| Refuse to Fight Imperial War
by Great Orion Voyager � 2009 freyakorps REFUSE TO FIGHT IMPERIAL WAR: Dropping cluster bombs on villages is criminal insanity. Refuse to kill your brothers in the Class War. War is always Class War: Worker Class versus Property Class. Workers die in battle to enrich Property Class War Profiteers whose own kids never join the military. There is no War on Terror. WAR IS TERROR. THE WAR OF TERROR IS CLASS WAR: George Orwell described it in 1984 as war without end, a secret war where reporters are not allowed to report battles, no one knows how many get killed, teenagers get drafted and disappear without a trace. Neocons have been looking for a new enemy since the Soviet Union. Now they found the perfect enemy: Faceless stateless poor folk. NEOCONS WANT WAR WITHOUT END: Neocons do not intend to win anything. The War of Terror can never be won. Victory can never be declared. The War of Terror is designed to last forever to maximize war profiteering and crony contractor corruption. George Orwell says, �The object of torture is torture.� Neocons want to torture prisoners to ensure future generations of terrorists. There is a natural tendency for guards to torture prisoners unless strictly prohibited. Torture does not work. When prisoners are beaten and tortured, they give false information just to make the beating stop. American patrols are clueless and mistake civilians as "bad guys." Teenagers go into Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo innocent civilians, but leave as terrorists�as intended. Neocons are using an American Prison Gulag to arrest and torture and disappear countless foreign and domestic protestors, dissidents, freedom fighters, any threat to the Property Class. Neocons are using an American Imperial Army to invade and occupy foreign nations to steal oil and resources, impose Totalitarian Theocracy, and transform all workers into slaves� a return to American Plantation Slavery led once again by Southern Christian Crackers. Southern Christian Crackers, bloodthirsty mercenaries, gun-crazed deer hunters, are happy to murder Muslims in a New Holy Crusade. Arrest every former member of the Criminal Bush Administration, send them to the World Court in The Hague, find them guilty of War Crimes Against Humanity, and behead them with scimitars broadcast live on Al Jazeera. AMERICA ALREADY LOST THE IRAQ WAR AND THE WAR OF TERROR: American patrols gun down anything that moves. They call it �lighting up bad guys,� even if some �bad guys� are innocent little girls� oh that�s �collateral damage.� You cannot shoot and bomb and torture civilians and expect to win anything. LACK OF BATTLE OBJECTIVES VIOLATES EVERY TENET OF BATTLE DOCTRINE: General Patton could see it instantly: When you have no battle objective, when your only plan is to drive around crowded cities provoking attacks, you will lose. WHEN YOU SHOOT AND BOMB AND TORTURE CIVILIANS, YOU LOSE HEARTS AND MINDS, YOU ALREADY LOST. YOUR ENEMY ARE NOT FOREIGN TEENAGERS: YOUR ENEMY ARE MILLIONAIRE WARMONGERS WHO FORCE YOU TO KILL AND DIE SO THEY CAN STEAL FOREIGN OIL AND RESOURCES. ONLY BAD GUYS ARE MILLIONAIRE WARMONGER BAD GUYS: Light them up. Send them to hell. Be strong. Do the Right Thing. Refuse to fight. Get a court martial and do years in prison. Henry David Thoreau said that in a nation of pigs, �the only place for a just man is a prison.� HONOR our sacred role models strong enough to do years in prison: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, Nelson Mandela. DUTY. HONOR. COURAGE. SEMPER FI. GET RID OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Threatening to nuke any population is criminal insanity. All nations especially America must get rid of all nuclear weapons immediately. DECREASE MILITARY SPENDING: The Missile Defense Shield is blatant theft of billions of your tax dollars to deliberately provoke a new Cold War, and must be shut down. BAN CLUSTER BOMBS AND LAND MINES: American cluster bombs and land mines are tools of terror, and weapons contractors who produce and sell such terror must be convicted of war crimes. BAN INTERNATIONAL ARMS SALES: It is time to WAGE PEACE. GIVE THE AMERICAN MILITARY TO THE UNITED NATIONS: The US Military should be given to UN to serve as UN Peacekeepers providing relief and medical aid throughout the world. Imagine the world�s most hated superpower as the world�s most beloved agent for freedom, democracy, human rights, relief and medical care. Imagine the US Military finally earning its pay, saving lives instead of murdering them, doing good instead of evil�. Imagine. FREYAKORPS WAR PHOTOS http://www.democracynow.org /2008/5/26/memorial_day_specialwinter_soldier_on_the Iraq War Veterans Testifying Before Congress, May 26, 2008 Marine Sniper Sergio Kochergin: "We were exposed to a lot of dead Iraqi citizens, either