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Wolf Britain, Poet and Activist
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Prescript: I'm looking for someone to go 50/50 with me and move to either Ecuador, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, or Mexico where we can make a very low income go much further with a lower cost, and higher standard, of living (than living in the States on such a low income). This includes an only income of Social Security Disability (SSDI) and/or Retirement benefits. The Social Security Administration most definitely DOES allow SSDI and/or Retirement benefits, but not Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, to be sent to recipients in most other countries! There are many books about moving and living abroad available at the public library and/or at Amazon.com . Naturally, I realize we would probably have to spend some time getting to know eachother, and finding out if we're compatible, before moving abroad together. We could even have our own separate "spaces" by choosing to rent or purchase a house or apartment with separate quarters, and still save considerable money in monthly costs compared to living in the States on the same income. If you might be interested, want to ask me some questions, and/or want to discuss it, please e-mail me at the address below.
CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE
(Click on the link to go to that part of the page):
2-11-02
Response To "President" Bush's 29 January 2002
"State Of The Union Address"
Capitalist Imperialism
The Twentieth Century, A People's History,,
"The Coming Revolt of the Guards",
By Howard Zinn
MORE OF MY COMMENTS AND FAVORITE QUOTES ON VARIOUS TOPICS CONCERNING 9-11-01, TERRORISM, EVIL, HATE, INJUSTICE, RACISM, BIGOTRY, PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION, INEQUALITY, REVENGE, RETALIATION(S), INVASION, WAR, MORE TERRORISM, MURDER, GREED, MONEY-MONGERING, WAR-MONGERING, "AMERICAN" FOREIGN POLICY(IES), CONQUEST, OCCUPATION, CONTROL, FALSE IMPRISONMENT, CAPITALISM, GLOBALISM, IMPERIALISM, COLONIALISM, HYPOCRISY, CORPORATE FASCISM, TOTALITARIANISM, DESPOTISM, DICTATORSHIP, OPPRESSION, REPRESSION, GENOCIDE, EUGENICS, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES, TRUE PEACE, FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, LIBERATION, EQUALITY, JUSTICE, AND LAST BUT THE GREATEST, LOVE, ADDED TO THE SITE ON OR ABOUT 3-11-02:
2-11-2002
RESPONSE TO "PRESIDENT" BUSH'S 29 JANUARY 2002
"STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS"
"Only by cutting through the darkness of ignorance
and prejudice, can we achieve true justice."
(Author Unknown.)
[PREFACE TO MAIN BODY OF TEXT: I realize that the "Founding Fathers" were far from faultless themselves, that they were a majority of rich businessmen, that most of them sought to protect the interests of land- and slave- holders when they wrote the Constitution, that one of the things they were primarily concerned about was revolts of the majority of poor people who wanted more personal representation in the new government then they were getting from, or received as a result of, the Constitution, and that most of them did not EVER want to really see True "liberty and justice for all". When I speak of the "True" Founding Fathers, I mean those among them who were more concerned, at least somewhat, with protecting the rights of all of The People than their own monetary interests, and who were against the "big government" that the majority of them wanted to see immediately instituted, but certainly did not want to see rage out of control as it did less than one-hundred years after the Constitution was written, or to the very dangerous and grave extent that it has escalated out of control today! But perhaps, like most "Americans", I give the Founding Fathers more credit than they deserve.
I also realize that the United Nations is in Truth an agent of the globalist-imperialist/corporate-elitist monopoly over "freedom", though its ideals, as outlined in its public Charter, are certainly much closer to what the entire world and all people of True Peace should stand for and live up to, with the exception of supporting war under some circumstances, that it was instituted to do the latter's bidding in the guise of humanitarianism, and that behind the scenes the U.N. primarily promotes and assures that the corporate-elitist/globalist imperialist "machine" will continue to be able to exploit the entire world, murder millions of innocent people, rape the land, and destroy the environment at will, in their pursuit of the profit to be had from the natural resources of the whole planet; otherwise the United States government could not get away with flagrantly, and with impunity, as well as immunity from the prosecution in the "World Court" that just about any other country would have to face, with the exception of England in particular, for violating the "international human rights" of sovereign countries all over the world as the U.S. government does!
I further realize that the "Royal Family", a very important primary ally of the United States government (a disgusting irony), has for centuries been a major part of the evil global conspiracy; and, as will be brought out later via Dr. Leonard Horowitz's very enlightening writings, is a major moving-force behind the genocidal program to eradicate half of the Earth's population, that is presently being carried out world-wide with the thorough support of the United States government, the global military-industrial complex, and families like the Bush's!
In addition, I also realize "democracy" and "civil rights" in the U.S. are almost completely a myth, and have been since the Founding Fathers first instituted them. These so-called rights and freedoms only just appear to exist; and a great big lie has been foisted upon us leading us to believe that they truly exist. But, as they are written, they should exist in total reality; so we should, indeed must, stand up for them and seek to bring about their actual and complete existence in reality. The mental and emotional conditioning we have undergone since we began being indoctrinated by the first people we came into contact with, and all through our schooling, has taught us to "accept the status quo", "don't make waves", "give in", and "you can't fight city hall"; but these are the actual myths; and these are the myths that we must fight and fully break away from. In fact, aside from our need to totally surrender our lives to our Creator, this is the next most important requirement of our entire lives; and as much as we will be persecuted for fighting for our true freedoms and rights by those who are part of that lie, and tempted to give up, we must persevere.]
