I am sorry… but ENOUGH “shock”.
Domestic spying?
Demagogues and anti-human lords and masters?
This is nothing new.
Read on.
It was this way during the Nixon years and the Reagan years. It was ALWAYS this way whenever J. Edgar Hoover had his hand in things.
It was this way when the best and brightest hopes we had were being murdered in broad daylight and patsies set up to take the blame.
It was this way when Joe McCarthy was demonizing people who gave a damn.
It was this way when Grandpa Bush was Hitler’s banker.
When the racist Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were rich and powerful.
When the first real wealth in this country was made on the opium and slave trades.
It was this way when America was fucking FOUNDED on slavery. Our original sin…not yet really even admitted let alone expiated.
When the entire nation was genocided out of the hands of its first residents.
And here we are once again wringing our hands and weeping while we sit at our $2000 computers in our $500,000 houses with $35,000 worth of gas guzzler(s) parked in the heated garage.
Give me a BREAK!!!
There is only one thing that will stop this situation in its tracks.
No…I take that back.
TWO things.
Either we make Washington DC look like this
and demand our country back SOON, or somewhere down the road all of America is going to look like this.
BET on it.
Our choice, now.
Business as usual…fall guys go down while bosses keep on with their hustle.
Or Nuremberg v.2.
A mass catharsis of all of our sins.
We shall see.
Let us pray.
AG
“Whenever a feeling of aversion comes into the heart of a good soul, it is not without significance. Intuition-a Divine attribute, not vain suspicion.” Rumi
that went something like this.
Waiter: “What? No TIP ???!!!”
Customer: “You want a TIP? I’ve got a tip for you. GET ANOTHER JOB!!!”
Well…instead of tips for me…I’ve got a tip for YOU.
Stop parroting the current MSM line.
“OH!!! HEAVENS!!! They FOOLED us!!! It’s TERRIBLE!!! Oh my oh my oh my!!! The sky is falling once again!!!”
The sky’s not falling. This is just business as usual. The bad guys are chasing the worse guys out of office.
And if we fall for this act yet again…then back we soon will be, economically imperialzing the world just as we have been.
And I say again…this act cannot be sustained much longer.
We are running out of oil, and we are running out of time. The people of the world are rising against us, and they are armed to the TEETH this time.
5 to 1. That’s the ratio of people in the underdeveloped world to those in the developed world.
Make it 10 or 15 or 20 to 1 when you add in the fat factor. We are fat and happy, and they are feeling VERY lean and hungry.
That kind of ratio used to be alright (for us, anyway), because our armament was so superior to theirs.
That is SO over now.
It was beginning to be over in Vietnam.
It continued to be over when the Russians fucked up in Afghanistan.
And now it is REALLY over.
We only have one trick left.
The old hostages with a bomb trick.
“Why…if you come any closer I’ll blow us ALL up!!!”
Mutually Assured Destruction.
MADness.
Want to have our bluff called?
Keep thinking that this anti-BushCo act is any more real than their pro-Iraq invasion scam. I mean…it’s the same people running the media, right? Wake the fuck up.
They are simply firing some incompetent executives.
Happens all the time in the corporate world.
So they can get BETTER thieves.
And the current line is…”Oh, they SPIED on us!!!”
BULLSHIT!!!
“They” are the ones doing the SCREAMING.
And “they” have been…and will continue to…spy on us with every tool at their disposal.
I studied a martial art called Aikido, and one of the tenets of that art is “Present a big target.” It is a defensive art, and you invite attack, then divert the force away from you.
That is our ONLY option, because we simply cannot hide any longer. Big Computer Brother can store too much information, and Big Tech Brother can collect that information.
So…STAND UP!!!
We must stand up in public…hundreds of thousands of us, like the Ukrainians…and INVITE their attention.
OVERLOAD their system.
And stop partaking of their bullshit at the same time.
You can’t have one without the other.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
And …
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Great, great diary and commentary.
You are so right. If we’re shocked, we haven’t been paying attention.
WOMAN:
I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS:
You’re fooling yourself. We’re living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes–
WOMAN:
Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
DENNIS:
That’s what it’s all about. If only people would hear of–
Substitute “Party Politics” for “Class”, and we get the same dimissive response from people who don’t want to know what kind of world we’re living in.
