity, personal development along new lines, invention, discovery, and adventure. It allows for variation and newness. It allows for development along unexpected lines. It allows for mistakes and learning from mistakes, new and untried ventures, new ways, new customs, and new ideas. It allows for personal risk-taking. It emphasizes the personal and individual. It is pluralistic. It is voluntaristic.

Personal secession means freedom and all that freedom entails.

Michael S. Rozeff is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free e-book The U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.

LewRockwell articles by Michael S. Rozeff

LewRockwell home page 

Personal Secession - The Way to Freedom

Humanity at the Crossroads: Business and Jobs

Humanity at the Crossroads: Business and Jobs

by Prof. John Kozy article link

June 5, 2011 | Global Research

What's known as the economy has not only had horrid consequences, it is ultimately unsustainable. In two centuries, it has turned human beings into beasts of burden and their rulers into mere teamsters, it has polluted the Earth, extinguished uncounted species and exterminated millions of people, it has denuded forests, melted glaciers, and is in the process of depleting un-renewable natural resources. Someday, no natural resources will be available for industrial processing, and this economy's assets will turn to dusted rust.

The economy, which is nothing but a collection of abstract ideas to which humanity is being sacrificed, has brought all of this about. If human beings and life in general survive, humanity will have to revert to its natural state in which jobs are done in cooperation with nature rather than in opposition to it.

Conventional wisdom is seldom wise; worse, it is often completely false. And when it falls into the category of the obvious, it is doubly dangerous for its obviousness makes it more difficult to question.

No one defines the word 'freedom' or lists the things Americans are free to do that people in other advanced democratic nations cannot, but who questions the claim that the American people are the freest on earth? No one provides a comparison of poverty in America to poverty in other developed countries, but who questions the claim that America is the most prosperous nation the world has ever known? No one mentions that America has not decisively won a major war in more than thirty years although it has fought perhaps a dozen or more, yet who questions the claim that America has the strongest military power yet created? All of these conventional, obvious bits of common wisdom are dangerous; they lead Americans into a false sense of complaisant superiority that is bringing about the country's undoing.

There are many such conventional, obvious bits of common wisdom. An encyclopedia would be required to list them all, but there is one so astoundingly false that I have never been able to understand why anyone believes it even though everyone seems to: businesses create jobs!

In fact, even deciding what this assertion means is difficult. If it means that only businesses create jobs, it is patently false. Not only do governments and even individuals create jobs, jobs existed for millennia before any businesses as we know them came into being. Ever heard of hunters and gatherers? Hunting and gathering are jobs that people worldwide engaged in. So are herding, trapping, fowling, planting, harvesting, building, skinning, preserving as in drying, cleaning, and the ubiquitous cooking. When a mother cooks her family's dinner, she is doing a job but not for a business. When an otherwise unemployed person is hired to cut your lawn or clean your house, you, not a business, are creating a job. In fact, throughout most of human history, these were the types of jobs human beings engaged in; they did not work for businesses! Businesses did not create any jobs. Anyone who doesn't know this should never have been awarded a diploma from any university, not an MBA, a Ph.D. in economics, or a J.D. Not even a simple B.A.

American politicians and economists take this unquestioned falsehood and attempt to make it the keystone of an economic policy and commercial law that makes the company more important than the species. People are made into factory fodder to be used like any raw material; buyers are cautioned to beware because merchants are expected to cheat, the courts will uphold a merchant's claim against a buyer but deny a similar claim made by a buyer against a merchant. In other words, the company is placed in a superior position to the worker, the job holder, the consumer, the person. The economy becomes a Hegelian master-slave relationship which has never been synthesized.

But what the proponents of this false bit of conventional wisdom fail to recognize is that it has a logical converse. Businesses do, of course, hire people and thus create jobs. Business is a necessary condition for jobs of this kind. But in like manner, the availability of labor is a necessary condition for the existence of business. One is no more important than the other. There is no logical or even practical reason to value the business differently than the job-holder. Just as businesses make jobs possible, workers make businesses possible. The only reason business has a predominant position in the economy is that policy makers have either eliminated or prohibited most other kinds of jobs. If you want people to be only factory fodder, prohibit them from being anything else.