BEGINNING OF MAIN BODY OF TEXT: In his "State of the Union" address on January 29th, 2002 at 7:00 p.m. (M.S.T.), "President" George W. Bush said, "....'Our' cause is just...." in the present, so-called "War Against Terrorism"; but he is a liar, and "our" cause is NOT just! The State of the Union is appalling; as freedom of press and freedom of speech are literally being controlled and curtailed to the point that the mass media has primarily become a propaganda arm of a U.S. government that has run amuck, which is now withholding many very important news items from The People; e.g., information about several huge, unprecidented anti-war protests that have been, and are, often taking place all over "our" country and the world; and not least of all, many thousands of innocent people are now being intentionally slaughtered for United States interests abroad, and have been for over one-hundred years! But now, violations of human rights and freedoms by the U.S. government, both domestically and internationally, by arresting and imprisoning many innocent people, including Americans, without providing them access to due process safeguards or their families, without informing the American people much if any details about why they are incarcerated, other than unproven generalities like their allegedly being "terror suspects", and are occurring in ways never before seen in the U.S., and/or perpetrated with such an extreme disregard for those violations of liberty and human rights!
"President" Bush promised that Constitutional rights, the foundation of our democracy, would not be abrogated in any way; but, again, he has lied by allowing several Amendments of the U.S. Constitution to be habitually violated in the name of war and "freedom", thereby seriously threatening our democracy in many untold ways! George W. Bush and his administration are the ones' who are the most extreme threat to our democracy. Many of our government officials, the ones who are truly interested in protecting freedom(s) and democracy, are very concerned about the abrogation(s) of democracy and freedom which the former are presently perpetrating, thus far, with impunity! They are standing up against all of those threats to our freedom(s) and democracy as never before; for they realize that same is leading to a complete curtailment of human and civil rights, by the institution of "Martial Law", in this country. They will not sit idly by and allow it to happen without exercising their democratic DUTY(IES) to prevent same from happening; otherwise, thousands if not millions more innocent Americans will be falsely imprisoned and/or murdered when Martial Law is instituted; and they know that they must do everything in their power(s) to prevent it!
It is also the ultimate in hypocrisy for G.W. Bush to go on to say in the above-referenced "State of the Union" address that we, the United States, "....stand(s) for limits on the power of the State", when "our" own terrorist government is out of control and taking away more and more freedoms of Americans and other citizens all over the world! He and "our" government limit the powers of international States, but not "our" own government's powers! Instead, the U.S. government exercises more and more centralized, authoritarian and imperialistic powers, and abuses them to greater and greater extents! In the name of so-called "freedom", true freedom is being taken away in droves; and the United States is acting the part of the dictator to the world, setting True Democracy back in both the United States and the world by over two-hundred years!
The Muslim extremists by and large let the U.S. and Americans alone; until, after years and years of abuses of their freedoms at the hands of the United States government, they were provoked beyond the point of tolerating it anymore; and now, though everyone should be against revenge, they are getting the revenge against "America" that the U.S. government has been pushing the Muslim world towards for decade upon decade! They're "mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore"; and "we" continue to provoke them by threatening and attempting to destroy not only their freedoms, but by threatening and destroying their very lives! Did "we" stupidly think they were never going to do anything about our endless provocations?!
It is absolutely absurd, and another ultimate hypocrisy, for the United States to expect, and try to force, other countries not to produce and build up biological and chemical weapons, and other weapons of mass-destruction, when the U.S. continues to genetically engineer more and more such lethal weapons, and possesses more of them than any other country(ies) in the world! What is really going on is something that's been going on for thousands of years, the elitists seeking to gain all of the profit, wealth, power, and control! They claim they do, but they don't really care about the poor, the poor countries of the world, or the average "American" citizens, except to exploit them, brainwash them, keep them down, and fool them into supporting the aims of the smallest percentage of the population, the rich!
The entire Bush family has been, and continues to be, a huge part of an "axis of evil" for generations, much worse than the patsies and scapegoats G.W. Bush claims are such; and he has further said, "....Let's also ask what benefits the American people"; but he and the other evil power-brokers of this country and world are NOT truly concerned about the "American" people AT ALL! He, and they, are ONLY concerned about the rich, and the people who operate and run the multi-national corporations! Yet most "Americans" are fooled by "President" George W. Bush's lies, and love him for them!
A prime example of how little the evil elitists that run this world care about the poor and Americans in general is the fact that the projected cost of the "War Against Terrorism" for the first year alone is thirty (30) BILLION dollars, and Bush is seeking a combined budget of TRILLIONS of dollars when this country is already trillions of dollars in debt, thousands of people are still homeless, and children are dying from hunger and malnutrition in the United States of America! Obviously, this thirty (30) billion dollars ought to be spent on programs to feed and care for the starving multitudes of the U.S. and the world; but, instead, they are to be used to murder innocent men, women, children, and little babies the world over!
In addition, the present Bush administration, and its international Allies, say Saddam Hussein, who was an ally of the previous Bush administration prior to the latter turning against him, is "dangerous"; but G.W. Bush himself, as well as his administration, is EXTREMELY dangerous, ESPECIALLY TO TRUE DEMOCRACY!! He and his administration, including the Allies, have already undermined True Democracy in many untold and/or obvious ways, and, as I said before, have set back such democracy by hundreds of years; and the "American people" are going along with it like cattle or sheep to the slaughter!!
All true Americans, who don't accept and bow down to this unconscionable situation, speak up with the real Truth against it; and very, very soon, with the direction things are heading, true Americans will be locked up, and/or murdered, in much greater numbers for standing up for that Truth, and against ALL of the tyranny(ies) existent today in the U.S. government! But we must not stand by and allow such tyranny to continue and escalate even more out of control than it already is, even if the consequences include losing even more of our individual, personal freedoms, and/or our very lives!
'Love your country, not your government'! All governments are artificial entities, and by their very nature are corrupt and not to be trusted, particularly the bigger and more out of control they get, as the government of the United States has gotten; and, as it is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, it is incumbent upon The People to "abolish" and "throw off" such corrupt government, especially in "America": "....(A)ccordingly all experience (has shown), that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils (such as what is taking place in the U.S. right now) are sufferable, than to right themselves by ABOLISHING the forms of government to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them 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(!)...." (The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 [Emphasis added by me].)