You are right. We have to get arrested. We have to send our library records and bookstore receipts to the AG. We have to raise hell in the airports and flood the No Fly list. We need to overload the system.
Maybe we old boomers who are turning sixty can go out in a blaze of glory. Those of us who dedicated ourselves to social justice are seeing a lifetime of effort fade into irrelevancy, because polite methods are useless against tyranny.
Senior Citizen Civil Disobedience might be a win/win tactic. If they jail us, they have to pay for our health care.
no, i don’t think you have to substitute “Party Politics” for “Class” … works just fine the way it is.
“
I don’ wanna go…
Them injuns got REAL weapons, now, General Bluster…
AG
I noticed the misdirected outrage in the WV mine disaster. The MSM has been hammering away at the misunderstanding when word came up from the rescue crew instead of focusing on the issues behind the cause of excessive danger.
Another one is the ‘story’ of Bush calling in the former Secs of State from the past twenty years for Iraq advisement.
Ha!…they know this is their only chance to coordinate the different stories before court dates. Live and die by their ali-buys.
totally agree.
You can’t trust the government, and you can’t trust the corporations who run it. Never could. This is nothing new.
The only thing that the permaGov has against bush is that he’s pissing people off too much. So they’ll put in someone else, more popular & more subtle, who will enact all of the same policies, but not draw the same attention to them.
Their only real goal at this point is to preserve their gains, and de-mobilize the beginnings of the real threat, independent social movements.
In 08, we’ll get Kerry, but with more charisma. We’ll get Clinton, but with even worse policy.
And a lot of people will be fine with that. Anybody But Bush, right?
Thats how this game is played. Same old shit, but better image.
I wasn’t shocked and the only thing you could say I was shocked about was that this story actually hit the light of day and continues to have new spying allegations come out daily it seems.(as in Andrea Mitchell asking James Risen in an interview if Christiane Amanpour is being spied on) I’ve always assumed from day one of bushco that they were literally taping/spying on just about everyone. That’s just what paranoid, arrogant nasty criminals do isn’t it?
I’ve also said long long ago that the only way we are really going to accomplish anything is for the public somehow to wake up and that we will have to actually start marching in the streets in massive numbers. Although if Katrina didn’t do it I don’t know what will. This is more than just getting rid of bushco…he’s permeated the whole of government with cronies and religious nut jobs who have taken over basically all policies-working against the ‘ideal’ of what America should be. I think it will take a revolution of some kind to get back to having Americans realizing that we have to start living up to our ideals and even our fantasy of what America should be.
And I’d really like to have that 2000 dollar computer you mentioned or a car for that matter…I’m just lucky my sister bought me a computer and pays the monthly internet fee.
So where’s the sign up sheet? I’ve been ready since 2000 to get in on the Revolution. I’m really tired of writing about it and I want to knock the White House gates down and demand the resignation and or IMPEACHMENT of the whole stinking Cabal of Fascists. Anyone else ready?
GREAT diary!
I’m ready lee…it sometimes seems like writing/calling is just pissen in the wind..we get one teeny tiny victory but bushco signs some order or whatever and takes 100 feet forward while we maybe, maybe gained a 1/4 of an inch. Rather like his signing some 15 or so? recess appointments for cronies in this last week.
Well Chocolate…the ols saying goes, “If you build it they will come. ANy ideas how to start a Revolution?
“Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
The following is from the ACT UP Civil Disobedience Manual:
Any group that wishes to use civil disobedience or direct action to achieve change must:
The classic type of civil disobedience advocated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., is one in which an unjust law is deliberately and openly violated. Most of the demands of AIDS activists do not lend themselves to the classic Gandhi/King style of civil disobedience. Nevertheless, the same basic principles apply: Make it more costly for those in power to resist than to give in.
This is done in one of two ways:
Those are all excellent ponts susanw. I will ponder them for awhile. In my perception(and it may be very scewed because I was not there) but the latest uprisings seem to just spring up. Guess we are all waiting for a Cindy Sheehan to lead? That felt good but sure did not get us anywhere. I am determined to overthrow this Cabal of Fascists in the WH. Here that NSA? FBI? CIA?