enemy combatants or innocent civilians who were killed by initial air strikes or invasion.... Me and another Marine led a family to dead corpses, and they were identified as their sons and uncles and nephews�. They began to cry and point at us and at the sky and telling us that the planes killed them, and it was our fault also.... A few of our Marines went to the hospital to provide security for all the relatives that were trying to contact their families. When they came back, they said they have never seen so much blood before. They said that they couldn�t even see the ground, so much blood and body parts were everywhere.... Our job consisted of patrolling ASB, and when we came into contact with Iraqis stealing stuff� we would shoot their tires out or shoot their windows, putting them on their knees like we�re about to execute them and just shoot in the air and laugh and yell at them and tell them that the next time will be worse. Our orders directly from command was to roughen up all the guys. They would always tell us that everybody is an enemy and that we can�t trust them and the only way to keep them in place is to put as much fear as possible�. During deployment in al-Najaf, nothing was fixed, except keeping the city in the occupied hands and instill fear into people every chance we got.... Drop weapons are the weapons given to us by our chain of command in case we kill somebody without any weapons�. We would carry an AK-47, and if the person that was shot did not have the weapon, an AK-47 would be placed at his corpse, and when the unit would come back to the base, they would turn it in to identify the shot man as an enemy combatant.... Looking at the situation, this point of view, a lot of enemy combatants that we shot were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were tired, mad, angry, and we just wanted to go home.... When we all come back from Iraq and we seek help from our command, they call us �weak� and �cowards.� The lines for a psychologist is almost a year long, and the only thing that can help us is the alcohol and the prescription pills they�re giving out like candy�. We lost numerous people from failing drug tests. They either want to get out, or they�re just so messed up, the only one thing that can help them to escape is the drugs. The last thing I want to tell you is about a roommate who we shared a bathroom with, a Marine who was on suicide watch for about few months on and off. The last three weeks before we were deployed, he was constantly on watch. A week before family day, when the family comes in and says goodbye to Marines before we deploy, he was released from watch, so that he would not say anything to his parents. About a month into deployment, he blew his brains out in the shower stall.... This Marine should have never gone to Iraq in the first place, and nobody was held responsible for his death. If there is no care for your own Marines, what care do they have for the people of Iraq?... Help us to stop this inhumane treatment of Iraqi people and stop this occupation of Iraq and help us bring our troops home." Marine Sergeant James Gilligan: "Destroying Iraqi property was such a pleasure for some, but for me one day it was orders. I was ordered to take Lance Corporal Jerome with me as security, and I received orders via inter-squad radio to destroy a civilian�s pickup truck. I slashed as much as I could, and I kicked in the windshield for good measure. It was later with regret that I thought that this might have been this man�s livelihood. Looting during the initial invasion was rampant. Nearly everyone had something: rugs, pens, pictures, you name it, anything you could find that would fetch a price.... Early May, while trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, we were surrounded by a crowd of non-hostile Iraqis. I witnessed my first sergeant as he exited the Humvee without any backup or support. He ran down a male Iraqi child who was maybe seven to eight years old and lifted him in the air, hand choking the boy. With his pistol drawn, he pointed into the child�s head and neck area, threatening and screaming shouts of profanity. As a result of this, the mood in the truck was dead silence until we returned to our campsite.... When you meet an Iraqi teenage male on the street, you�re not meeting your average American male. You�re meeting an Iraqi male who has experienced a conflict, an occupation that has been going on for the past five years in his homeland, in his neighborhood, in his streets, in his schools�. They know exactly what the Marine Air Wing is capable of. They know exactly what our prison systems are like. They know exactly what our responses are going to be to gunfire, mortar fire, sniper attacks. And they�re doing it, and they�re doing it good. They�re trying to continue this resistance, and this