The foregoing is the situation that The People of the United States of America find themselves in at the present time; as "Despotism", in the guise of the person and administration of George W. Bush, is unquestionably seeking "to reduce them under absolute Despotism"; and We, The People MUST "throw (it) off" and "abolish" it before it is forever too late!
[Copyright (c) 2002 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by S. Wolf Britain. All rights are reserved.]
CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM
(Added to the site on 3-11-02)
".... As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it ... watching the beginning of the American industrial system: 'Things are in the saddle and ride mankind(!)' The protection of corporate property is deemed more important than the protection of human life(!) Indeed, the (U.S.) Supreme Court decided in the late nineteenth century that a corporation was 'a person' and so protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, more protected, in fact, than black people, for whom that amendment was originally written ...."! [Note by me: This is the insanity we live under, but much worse today, in the U.S.A.; and what is most insane of all is that most of "us" think it (capitalism, materialism, selfishness, self-centeredness, greed, love of money, and/or love of "things" more than fellow human beings) is wonderful, "normal", and to be greatly sought after and prized! That is the ultimate in absolute insanity, no matter how normal it is thought to be by the insane majority!]
(Copyright © 1999 by Howard Zinn {1922- }, author, historian, activist, and emeritus professor at Boston University.)
When the British monarchy carried out a stranglehold of imperialistic power and control on both its own people and many of the people(s) of the world, including the American colonies, as the U.S. government is committing against its own people and many people(s) of the world today, The People of the colonies justly revolted, revolutionized the colonies, and brought about the existence of the United States of America. So today The People must revolt against the extremely oppressive imperialism of George W. Bush and his cohorts, take their government back, and restore True Freedom!
It is no wonder that England and the majority of its corrupt government, including the "royal" family, are presently in support of "President" Bush and the U.S. government's 'reign of terror against terror', retaliation(s) and revenge for terror against the United States and its Allies which their own governments have instigated with their own terror for over half a century; as the British government has been "for" such imperialism for hundreds and hundreds of years. British historians are probably laughing, or ought to be, at the irony of the U.S. government's actions at the present time, an effort to subjugate the "American" people and the so-called "backward" countries of the world to "American" imperialism and domination, just as the British government sought to do with their form of imperialism and world domination!
Such an "effort" has largely been successful, because the majority of "The People" are now blindly in support of it and allowing it to happen, and have been allowing it to happen for over a hundred years! Read the true history, by such great author / historian / political scientist / professors as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, of what big-business interests and the United States government have been guilty of perpetrating by way of their foreign policies and actions just in the twentieth century alone, and you will be amazed at how little of the real Truth you were taught in history classes all through your schooling, at least short of college, if you were so blessed as to have attended a college that had professors like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, etcetera, and/or others who tell it like it is, and to have understood them, about True History! The slaughtering victors have long been wrongly glorified as heroes, while the very large numbers of innocent victims have always been de-emphasized to the point of being nearly, if not completely, very conveniently and very sadly, forgotten and/or put out of mind; but we must totally stop glorifying the trained professional murderers, and never forget any of the many innocent victims that we know of!
The True victims, and True compassion for them and all people, give us conscience; but, if we put the victims out of our minds, we deaden our consciences; and if we make a habit of doing so, as most people do, we will deaden our consciences completely, until we have little if any conscience left at all! This is a great tragedy, and travesty; and you must not allow it to happen to you; or, if it has already happened to you, and you can recognize it and face it, you must attempt to revive and/or reanimate your conscience and face the truth of all of the evil elitist / capitalist / imperialist globalization (rich / corporate / political, global exploitation / conquest / domination), and autocratic / authoritarian / police-State injustice, in the United States and the world, and take a total stand against it! Otherwise, those who passively acquiesce to it indirectly support its many pervasive wrongs, and are ultimately just as responsible and/or accountable for its exceedingly grave harm to all mankind, just as we all will be held accountable and responsible for all wrongs that we go along with and don't take a stand against; for each and every one of us has the Duty to stand up against as much oppression and tyranny as we are able to do within our largest possible sphere of influence!
Corporations are NOT people, no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a hundred or so years ago, and no matter that newer federal case law precedent has not overturned it! Since elitist-corporate interests rule the entire world, it is not surprising that it has not been overturned; as the whole United States government caters to its interests ahead of those of true people! In fact, "our" entire government is run by "men" and "women" who are part and parcel of corporate interests; i.e., "President" G.W. Bush is an oil "magnate/baron" who bought his way into office with his billions! Those who are not part of "the global economy", and/or fully in favor of it, would either not become President of the U.S. in the first place, or would be assassinated soon after entering office! Ninety-five percent (95%) of the real "American people", the so-called "lower classes", who are supposed to run their own government, do not run it AT ALL! All of it is run by "well-to-do" elitists and lawyers who could really care less about the majority of the population; and they live by the lies of their minority!
"It is written...." "Thus says the Lord (God)...." "(They) are of (their) father the devil, and the lusts of (their) father (they)... do(!) He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him(!) When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it(!)" "Wherefore put away LYING, speak every man TRUTH with his neighbor: for we are members one of another(!) Be angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil(!)" (Matthew 4:4; Malachi 1:4; John 8:44; and Ephesians 4:25-27.)
"And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and LYING wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the TRUTH, that they might be saved(!) And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a LIE: That they all might be damned who believed not the TRUTH, but had pleasure in unrighteousness(!)" (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12.)
"But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, AND ALL LIARS, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death(!)" "And there shall in no way enter into (heaven) any thing that defiles, neither whatever works abomination, or makes a LIE: but (ONLY) they which are written in the Lamb's Book of Life(!)" "Blessed are they that (obey God's) commandments, that they may have (a) right to the Tree of Life, and may enter in through the gates of the city (of heaven)(!) For (outside of heaven) are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, whoever loves and makes... LIES(!)" (Revelation 21:8; 21:27; and 22:14-15 [The Word(s) of God]; emphasis added by me.)