You are right, alohaleezy. The Cindy Sheehan protest is a perfect example, and I think it made great gains. Impatient as I am to kick the bums out, I know that one grieving mother’s protest can’t start a revolution alone, but she drew supporters and press attention. She also set an example for others.
Every act of protest, every freeway sign, every march, every letter to the editor is another drop in the flood that will sweep the corrupt from power (some of them, and for a little while, anyway), provided we all keep the momentum going. Disapproval of this Administration must be kept in the public eye until it become part of America’s landscape.
Each of us can contribute, even if it’s only by refusing to stand silent when our relatives, co-workers, neighbours, and the guy in the next pew spout ridiculous propaganda. There are lots of people all around who agree with us, but are afraid to speak up because they feel alone and threatened.
Not all of us have to chain ourselves to the White House gates to contribute to the rising tide.
It could be that revolutions are built rather than started suddenly. And I think you all (me very newbie) have been helping to build it here in this blog.
There have been several sparks that are setting each of us off one by one, but nothing has caught on with the larger public yet. But those sparks which inflame us so are having their effect nationwide – witness the Administration’s plunging approval. The Admin adman continues to overreach in increasingly reckless ways, blinder blunders by the week.
It doesn’t take the entire country to rise up and rebel, just a shift in opposition across the board – while the “radicals” storm the gates, the not-so-rads cheer them on, the mods think hey ok, and the rest stop caring or don’t dare oppose too publicly – a shift.
But the people at Daily Kos seem to say we need to “frame” the argument against Bush. Protesting in the streets will get us nowhere. We need to elect representatives who are honest….um….like all the guys and gals who fought in Iraq…soldiers who put their lives on the line so we could be free….and put Hilliary Clinton or someone whose handsome in the Whitehouse. Then we will regain the Whitehouse and uh….give the soldiers the weaponry they need to ….get the job done!
We can still win this war in iraq with the right leadership! We can defeat the insurgents and then IRaq can be free from the secular Baathists and free to exercize it’s rights under a theocratic state that is opposed to all American interests and cultural values.
Maybe I haven’t expressed myself very well…I have been very confused lately.
I always get like that when my meds are denied.
I heard in addition to the No Fly list (I seem to be on that I have SSSSS always now on the planetickets…anybody else?) I hear there is a no med list. I think you are on that. But I have friends in the hood. Whaddya need?
Thanks. It all depends on the day and current governmental intrusion as to proper maintenance. They were considered recreational or self medicating for most of my life until I quit everything and pursued therapy. Funny thing is they put me back on pretty much the same thing.
I can only imagine the wide selection of lists I’m on and I’m just a peace-loving, tree-hugging, middle aged miscreant.
Mind-boggling, isn’t it.
No, my mind isn’t boggled. I’m fine. I have my meds too. Lots. They help me understand. Everything is Ok now, you see. It’s going to be allright. You’ll see. Just let our elected representatives do their job. They must know what their doing, it’s their job to help us be governed by them so that we can be free and watch TV . It’s fun to watch TV with my meds. I’m Ok now. I feel good about me because the President feels good about me and protects me from the bad people who live outside. President Bush is very tall when he is on TV because of his cowboy shoes and his height that makes him as big as a tall person so I feel safe with him on TV. He is from the west with his accent like old westerns where the sheriff comes to town and tells the bad people they must leave but they don’t and then he shoots them with his gun that makes them dead people and then in the next episode they aren’t there but new bad people come to town too and then they get made dead by the Sheriff because they didn’t know about the other bad people too.
lakdjosojdf kda; a;s kssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas
Welcome to the Twilight Zone…dodododo…dodododo…
Those sound whole lots more better that what I get.
Would that I had a thousand 4’s to give, Stu Piddy.
The “tall” reference wiped me out.
Yupsolutely.
That last part of his comment must be encrypted or something.
The last part I wrote with my head when the meds made it too heavy for my neck and because when it buckled but I just lifted the neck with my brain so that my head is attached to it and then it won’t happen again but so then I am ok because of the president and his skills that are helping me. I wonder if he would let me have sex on Laura. She is very beautiful with her face.