One wonders, of course, how people who held jobs for millennia without the intercession of businesses suddenly, almost overnight in historical terms, became factory fodder. It happened because the masses were driven from the land. They were driven into cities where the kind of work people had done for millennia was no longer available. The only critters available for the hunt are other people and the only stuff to be gathered are other people's property. Industrial capitalism turned hunting and gathering, the most basic forma of work, into crimes. Property became more important than people.

How did this come about? We shall never know. The event has been buried by the dust of time, but we do know who tried to justify it.

John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government argues that there are three natural rights—life, liberty, and property. Thomas Jefferson, who was familiar with Locke's writing, said, "Oh, no. That's a receipe for tyranny by the status quo and altered the trilogy into life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What Jefferson saw and Locke didn't was that if all the property were already owned by the aristocracy, making property a right gave exclusive possession of it to those who already had it, which made the Hegelian master-slave relationship irresolvable, and so it still stands today. Worse, it has been chiseled into a legal wall of separation by the American federal courts when they imported English Common Law into American jurisprudence.

What's known as "the economy," industrial capitalism, has not only had horrid consequences, it is ultimately unsustainable. In two-short centuries, it has turned human beings into beasts of burden and their rulers into mere teamsters, it has polluted the Earth's atmosphere, its streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, extinguished uncounted species and exterminated millions of human beings, it has denuded forests, melted glaciers, and is in the process of depleting un-renewable natural resources. Someday, no natural resources will be available for industrial processing, and this economy's assets will turn to dusted rust. Industrial Capitalism carried within it the seeds of its own dissolution. Its process is a physical reductio ad absurdum. If human beings in particular and life in general survive this collapse, will humanity revert to its natural state? Will the jobs people do be done for the benefit of human beings rather than for an artificially constructed economy?

The economy's leaders have indirectly brought all of this about by their policy choices, but the economy has done it directly. What is happening to humanity is being brought about by the economy which now controls the actions of leaders and the fates of people. Everything that happens is a consequence of it, and it is nothing but a collection of abstract ideas to which humanity is being sacrificed.

Some will say that technology will be our savior. But that is nothing but a belief based upon a hope, a unicorn on the back of a chimera, that is, too, more likely false than not. Technology has been far more destructive than constructive. Every technological advance has brought with it its own horrors. Business is not a human benefactor, and technology is just another kind of business. It does not exist for you and me any more than hedge funds do. It exists only for the sake of the economy.

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site's homepage.

Global Research articles by John Kozy

Global Research home page

Humanity at the Crossroads: Business and Jobs

Constitution Worship Revisited

Constitution Worship Revisited: I’m Still Fed Up!

by Gary D. Barnett article link

June 4, 2011 | LewRockwell

Last year I wrote an article titled "I'm Fed Up With Constitution Worship!" Since that time it seems, I hear more and more every day about "getting back to the constitution," mainly from "conservatives" and those of the Tea Party persuasion. I always wonder not only have any of these people ever read and studied the constitution, but also do they even understand why it was secretly drafted in the first place? All indications show that they aren’t at all familiar with the enabling power of that document to create a strong central governing system that reduced severely the sovereignty of the states.

I have this contrarian view not because I am cynical or pessimistic, but because I have thoroughly studied this set of rules or "law of the land," and found them to be antagonist to individual liberty and state’s rights, and sympathetic to big government. When one compares the constitution that was replaced, The Articles of Confederation, there is little doubt of this truth. Lysander Spooner said this:

"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."

In my opinion, there is no doubt that the constitution fully authorized the government that we had and still have today. It is also true that any set of rules is powerless to stop tyranny unless the people enforce and demand compliance on a constant basis. This has never been the case. Even if it had been followed to the letter, it is obvious that liberty would still have been compromised.

Before the current constitution was drafted, there was never any mention or acceptance of the notion that there was a (U)nited States, or that any single nation existed with power over the states. Quite the contrary was the case. It is very troubling that so many Americans have been fooled into believing that the constitution is the basis of our freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing could be more misunderstood!

Recently, those like Tom Mullen and Bill Buppert have explained thoroughly why the constitution is not what it is made out to be, and many others have properly denounced this misleading document as well, but the general thinking is still very misguided. Most continue to laud and worship this very flawed piece of parchment, and continue to believe that it is the creator and savior of liberty. Liberty lies in the essence of man, not in documents secretly drafted in the dark of night by the few. The free spirit of the people must awaken before any real freedom becomes evident, and in that awakening they must realize the great importance of the individual and of individual responsibility.