Many of the oppressive monarchs of the old British empire, and/or their spokesmen, spoke out of both sides of their faces, claiming they cared about "the people", while all the while they kept the poor impoverished, and assassinated government officials and citizens who did not go along with their tyranny(ies)! This two-facedness and keeping the poor oppressed is just what the current "President" Bush is perpetrating, while instituting more and more of a police-State that is given greater and greater free-reign to arrest people without Miranda Rights, detain without charges, legal counsel and/or speedy-trial, and to hold same under such tyrannous and shameful conditions indefinitely; and we're being led to believe that such treatment is limited to suspected Middle-Eastern terrorists operating in the U.S.; but very, very soon those same "free-reign" laws will be applied, if they haven't already, to many citizens born in this country who are speaking out against these destructions of True-Democracy!
"We" also have government officials today, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as G.W. Bush, and his family and proponents, who are bringing FALSE religion into the "American" government, and thereby undermining separation of church and State, leading to what I and many others have warned, in earlier writings, and continue to warn, will occur as a result, the setting up of a false, so-called "Christian" government in the United States that will not be Truly-Christian AT ALL; for Christianity is ONLY True if it is COMPLETELY Christian, and it is NOT Truly-Christian AT ALL if it carries out ANY hypocritical act(s) such as murder in the name of war, the death penalty, abortion, etcetera; and, if we look all through history, which is often repeated, every single religious government, without exception, was autocratic, dictatorial, despotic, authoritarian, oppressive, and tyrannous, abolished True Freedom(s) and was directly responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of their people in many ignominious, disgraceful and disgusting ways that words are highly inadequate to do justice for!
If We The People of "America" allow the aforesaid subversion(s) of True Democracy and Freedom to continue to happen in the U.S., anymore than they already have, we deserve everything that will befall "us" as a result, which will be absolutely atrocious; and ONLY those who do not support same IN ANY WAY, will be spared the ultimate destruction for it! So each and every one of us has the Responsibility and Duty to stand up against ANYONE and ANYTHING that will help to bring it about, even if it includes standing up against the President of the United States, his entire cabinet, and/or the government as a whole; for this is being a True American; and if we don't actively try to help to save our government, we are NOT True Americans AT ALL!
What is "our President", and what are ALL of our legal representatives, supposed to be anyway? They are supposed to be ONLY our REPRESENTATIVES! They are supposed to ONLY represent our highest ideals of freedom and democracy, which were designed and outlined for us by our Creator and our True Founding Fathers, not anything else; and, if they "represent" anything else, such as the sabotage and overthrow of True Democracy and Freedom IN ANY WAY(S), they are "our" representatives in name only, are our enemy(ies), and should and must be removed from office, not be followed or obeyed in any fashion, and must not be allowed to continue to subvert True Freedom and Democracy in any form whatsoever, within and without our borders!
As Lord Byron so aptly said, and as I've quoted elsewhere, Tyranny "is the worst of treasons(!)"; and we are now hearing irresponsibly-stated right and left these days that we are supposedly "giving aid and comfort to the enemy", aiding the terrorists, are ourselves enemies of democracy, freedom and our country, the United States government, and supposedly committing treason, if we say anything against our current "leaders", and speak against the oppression being exercised to such a colossally-gross extent at the present time by the current administration! In other words, if WE exercise our rights, duties and freedoms to be True Americans and speak the Truth against THEIR tyrannical treasons, WE are allegedly committing treason; and, if that were so, which it most definitely is NOT, our Founding Fathers were committing treason against the tyranny of England! It is Truly impossible to commit treason against tyranny, or treason against treason; and that false accusation, character assassination and slander is the ultimate antithesis of True Freedom and Democracy, and is a declaration of "war" against those of us who stand for NOTHING BUT True Freedom! We must not, we cannot, sit back and allow this great threat to escalate any further out of control, and bring about the soon-imprisonment of many True Americans; and it is our God-given duty to stand up against it in any and all NON-VIOLENT ways that we can! Violence only gives "our" evil leaders the supposed justification to do what they want, to wipe us out!
Remember the many millions of innocent North American Indians, African-Americans, Mexicans, Cubans, Hawaiians, Samoans, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Chileans, East Timorese, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Libyans, Iraqis, Sudanese, Serbians, Czechs, Slovakians, Albanians, Yugoslavians, Bosnians, Afghans, Kurds, Colombians, "Americans", and other fellow human beings that were and are being slaughtered by the U.S. government and/or its allies (not necessarily in that order), many of the former of whom were patriotic freedom fighters seeking True Democracy and Independence for their own countries, like we Americans sought for and achieved by the American Revolution! They did not completely die in vain; because, if nothing else, they serve as a huge reminder of the dishonorable, primarily greed-oriented, tyrannical, treasonous, oppressive, excessive, out of control, and murderous nature of the United States government, that it has not gotten better, but is much worse than ever before, that it has already carried out and is capable of the most---and will carry out even worse if we don't stop it from happening---heinous crimes against humanity, that it is much too great a waste of life to try to stand up violently against the U.S. government war machine, and that "we" too would just be heinously slaughtered for doing so!
At the very end of the Declaration of Independence it clearly states, "....(W)ith a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor". (Id., July 4, 1776.) It is therefore a matter of sacred Honor that we sacrifice all, including our money, and our lives if need be, to fulfill our duty(ies) to Divine Providence, better known as God, and to our True country, to seek the redress or correction of the grievous violations of our Independence from the tyrannical control being unjustly inflicted upon us at this time by the treasonous United States government, which has usurped or taken away government control from The True People, and must Declare ourselves Independent of same, and ONLY standing for True "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"; for there is no other recourse, and "....(n)either is there (True) salvation in any other (than the Lord Jesus the Christ): for there is no other Name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be (Truly) Saved"! (Acts 4:12.)