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ko
No I don’t have any ideas offhand Lee although I think the biggest stumbling block is not bush/cheney cabal but the media. If we can’t get our voices heard or told by the mainstream media how is the general public going to know what’s really going on. It’s the continued miscoverage by the entire media that has left the public in the dark or misinformed or given the completely wrong slant to any story of importance.
Just having one or two lone voices telling the truth or reporting on a story the real journalist way(as in Olberman or Stewart) isn’t going to drown out the incredible media machine that keeps people misinformed or diverted with idiotic stories about missing white women or Michael Jackson or whatever the daily diversionary story is.
Look at how many people still think Saddam had something to do with 9/11…I sometimes think we should have a massive turn off the news revolution until they start doing their jobs correctly..really doing their jobs. Asking the real questions and followups, doing investigative reporting and let the chips fall where they may..yeah I guess I’m dreaming right. Make tougher legislation so not so few(6 I think) conglomerates own the airwaves/print/publishing houses etc.
Maybe you just came up with the start. Not so much turn off the media but sit down in their headquarters. I agree with you 100% that the media for instance led the nation to believe there were maybe a 100,000 if that in DC when all our friends marched in Sept. We all know it was more like 3-500,000. They never covered it just like they never covered the protestors Inaugural Day in DC. WE have to make them stop shilling and spinning and tell the truth.
If one lives in a large city get folks together and do a sit in in their lobby or on the sidewalk for more exposure?
this was done at the Rochester newspaper office, over the summer I believe. It worked to some extent, but all we got was a small piece in the “online edition.”
This can work, but watch out for getting blown-off in this way. Also, they’d be more than willing call the cops. (this was a police-brutality issue, so that may have made the police more hesatant to violently kick the protesters out.)
It takes ideas. We have to spread our message everywhere possible. We have to convince those who are on the fence, and either win them to our side, or at least convince them to work with us. We have to understand the relevant political theory (why is this happening, how can we stop it) and some political history (what has and has not worked in the past)
We’re fairly good at this. We can learn the rest as we go on.
It takes action. All the theory and history in the world won’t help us if we never get out of our little discussion groups. We need to get off of the goddamned blogs and stir shit up a lot more often than we are. We need to focus on small victories at first, to keep ourselves energized and show people that what we are talking about is possible.
Good examples of this are kicking recruiters out of individual schools, and pressuring local school districts not to give students names to recruiters anymore. (NCLB tries to pressure them into doing it.)
Fight for publically-owned power in your city. End the death penalty in your state. Start locally, and these things will add up to be significant gains.
Furthermore, our experiences will help sort out our ideas. After you see the police beat a group of peaceful demonstrators, you start to see their connection to the larger system. After you see the leadership of the anti-war movement abandon its demands, so as to not embarrass Kerry, you start to view electoral politics, and both the major parties, and the supposed leadership of the movement, in very different ways.
we’re getting better at actions in general, but it is very uneven. Some cities have strong activist groups winning real changes, some have a total vacuum on the left. It is also quite uneven between various struggles, some are making good progress(anti-war), many more are sliding backwards(women’s rights, gay rights, anti-poverty, worker’s rights).
It takes organization. We can’t stop all recruitment in every school, and we can’t end the war with a string of city-level “out now” resolutions. At some point, we’re going to have to take this to the national level. A rochester student anti-war group can’t do much to organize a demo in DC, but CAN, nationally, can do that (sort of).
Organization will provide a framework in which to further debate our ideas, and a platform from which to launch more and larger actions. When a bunch of people who know what they want (ideas) and know how to get it (action) come together, shit’s gonna change.
This is our biggest weakness on the left. We can’t form one functional coalition on anything. The major anti-war coalitions that we have are UFPJ, ANSWER, and CAN. UFPJ recently declared that they are no longer going to work with ANSWER, and they are not calling for any actions on March 18. ANSWER is largely undemocratic, and can’t seem to balance being the (far?) left wing of the movement with being one of the largest organized forces in the movement. CAN is largely de-centralized, (it calls itself a network, remember) and doesn’t really have the resources to call a national demo, in terms of money or manpower. And the anti-war movement is probably the BEST organized movement we have right now.
but enough about that, the bottom line is that WE ACTUALLY CAN WIN, IF we get our shit together, and we start seriously fighting back.