My intent here is not to claim that our original constitution, The Articles of Confederation, were a perfect set of rules, or that any set of rules established by simple men could be perfect. My intent is to expose the lie that is our current constitution. If we as a people could see the truth of why our original constitution was completely scrapped in favor of our current one, maybe a more widespread anger would arise. Once it is accepted that the Hamiltonians in 1787 staged a coup to destroy states rights in favor of federal power, and to destroy individual liberty in favor of nationalism, then maybe more will begin to question their false idolization of the constitution. One could only hope for such an awakening.

Before this constitution, there was no power whatsoever for the federal government to tax. That was left entirely to the individual states. Now the Feds have an unlimited power to tax. In Article 1, Section 8, the taxing clause states, "Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." I see no limits mentioned here whatsoever, and given the term "General Welfare" of the (U)nited States, there is no reason to believe that any restriction was intended. Many so-called constitutional scholars will argue this, saying that all spending must be "constitutional", or within the confines of the taxing and spending clauses, but these arguments can easily be refuted given the broad and sweeping language in this section. This was in my opinion done explicitly by design. Article 1, Section 8 is nothing if it is not an all-encompassing, unrestricted, and explicit enabler of unlimited governmental power.

Anyone can check the definitions during that period by simply going to the dictionary of that time, Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language. It is immediately obvious that there was little difference in the meaning of general welfare at the time of the founding as there is today. But this is just one example of the obvious misunderstanding by so many in modern times.

Under the Articles of Confederation, there was no president. There was no supreme court. There was no federal taxation, and certainly no immoral income tax. This meant that there was no IRS. There was no federal control of interstate commerce. Congress could not raise an army or draft troops. What this meant, was that the states were sovereign, and no national government existed in any real sense. Because of this, freedom flourished, and tyranny was not evident. So how is it then that this very pro-central government, federal controlling, and powerful national governing system could be created by the same constitution that supposedly set us free? Why were the Articles scrapped entirely if freedom of the people and state’s rights were the objectives sought? I can tell you; at no time did those who supported the drafting and ratification of the U.S constitution in 1787 consider individual freedoms!

There are those who would offer that the Bill of Rights adopted several years later corrected the obvious problems that plagued the constitution, but that thinking is based on the false logic of gullible minds. While those amendments certainly were restrictions on government power, they did nothing to change the original intent, that being one of granting massive and in many cases unlimited power to a federal government.

The constitution allowed for the usurpation of power by the executive branch, it allowed federal courts to approve and sanction authoritarianism by the government over the people, it allowed for legalized forcible theft by the federal government in the form of taxation, and it allowed the federal government both the ability to collect taxes for war, and to also prosecute those wars. These egregious powers given by the constitution to the central government are completely antithetical to liberty, and should never have been considered by any men of character.

The people did not establish our constitution, nor was it inspired by divine intervention as so many suggest. It would be difficult for me to imagine that God would have a hand in the destruction of our inherent and natural rights. No, this flagrantly flawed document was designed and implemented by a few corrupt men led by Alexander Hamilton. Their agenda was guided not by any desire to achieve liberty for all, but by a grand lust for power and control. Had that not been the case, the Declaration of Independence would have been the guide for any new set of rules, and our original constitution would have been even more scrutinized instead of being replaced.

Instead, after 224 years, we now have exactly what the original ruling class desired, an all-powerful central government ruling over the lower classes. This is a rule by the few over the many. As Aristotle said: "rule by the few is aristocracy in its ideal form and oligarchy in its perverted form." The elite class holds all the cards, while the rest of us now struggle under the thumb of tyranny!

Gary D. Barnett is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.

LewRockwell articles by Gary D. Barnett

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Constitution Worship Revisited

Our Goose is Cooked

Our Goose is Cooked 

by Mike Whitney article link

June 02, 2011 | Information Clearing House

This must be what it was like in Russia before the Soviet Union collapsed. The government's so crooked that nothing works right, the infrastructure's in a shambles, millions of people are scraping by on government handouts, and everyone's on a permanent downer. Welcome to the Soviet States of America 2011.

I mean, seriously, things are really looking bad. Apart from killing people, we really don't do anything anymore. We have a humongous, over-bloated military that lumbers from one war to the next spreading misery wherever it goes, and meanwhile, back at home, things continue to go to the dogs. How long can that go on?