Wherefore, fully stand up ONLY for True Freedom, and don't be fooled by the murderous intent and actions of the fraudulent U.S. government and its corporate-elitist war machine, seeking imperialist world domination ONLY for the sake of its god, money, with NO True Care for its fellow -men, -women and -children, but ONLY to slaughter anyone and everyone it believes to be standing in its way, all falsely in the names of God, almighty-"America" and almighty-"Americans", liberty, freedom, democracy, justice, and corporate interests; and completely stand up against ALL of this blatant hypocrisy, insufferable "white-collar" criminality, and intolerable INjustice!
[Copyright (c) 2002 in the U.S.A. and Internationally by S. Wolf Britain. All rights are reserved.]
Continued below:
Continued:
THE FOLLOWING ARE EXCERPTS FROM YET ANOTHER GREAT BOOK, THIS ONE BY HOWARD ZINN, ON THE HOPE THAT THE DOWNTRODDEN MAJORITY OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS WILL "REVOLT" AGAINST THE OPPRESSIVE, INCREASINGLY NON- TRULY DEMOCRATIC, GOVERNMENT OF THEIR COUNTRY, THAT WAS ADDED TO THE SITE ON 3-11-02:
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
A People's History,
Chapter 10,
The Coming Revolt of the Guards,
pages 281-293,
by Howard Zinn, Ph.D.
(Author, Historian, Political Scientist,
Social Activist, and Professor Emeritus
at Boston University)
Copyright © 1980, 1984 by Howard Zinn.
All rights are reserved.
"....(H)istories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crisis everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions.
"The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves. But from time to time, Americans reject that idea and rebel.
"These rebellions, so far, have been contained. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased.
"There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media---none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.
"One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the property-less, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.
"Against the reality of that desperate, bitter battle for resources made scarce by elite control, I am taking the liberty of uniting those 99 percent as "the people". I have been writing a history that attempts to represent their submerged, deflected, common interest. To emphasize the commonality of the 99 percent, to declare deep enmity of interest with the 1 percent, is to do exactly what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them---from the Founding Fathers to now---have tried their best to prevent. Madison feared a "majority faction" and hoped the new Constitution would control it. He and his colleagues began the Preamble to the Constitution with the words "We the people . . . ," pretending that the new government stood for everyone, and hoping that this myth, accepted as fact, would ensure "domestic tranquillity".
"The pretense continued over the generations, helped by all-embracing symbols, physical or verbal: the flag, patriotism, democracy, national interest, national defense, national security. The slogans were dug into the earth of American culture like a circle of covered wagons on the western plain, from inside of which the white, slightly privileged American could shoot to kill the enemy outside---Indians or blacks or foreigners or other whites too wretched to be allowed inside the circle. The managers of the caravan watched at a safe distance, and when the battle was over and the field strewn with dead on both sides, they would take over the land, and prepare another expedition, for another territory.
"The scheme never worked perfectly. The Revolution and the Constitution, trying to bring stability by containing the class angers of the colonial period---while enslaving blacks, annihilating or displacing Indians---did not quite succeed, judging by the tenant uprisings, the slave revolts, the abolitionist agitation, the feminist upsurge, the Indian guerrilla warfare of the pre-Civil War years. After the Civil War, a new coalition of southern and northern elites developed, with southern whites and blacks of the lower classes occupied in racial conflict, native workers and immigrant workers clashing in the North, and the farmers dispersed over a big country, while the system of capitalism consolidated itself in industry and government. But there came rebellion among industrial workers and a great opposition movement among farmers [at and after the turn of the century from the late eighteen hundreds into the nineteen hundreds].
"At the turn of the century, the violent pacification of blacks and Indians and the use of elections and war to absorb and divert white rebels were not enough, in the conditions of modern industry, to prevent the great upsurge of socialism, the massive labor struggles, before the First World War. Neither that war nor the partial prosperity of the twenties, nor the apparent destruction of the socialist movement, could prevent, in the situation of economic crisis, another radical awakening, another labor upsurge in the thirties.
"World War II created a new unity, followed by an apparently successful attempt, in the atmosphere of the cold war, to extinguish the strong radical temper of the war years. But then, surprisingly, came the surge of the sixties, from people thought long subdued or put out of sight---blacks, women, Native Americans, prisoners, soldiers---and a new radicalism, which threatened to spread widely in a population disillusioned by the Vietnam war and the politics of Watergate.
"The exile of Nixon, the celebration of the Bicentennial, the presidency of Carter, all aimed at restoration. But though the great tide of the sixties had receded, it left on the beach millions of moving organisms, pockets of energy, in an atmosphere calmed down, but electric with possibility.
"In this uncertain situation of the seventies, going into the eighties, it is very important for the Establishment---that uneasy club of business executives, generals, and politicos---to maintain the historic pretension of national unity, in which the government represents all the people, and the common enemy is overseas, not at home, where disasters of economics of war are unfortunate errors or tragic accidents, to be corrected by members of the same club that brought the disasters. It is important also to make sure this artificial unity of highly privileged and slightly privileged is the only unity---that the 99 percent remain split in countless ways, and turn against one another to vent their angers.
"How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters to poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred---by economic inequity---faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices.
"But with all the controls of power and punishment, enticements and concessions, diversions and decoys, operating throughout the history of the country, the Establishment has been unable to keep itself secure from revolt. Every time it looked as if it had succeeded, the very people it thought seduced or subdued, stirred and rose. Blacks, cajoled by Supreme Court decisions and congressional statutes, rebelled. Indians, thought dead, reappeared, defiant. Young people, despite lures of career and comfort, defected. Working people, thought soothed by reforms, regulated by law, kept within bounds by their own unions, went on strike. Government intellectuals, pledged to secrecy, began giving away secrets. Priests turned from piety to protest. Prisoners, isolated in cages, organized.
"To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget---the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change. To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one's humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise.