First, let me say that a South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission-style may indeed be the best way out of this mess for ALL involved and may facilitate a peaceful conclusion to the possibly dire internal conflicts we can all see as coming as America’s divided political landscape is strained further by a War for Profit that terrorizes the world.
Letting them get away with what they have done so far in exchange for a complete recounting of all crimes and torts is the only way to keep them from coming back and to move on as a nation short of toppling the Republic entirely. Hard to lure someone out of power with a War Crimes charge alone. If they fight on and into their own demise, all we’ll get for justice are a few pitchmen and a clerk or two in the docks. Was Nuremburg any real satisfaction once the deeds were done?
I like the rabble rousing speech, etc. You are good at it and you are right. Might I suggest a more nuanced approach that could augment the energizing street clash strategy. While throwing your body into the gears of the system is photogenic and effective and necessary, a few additional, simultaneous approaches with more focused goals may get you from A to B a lot quicker than civil unrest alone.
I assume your goal is not necessarily to topple the Republic, but rather reform it’s political system and bureaucracy significantly to reign in it’s behavior in relation to the worlds resources, human and otherwise. If you want to topple the Republic entirely, we should discuss your plans for the day after that first and foremost. I actually think that is the real elephant in the room. But not here, or now.
It may seem naive, but there is a mechanism in place whereby individuals who wish to change the behavior of the government can easily do so, and often for personal gain. It’s called joining the government.
The Republicans are waging a war for the very heart of the government bureaucracy, replacing traditionally career bureaucrat positions with partisan operatives, qualifications aside, like the infamous Brownie. This has to be stopped, as it will be even harder to reverse than the Supreme Court going to the Right a bit.
The way to stop what irks you under total Republican reign is to pass as GOP party minions and join up to do good work from within until friendlier times can be brought about. That’s far less deceptive than what they are doing – nobody voted for this.
The same works for the military and their lockstep participation in all this. They’ll cut you an induction bonus check for doing it to them. Just sign up and waste their time and resources. Imagine if a naughty person organized 3000 people to join the army all at once and then all apply for Conscientious Objector status in public fashion a few weeks in (CNN:’It started as a trickle of objectors at first, but now it is a real movement from within the military’s rank and file..’).
I certainly can’t recommend that anyone do any of the above, but even ‘just’ getting elected as a poser GOP candidate (on their dime!) locally will provide a more long lasting opportunity for change making than one night in the clink for getting in the President’s ugly mug.
Civil Protest may even bring down the presidency, but sounds like everyone agrees the problem has metastasized and this too must be reversed.
So we must do both to really win back this government.. assimilate it, then reform it from within as the demand grows for reform without.
prison labor?
I fear that it is too late for that.
Wish it were otherwise, but I don’t see it.
Too slow.
Radical surgery is needed.
A popular uprising for impeachment and full accountability regarding all criminal acts.
Then maybe some gradual healing.
Until then…nothing is going to happen except patsy cake. The patsies will do the time and the capos will eat the cake.
Just as it always was.
AG
I wish with all my heart that I didn’t agree with you completely, Arthur.
It’s just one small step from unconstitutional arrest and imprisionment to the gas chambers for Arab Americans, followed by gays, Jews, uppity women, all non-Christians, the wrong kind of Christians, those black people who never really got the hang of being good Americans, god-hating liberals, those brown people who never really got the hang of being good Americans, unionists, those red people who never really got the hang of being good Americans, socialists, those yellow people who never really got the hang of being good Americans, all non-Republicans, and very special treatment for all the enemy sympathizers who object to this cleansing of a terrified, embattled America.
This administration is already softening us up to accept as public policy what they now do in private.
And don’t forget all them white people who never really got the hang of being “good Americans”.
There’s lots of US, too.
We wouldn’t have been very good Germans, either.
AG
You’re right. There are a lot of us.
Your writing gives me hope when I get so angry and discouraged at the blind apathy and self delusion I see all around me.
Your clear headed reasoning and broad knowledge confirms my worst suspicions.
Your righteous anger stiffens my spine and won’t let me give up.
Thank you.
Take one and pass it on.
AG
P.S. Sorry for the double post. Hit the wrong button.
Take one and pass it on.
AG