You can't get a job anymore, because all the jobs have been shipped off to Guandong Province or someplace South of the border. The best you can hope for is some part-time gig jerking double-tall-mochas or steering folks towards the red-dot special on Aisle 9. So, how can you sustain a middle class on a measly $9.50 per hour? It can't be done.

And just look at Washington. What a joke. The White House is just a protection racket for big business. And Congress, well, what can you say about congress? We'd be better off if they just packed their bags and went home for all the good they do. Then at least we could turn the House of Representatives into a homeless shelter or something that had some practical value for people. At any rate, we wouldn't have to listen to the bloviating of numbskulls like Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid anymore. That's got to be worth something.

You know our goose is cooked, don't you? You know we're not going to get out of this, right? The country is disintegrating. It's obvious. It isn't even America anymore; it's like we're on some kind of movie set where everything looks real, but it's all just props. Everything is perfectly placed to make you feel like you still live in a free country, but you know you don't. You know the government spying on you and going through your mail. You know if you stand in front of the state-house with a peace sign you'll get rousted or pepper-sprayed or something. You know if your name turns up on the wrong list, you'll either get bounced off your plane or dragged off to some far-flung blacksite where they keep you in a 6 ft. box until they want to waterboard for the millionth time. Yeah, everything still looks the same, but it's all changed. Everything's different now.

You watch news, right? It's all propaganda, every bit of it. In fact, they all read from same script. Maybe you went to some toffeenose college so you prefer PBS's Jim Lehrer News Hour, because you're smart and you want more "in depth" coverage. So, you get two brainy experts on each segment. But, there's one little problem, isn't there? Both experts are from corporate-funded think tanks, and both of them have exactly the same views on every single issue. But you think, "Hey, at least public TV airs different opinions." Right.

It's all George Orwell. It's all 1984. You know that. That's why we're all so frustrated. It's bad enough that the country's going to Hell in a handbasket, but it's even worse that they have to lie to you about it 24-7. That just reinforces the feeling that we're all goners; that the whole society is just propped up on one big freaking lie.

Have you looked around lately? Have you noticed the women at the grocery store who keep their head's down at the checkout stand while they load the boxes of mac n' cheese onto the conveyor-belt hoping like Hell that one of their credit cards will be accepted? Have you noticed that there are more kids at school showing up like ragamuffins and piling into the cafeteria for a free lunch. Have you been to a state park lately and seen the people who sleep in their cars at night and then spend $.50 to shower in the public restrooms. Have you taken a look under the freeway overpasses where small encampments are turning into tent cities.

I'm telling you, our goose is cooked.

The other day my bank shut-down after 30 years in business without any sign they were in trouble. Whoa. You talk about shattered confidence; that'll do it every time. There I was in a long line of nervous-looking 50-somethings chewing on their lower lips and scowling while they made their way through the front door of the bank.

"Er, Mr. Bank Teller, could you tell me; do I have any money left?"

Don't kid yourself, when your bank goes under, it changes your world view. And it changes your feelings about America, too. Forget about security; it doesn't exist anymore. They'll fleece you out of your life's savings without batting an eye. Bankers are all crooks, every last one of them. And we're all just chickens for-the-plucking.

There was an article in USA Today that really sums up how bad things have gotten. The article is titled "Feds chase more student loan defaults". Here's a clip:

"The government increasingly is threatening to sue people who've defaulted on their student loans to get the money back. The number of loan defaults that the Education Department has referred to Justice Department lawyers for possible legal action has risen dramatically since before the recession and nearly doubled from 2009 to last year....

If the government does sue, it can go after wages and bank accounts, put liens on people's property and hold parents responsible for their children's debt if they co-signed the education loans. "The most important thing to remember is we want the loans repaid," says Jane Glickman, Education Department spokeswoman.

Can you see how sick this is? Since when has the Justice Department become a collection agency for private industry? Let the banks hire their own goons for Chrissake. They'd probably like that better that anyway.

And why is the DOJ shaking down our kids when the guys on Wall Street who created this mess are still slurping Bordeaux and figuring out new ways to ripoff Uncle Sugar? The whole thing is backasswards.

Any country that preys on its kids to make a few bucks is on it's last legs.

America has lost its way. Sooner or later we going to wind up in the same dustbin as the Soviet Union. 