"True, to overestimate class consciousness, to exaggerate rebellion and its successes, would be misleading. It would not account for the fact that the world---not just the United States, but everywhere else---is still in the hands of the elites, that people's movements, although they show an infinite capacity for recurrence, have so far been either defeated or absorbed or perverted, that "socialist" revolutionists have betrayed socialism, that nationalist revolutions have led to new dictatorships.
"But most histories understate revolt, overemphasize statesmanship, and thus encourage impotency among citizens. When we look closely at resistance movements, or even at isolated forms of rebellion, we discover that class consciousness, or any awareness of injustice, has multiple levels. It has many ways of expression, many ways of revealing itself---open, subtle, direct, distorted. In a system of intimidation and control, people do not show how much they know, how deeply they feel, until their practical sense informs them they can do so without being destroyed.
"History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive.
"However, the unexpected victories---even temporary ones---of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful. In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, garbagemen and firemen. These people---the employed, the somewhat privileged---are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.
"That will happen, I think, only when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica [New York]---expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us.
"Certain new facts may, in our time, emerge so clearly as to lead to general withdrawal of loyalty from the system. The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system---the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government---to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas.
"All of us have become hostages in the new conditions of doomsday technology, runaway economics, global poisoning, uncontainable war. The atomic weapons, the invisible radiations, the economic anarchy, do not distinguish prisoners from guards, and those in charge will not be scrupulous in making destinctions. There is the unforgettable response of the U.S. high command to the news that American prisoners of war might be near Nagasaki: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard remain unchanged." [Intentionally dropping the atomic bomb on our own men as well as hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Japan!]
"There is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the guards. It had been shown in the early 1960s (Murray Levin, The Alienated Voter) that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn't care about them, and about which they could do little. In the mid-seventies, another study (Donald Warren, The Radical Center) found that alienation had spread upward into families above the poverty line [above about $900.00 per month right now]. These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government---combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left.
"In the twenties, there was a similar estrangement in the middle classes, which could have gone in various directions---the Ku Klux Klan had millions of members at that time---but the work of an organized left wing mobilized a huge amount of this feeling into trade unions, farmers' unions, socialist movements. We may, in the next decade [or, as it has turned out, two decades], be in a race for the mobilization of middle-class discontent. [We can hope so, and seek after same, anyway!]
"The fact of that discontent is clear. When the surveys of the early seventies showed 70 percent and 80 percent of Americans distrustful of government, business, the military, it meant that this feeling went beyond blacks, the poor, the radicals. It had spread among skilled workers, white-collar workers, professionals; for the first time in the nation's history, perhaps, both the lower classes and the middle classes, the prisoners and the guards, were disillusioned with the system.
"There are other signs: the high rate of alcoholism, the high rate of divorce (from one of three marriages ending in divorce, the figure was climbing to one of two), of drug use and abuse, of nervous breakdowns and mental illness. Millions of people have been looking desperately for solutions to their sense of impotency, their loneliness, their frustration, their estrangement from other people, from the world, from their work, from themselves. They have been adopting new religions, joining self-help groups of all kinds. It is as if a whole nation were going through a critical point in its middle age, a life crisis of self-doubt, self-examination.
"All this, at a time when the middle class is increasingly insecure economically. The system, in its rationality, has been driven by profit to build steel skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children's playgrounds, to give huge incomes to men who make dangerous or useless things, and very little to artists, musicians, writers, actors. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
"The threat of unemployment, always inside the homes of the poor, has spread to white-collar workers, professionals. A college education is no longer a guarantee against joblessness, and a system that cannot offer a future to the young coming out of school is in deep trouble. If it happens only to the children of the poor, the problem is manageable; there are the jails. If it happens to the children of the middle class, things may get out of hand. [And they have, as shown by more and more fired workers "going postal" and killing their bosses and others.]
"The poor are accustomed to being squeezed and always short of money, but in recent years the middle classes, too, have begun to feel the press of high prices, high taxes. In the mid-seventies, the property of the average homeowner in Boston was assessed at about 32 percent of its value, while downtown, the National Shawmut Bank of Boston was assessed at 6.9 percent of its value, the First National Bank Building at 8.7 percent. A new group called Fair Share was calling attention to this. A new publication called Dollars and Sense was printing the figures. Would taxpayers, whose anger had always been shunted onto welfare recipients, begin to see that their incomes were being dismembered to subsidize welfare for the rich?
"In the sixties and seventies, there was a dramatic, frightening increase in the number of crimes. It was not hard to understand, when one walked through any big city. There were the contrasts of wealth and poverty, the culture of possession, the frantic advertising. There was the fierce economic competition, in which the legal violence of the state, and the legal robbery of the corporation, led to the illegal crimes of the poor. Most crimes by far involved theft. In the year 1978, 50 percent of prisoners in American jails were black, 31 percent had been unemployed in the month prior to their arrest, 60 percent had earned less than $6,000 in the year prior to their arrest.
"The most common and publicized crimes have been the violent crimes of the young, the poor---a virtual terrorization in the big cities---in which the desperate or drug-addicted attack and rob the middle class, or even their fellow poor. A society so stratified by wealth and education lends itself naturally to envy and class anger.
"The critical question in our time is whether the middle classes, so long led to believe that the solution for such crimes is more jails and more jail terms, may begin to see, by the sheer uncontrollability of crime, that the only prospect is an endless cycle of crime and punishment. They might then conclude that physical security for a working person in the city can come only when everyone in the city is working. And that would require a transformation of national priorities, a change in the system.
"In the seventies, the fear of criminal assault was joined by an even greater fear. Deaths from cancer began to multiply, and medical researchers seemed helpless to find the cause. It began to be evident that more and more of these deaths were coming from the environment poisoned by military experimentation and industrial greed. The water people drank, the air they breathed, the particles of dust from the buildings in which they worked, had been quietly contaminated over the years by a system so frantic for growth and profit that the safety and health of human beings had been ignored. [And, to a great extent, still are being ignored; because the workers are expendable as long as they, for the time they are able to, increase profits.]