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Our Goose is Cooked

From Civil Disobedience to Civil Defiance

From Civil Disobedience to Civil Defiance

by Ed Kinane article link

June 2, 2011 | TruthOut

 

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience ... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves ... [and] the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem." -Howard Zinn 

Over the years, I've been jailed numerous times. Each such event arose from what is loosely called "civil disobedience."

The tactical value of arrest and ensuing "court witness" and "prison witness" is that they can generate news helping to bring vital, often neglected, issues to public notice. These mindful acts can boost solidarity and the grassroots campaigns in which they are embedded.

At a personal level, court and trial witness help us keep our "edge," maintain our focus, clarify our values. Such public stands impede co-optation. Court witness provides the opportunity to craft trial statements articulating why one has taken part in a given direct action. Along with such statements, the testimony of defense witnesses can be used to turn the tables on the prosecutors. They can put militarism (or whatever issue is at stake) "on trial." And they can be published, reaching well beyond the courtroom.

Those willing to do jail and court witness are often deeply affected. The solidarity and community that may be generated can be transformative. And for privileged folks, and perhaps especially privileged white folks, it's eye opening to expose ourselves to the "justice" system of this overly incarcerating nation. Given the disproportionate numbers of people of color in every jail and prison, any conscious person can't help but become more aware of our society's stark and systemic racism.

Thanks in large part to court and prison witness, one grassroots organization I've long worked with has grown by leaps and bounds. Determined to expose and close the Pentagon's School of the Americas (SOA) - a.k.a. the "School of Assassins" - more than 200 SOA Watch activists over the years have willingly endured trial and incarceration. Inspired by them, each November, thousands from all over the country converge on Fort Benning, Georgia to protest the SOA there for fostering large-scale bloodshed and human rights abuse in Latin America. (In response to our persistent pressure, the SOA has undergone a PR makeover: it has changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC.)

Most of us vote. However, merely voting is tokenistic. It's getting a free ride, not paying our fare. It's not doing our part to neutralize the toxic power structure impacting everyone the US imperium touches, i.e. the entire planet. Democracy is far more than voting and elections; democracy must be struggled for. Each nonviolent direct action ("civil disobedience") is a vote multiplied many times over. If more middle-class citizens would risk arrest and incarceration for nonviolent acts of solidarity and conscience, ours might well be a better nation, a better world.

Many of us have valid reasons not to risk arrest. But some of us are in a position to take the plunge ... or we're in a position to make changes in our life style or circumstances so we can risk arrest and its consequences when that imperative calls. In any case we can actively support those nonviolently taking such risk. Bradley Manning, the young soldier who allegedly provided WikiLeaks with secret files exposing - among much else - US military massacres of civilians in Iraq, is deeply at risk. For nearly a year, Bradley - perhaps the premier patriot of our day - has languished in Abu Ghraib-like conditions in the Quantico Marine base brig. For his whistleblowing, he faces possible execution. (Update: In the wake of the March 20 demonstration at Quantico, Bradley has been transferred to Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.)

* * *

This past winter's events in Tunisia and Egypt have much to teach us. These North Africans embody what Gandhi taught: when enough of us withdraw our cooperation from it, tyranny crumbles. Tyranny can't be sustained if good people refuse to go along. To avoid or remove tyranny, we need to cultivate the will to disobey, the will to defy.

"Civil disobedience" isn't the best term for what's been happening in Cairo and elsewhere throughout the Islamic world - and in Wisconsin. More apt and bracing is "civil defiance." "Civil" because it involves citizens acting civilly, i.e. nonviolently. That Cairenes may ignore curfew and crowd-control orders (i.e. they disobey) is less relevant than that they have collectively risked life and limb to oust Mubarak - and that they continue to do so in the face of his military successors.

"Civil defiance" is the term embraced by Harvard's Gene Sharp. Sharp's tally of "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action" is reprinted in the appendix of his seminal 93-page "From Dictatorship to Democracy," fourth US edition, May 2010 (original, 1993). This how-to manual has been translated into many languages - including Arabic - and is downloadable free from the Albert Einstein Institution web site. Sharp isn't just about the grassroots mobilizing to depose a tyrant; Sharp seeks to assure that the tyrant isn't replaced by another tyrannical regime - a common fate of palace coups and violent revolution. Not to mention outside interventions.

Egyptian activists have likely read "From Dictatorship." We also would do well to study it to understand not only the rise of people power throughout the Middle East ... but to better see how together we, too, might counter any moves toward tyranny here.