"A woman in the town of Globe, Arizona, stepped outside her bedroom door one morning in the summer of 1969 and was covered with spray mist from a Forest Service helicopter spraying pesticides in a nearby national forest. She began to investigate, found plants and fruit trees dying nearby, and organized local people in a mock funeral procession carrying the dead plants to the forest supervisor's office. Later she wrote a book called Sue the Bastards! But there were limits to what lawsuits could do, what books could do, to poison sprays. In early 1977 she died of cancer, and doctors found herbicides in her body tissue.
"The problem of pesticides in the air, of asbestos in buildings, of lead paint on walls, of plutonium in the earth, of industrial wastes in drinking water, is a problem beyond class, race, sex. It could unite people of all classes and groups in fury against those few in the Establishment who, in their demonic pursuit of more weapons, more profits, keep insisting (like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, like the tobacco companies, like Hoover in 1932 and Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam war) that everything is all right.
"Technology was running wild, and one of its effects, more subtle than radiation poisoning, was fearsome in its own way: there was a growing dependence on computers to replace human thought. An M.I.T. pioneer in computer building, Joseph Weizenbaum, sound the alarm against the perversion of his own field, in his book Computer Power and Human Reason. People were attributing too much wisdom, he said, to science, whose knowledge is not certain. They were giving frightening power to machines, replacing human judgment. The deification of computers was a rejection of direct experience, a replacement of human sensitivity by mechanical devices. What Weizenbaum described has effects on the whole human race, not just one social group. People of all kinds, seeing this, might join to reassert the importance of the living being.
"This scary technology, and more, has been adopted by the military. Modern war now means not only the indiscriminate killing of "the enemy"---civilians as well as soldiers, as in World War II, Korea, Vietnam---but the use of weapons that kill friend and foe alike. A tiny group of military planners can launch attacks that will destroy not only "enemy" populations but their own. The people of the United States, the people of the Soviet Union, indeed the population of the world, are at the mercy of a few leaders of the superpowers, who may decide, for their own reasons of strategy, power, or pride, to start the chain of nuclear detonations---or may start it without even deciding.
"Small experiences of the recent past suggest larger horrors for the future. In 1976, a book named Friendly Fire (by C.D.B. Bryan) told of a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam who was reported to have died on a "noncombat" mission. His parents, grief-stricken and puzzled, investigated. They found the government uncooperative, cold, anxious to minimize and obscure what had happened. What had happened was that their son was killed by "friendly fire," a misdirected artillery shell. The parents turned from quiet residents of Black Hawk County, Iowa, to angry, active opponents of the Vietnam war. The war that was supposed to kill "the enemy" had killed their son. In another war, we may all be killed by "friendly fire." [Or by the retaliatory nukes of those "enemies" the U.S. government has been oppressing and provoking for over half a century, and are now further angering by what "we" are presently doing in killing millions of their people.]
"During the military operations in Vietnam, 20,000 tons of herbicides were dropped by U.S. planes on 5 million acres of the Vietnamese countryside, destroying trees and crops. Among Vietnamese mothers in those areas, birth defects developed in unusual numbers. In 1978 a woman named Claude de Victor, working for the Veterans Administration hospital in Chicago, began to see a pattern of disease and death among former helicopter pilots [in Vietnam]. Some told of birth defects in babies born to their wives. When she reported this, she was transferred to another job. But shortly after that, a one-paragraph item from Washington appeared on an inside page of the Boston Globe:
"The Veterans Administration warned its offices across the country yesterday to watch for after-effects among veterans of the Vietnam defoliant "Agent Orange," which some researchers suspect of possible links with cancer or genetic defects. Thousands of veterans were exposed to Orange, the most effective and heavily used of various defoliation compounds of which more than 100 million pounds were sprayed over one-seventh of South Vietnam's [Laos and Cambodia’s] land area between 1962 and 1971." [And now the United States government is allowing, if not outright seeking, the alteration of our very genetic structure, with genetically engineered foods, drugs and so-called vaccines, not to mention the many other chemicals being released into the environment to alter the weather, etcetera, changing the very building blocks of humanity without knowing what most of the probably horrendous side-effects are going to be on mankind as a whole, not just those immediately affected, health-wise, in a very adverse fashion! In fact, "our" government has been altering us genetically for at least the last 50 years; and we are now seeing many more "mysterious" illnesses cropping up in larger and larger segments of the population---I should know; as I am suffering from one or more of them---and many experts are clearly stating and proving that it is a program of genocide and population control; so it is very true that we are all expendable to "our" government!]
"Perhaps much of the general distrust of government reported in recent years comes from a growing recognition of the truth of what the U.S. Air Force bombardier Yossarian said in the novel Catch-22 to a friend who had just accused him of giving aid and comfort to enemy: "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it the longer you might live." The next line in the novel is: "But Clevinger did forget, and now he is dead."
"In the late seventies, the American system seemed out of control---a runaway capitalism, a runaway technology, runaway militarism, a runaway of government from the people it claimed to represent. Crime was out of control, cancer was out of control. Auto accidents, the decay of cities, and the breakup of families were out of control. The nuclear arms race was out of control. And people seemed to sense all this. [But now all of these things are out of control even more than they ever were; but the 99 percent are being fooled into believing that they've all gotten better! If people are locked up or dead, and if the mainstream media are allowed as they are to not report how out of control a lot of the problems are, as well as to misreport the extent(s) of the problem(s), it's much easier to make it appear that things are supposedly better than they really are, and to get the majority of people who are burying their heads in the sand to believe that things are better than really are---though this does not in any way suggest that we are better off burying our heads in the sand! As one of the X-Files mottoes so rightly says, "The truth is out there"!]
"Let us imagine the prospect---for the first time in this nation's history---of a population united for fundamental change. Would the elite turn as so often before, to its ultimate weapon---foreign intervention---to unite the people with the Establishment, in war? Here, too, the situation may be different today. The defeat of the colossal U.S. military machine in Vietnam was a turning point; the American Empire may have reached its limits, and must now retreat, recognizing that human beings abroad, if determined enough to rebel against harsh regimes, cannot be defeated even with the most terrible of weapons. Ordinary weapons may be not enough---and nuclear weapons too much---to deal with popular revolutions. And Americans may no longer go along with military intervention. [Unless of course the United States government creates a climate of majority-support through stirring up false-patriotism, and a fervor for obtaining revenge, as they are very successfully doing right now!]
"In the late seventies, there was growing evidence of U.S. impotence in the world arena. It could not stop, in 1979, a popular revolution in Iran, where in the past the CIA had its way. And in the same year in Nicaragua, the very dynasty installed by U.S. Marines before World War II was toppled by a revolutionary army, and the U.S. government seemed unable to prevent this.
"With the Establishment's inability either to solve severe economic problems at home or to manufacture abroad a safety valve for domestic discontent, Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that "realism" so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that "realism" anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.
"The society's levers of powers would be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state---the giant corporations, the military, and their political collaborators. We would need---by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country---to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and [true] justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force---children, old people, "handicapped" people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available---free--- to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.
"The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods---a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name "socialist."
"People with time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.
"To do all that, in the complex conditions of control in the United States, would require combining the energy of all previous movements in American history---of labor insurgents, black rebels, Native Americans, women, young people---along with the new energy of an angry middle class. People would need to begin to transform their immediate environments---the workplace, the family, the school, the community---by a series of struggles against absentee authority, to give control of these places to the people who live and work there.
"These struggles would involve all the tactics used at various times in the past by people's movements: demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships; creating---in music, literature, drama, all the arts, and all the areas of work and play in everyday life---a new culture of sharing, of respect, a new joy in the collaboration of people to help themselves and one another.
"There would be many defeats. But when such a movement took hold in hundreds of thousands of places all over the country it would be impossible to suppress, because the very guards the system depends on to crush such a movement would be among the rebels. It would be a kind of revolution, the only kind that could happen, I believe, in a country like the United States. It would be a process over time, starting without delay, there would be the immediate satisfactions that people have always found in the affectionate ties of groups striving together for a common goal.
"All this takes us far from American history, into the realm of imagination. But not totally removed from history. There are at least glimpses in the past of such a possibility. In the sixties and seventies, for the first time, the Establishment failed to produce national unity and patriotic fervor in a war. There was a flood of cultural changes such as the country had never seen---in sex, family, personal relations---exactly those situations most difficult to control form the ordinary centers of power. And never before was there such a general withdrawal of confidence from so many elements of the political and economic system. In every period of history, people have found ways to help one another---even in the midst of a culture of competition and violence---if only for brief periods, to find joy in work, struggle, companionship, nature [and, not least, nature's Creator, God].
"The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done---bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite's weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space---the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet---to dismantle that system while creating a new one.
"The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel, as before, in ways that cannot be foreseen, at times that cannot be predicted. The new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards. We readers and writers of books have been, for the most part, among the guards. If we understand that, and act on it, not only will life be more satisfying, right off, but our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world[!]" [Text between brackets ("[ ]") added by me.]
[Additional notes by me: Can you now see how the Establishment had to have this new "War Against Terrorism" to bring the 99 percent into apparent unity, and to try to keep them from rising up against the elitist 1 percent? The former know the latter will take such action if they don't stir up a major military conflict every ten years or so; and no doubt the U.S. government thinks they will succeed in "hoodwinking" the majority of the 99 percent; but we must get messages like the foregoing out to them so they will be more likely to wake and rise up, and take concerted action(s) against any and all such controls by the 1 percent, to bring about True Peace and Prosperity for the majority-class, not only for the minority-class as has hitherto, and much too long, been the case.
The 1 percent minority-class felt they had to bring about this even more serious world-wide conflict in order to stave off the rebellion of the majority-class that they saw coming, they had to have a lot of innocent Americans die in the attacks, and they had to have a serious attack on symbols of "America" like the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, in order to stem the tide of American dissatisfaction with the government and get the support for the war that they got, just as they got in support of World War II after they allowed the attack on, and the many deaths at, Pearl Harbor, another very large symbol of America. But we must not be fooled and let the 1 percent keep us from seeking and finally obtaining true justice for the 99 percent the world-over; and step one is to stop the present wholesale terrorizing and slaughter of a great many innocent people the world-over by the U.S. government, in the process of killing the alleged guilty people responsible for the attack(s) on the United States and other acts of international terrorism to cover "our" own!
Don't forget that the U.S. government itself is an international terrorist state that has been murdering millions of innocent people worldwide for over 100 years; and that it is a giant hypocrisy for terrorists to kill terrorists, especially when they claim one form of terrorism is supposedly justified and the other is not! There is NO justification for terrorism of ANY kind, particularly for the so-called "greatest democracy on Earth" to commit terrorism as it does; and we must not continue to allow it to go on without raising our voices and concerted efforts against it! As Howard Zinn showed above, We The People have a great deal of power to bring about a complete end to it NOW!]
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Postscript: I'm looking for someone to go 50/50 with me and move to either Ecuador, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, or Mexico where we can make a very low income go much further with a lower cost, and higher standard, of living (than living in the States on such a low income). This includes an only income of Social Security Disability (SSDI) and/or Retirement benefits. The Social Security Administration most definitely DOES allow SSDI and/or Retirement benefits, but not Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits, to be sent to recipients in most other countries! There are many books about moving and living abroad available at the public library and/or at Amazon.com . Naturally, I realize we would probably have to spend some time getting to know eachother, and finding out if we're compatible, before moving abroad together. We could even have our own separate "spaces" by choosing to rent or purchase a house or apartment with separate quarters, and still save considerable money in monthly costs compared to living in the States on the same income. If you might be interested, want to ask me some questions, and/or want to discuss it, please e-mail me at the address below.
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