Ed Kinane is an essayist and anti-state terror activist based in Syracuse, New York. In 2003, he spent five months in Baghdad with Voices in the Wilderness ... before, during and after "shock and awe." An advocate of "prison witness," he has twice done federal time for direct actions against the Pentagon's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Ed has worked on Peace Brigades accompaniment teams in the war zones of Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala and Sri Lanka. In the eighties, he spent nearly three years teaching in and hitchhiking around Africa.

In March, Ed was arrested - along with over 30 others - at Quantico Marine base protesting - along with hundreds of others - Bradley Manning's captivity. More recently, Ed was arrested at Hancock Air Base - also along with over 30 others - for protesting the Reaper drone operating from there. Reach him at edkinane@verizon.net.

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From Civil Disobedience to Civil Defiance

America Will Be Dismembered By Its Creditors

“America Will Be Dismembered By Its Creditors”

by Mac Slavo article link article link article link

June 1st, 2011 | SHTFplan | Club Orlov | Silver Bear Cafe

Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse, says that the U.S. will be unrecognizable in ten years. In his most recent interview with WMNF Tampa he outlines the five stages of collapse:

First you have financial collapse, which is basically the volume of debt that has to be taken on in order for the economy to continue functioning, cannot continue. We’re seeing that right now in Greece, we’re probably going to see that in Japan, we’re definitely at a point now in the United States where even if you raised the income tax to 100 percent, there’s absolutely no way of covering the liabilities of the U.S. federal government. So, we’re at that point now but the workout of the financial collapse is not all quite there. We don’t quite have a worthless currency but that’s in the works.

That, of course, is followed by commercial collapse especially in a country like the United States that imports two thirds of its oil. A lot of that is on credit and if a little bit of that oil goes missing then the economy starts to fall apart because nothing moves unless you burn oil in the United States and, of course, a lot of goods that are sold everywhere are imported again, on credit.

And then commercial collapse is generally followed by political collapse because the Congress no longer has the ability to spend money in the fashion to which they have become accustomed. Governments at every level start failing. We’re seeing the beginnings of that where fire and police departments around the country are being cut. Right now there’s a big fight over the retirement of retired municipal workers. Retirements are, basically, being looted in order to paper over these giant gaping holes in the finance scheme.

Then the last two stages are I think generally avoidable in most places which is social and cultural collapse.

I think the country will be unrecognizable in 10 years, I don’t know about 5, but I don’t think it will look like a country in 10 years. I think it will be largely dismembered by it’s creditors.

I think certain stages like the onset of fuel, transportation, fuel shortages will be very sudden. American society tends to be very fragile…

I expect certain parts of the country to go through this cataclysm where suddenly everything that they depend on, which is basically their car, no longer works and everybody’s stranded and very angry. It would be a lot of mayhem. We’ve already seen that, for instance, during Hurricane Katrina and afterward because of all the refinery problems the ‘..’ pipeline that goes up from the Gulf, I think it ends up in New Jersey somewhere, it couldn’t be filled so gas stations in places like North Carolina ran dry and I’ve heard from people in that area that basically civilization ceased to exist. And then, when gasoline supplies were restored civilizaton sort of came back. That should be the pattern in a lot of places in this country.

Unfortunately a lot of people simply cannot be reached because they refuse to hear what we have to say. It’s not that they can’t understand it, it’s that they refuse to listen. The media, in general, in the United States makes it very easy because there is this fictional reality that they perpetuate and foist on people that contradicts what we’re saying. We’re saying that ‘this will not continue for very much longer, people’. And then the media says that ‘everything is fine, everything is normal’…

Our entire way of life – everything that we have come to know from the Baby Boomers to Generation Z – is being systematically disassembled – our financial, economic, political and social systems. Slowly, day-by-day, one policy shift at a time, the world as we know it is changing.

We’re faced with mountains of debt, a dead or dying production capacity, a depreciating currency, rising unemployment, and more Americans than ever before having to rely on government assistance just to feed themselves and their families.

Whether we slowly devolve into a near third world nation over the course of the next decade, or experience a violent and rapid economic collapse fueled by rising commodity prices and shortages, remains to be seen.

Either way, we share Mr. Orlov’s views that the system has crossed the Rubicon and has been irreversibly damaged. The coming decade is going to be long and arduous – unlike anything Americans have ever experienced before or ever expected to happen.

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America Will Be Dismembered By Its Creditors