act of resistance is not going to end until we are actually out of that country." Army Captain Luis Montalvan: "In Iraq, I witnessed many disturbing things. I witnessed waterboarding. I was given unlawful orders by superiors to not offer humanitarian assistance to refugees caught between Syrian and Iraqi borders. I disobeyed those orders. I participated in countless massive operations led by American commanders whose metrics for success were numbers of detainees apprehended without regard to real effects�. I lost many friends in Iraq, American and Iraqi. Many Iraqi friends continue to suffer as refugees inside and outside of Iraq.... For the past year and a half, myself and a number of fellow veterans of Iraq have co-authored pieces in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, among a number of other media outlets. And we have beaten our drum to try to raise the issue of the dereliction of duty committed by a number of generals who have been promoted and promoted again and continue to perpetuate lies and paint a rosy picture of the situation of Iraq." Marine PFC Vincent J.R. Emanuele: "An act that took place quite often in Iraq was taking pop shots at cars that drove by. This was quite easy for most Marines to get away with, because our rules of engagement stated that the town of Al Qaim had already been forewarned and knew to pull their cars to a complete stop when approaching a convoy. Our rules of engagement stated that we should first fire warning shots into the ground in front of the car, then the engine block, and then the driver and passengers. Most of the time, however, the shots made their way straight to those very individuals in the car. That is if the car was even moving in the first place. Many times, cars that had actually pulled off to the side of the road were also shot at�. This was not the best way to become friendlier with an already very hostile local population. This took place for most of my eight-month deployment. In one instance, we were sent on a mission to blow up a bridge that was being used to transport weapons across the Euphrates. During this mission, we were ambushed and were forced to return fire�. It was very difficult, if not impossible, to clearly identify hostile targets. This resulted in our unit firing into the town with little or no identification of hostile targets. Because of inadequate intelligence or incompetent leadership, our platoon lost a good Marine that day, and I lost my best friend.... Rarely, if ever, did we conduct a battle damage assessment to report civilian deaths and destruction. So almost all the time these incidents went unreported and not investigated.... Another mission was transporting prisoners from our detention facility to the desert. The reason I say the desert and not their town is because that is exactly where we would drop them off, in the middle of nowhere. Now, most of these men had obviously been deemed innocent, or else they would have been moved to a more permanent detention facility and not released. Our unit engaged in punching, kicking, butt stroking or generally harassing and abusing these prisoners until the point at which our unit would be take them in the middle of the desert, miles from their respective homes, and at times throw them out of the back of our Humvees, all the while continually punching, kicking and at times even throwing softball-sized rocks at their backs as they ran away�. Possibly the most disturbing of what took place in Iraq was the mishandling of the dead. On several occasions, our convoy came across bodies that had been decapitated and were lying on the road, sometimes for weeks. When encountering these bodies, standard procedure was to run over the corpses, sometimes even stopping and taking pictures, which was also a standard practice when encountering the dead�. On one occasion, after I personally shot a man attempting to flee, we drug his body out of the ditch he was laying in, and we subsequently left that body to rot in the field, where we saw this man a week later. These are just a few of the disturbing stories I could share with you. Others would include continually dehumanizing Iraqis by referring to them as �hajis� or �sand niggers.� Even the racist and sexist nature that exists within the military itself�. I could also tell story upon story of families being destroyed as a result of occupation�. Several members of my platoon went through divorces, many with children involved�. The overwhelming majority did not think dying in Iraq was honorable or acceptable, nor did they want to go back to Iraq a second or third time. Unfortunately, because of personal circumstances, whether they be financial or family issues, many indeed were deployed up to three times during their four-year enlistment�. Our unit had a general disdain for Iraqis. Our unit did not trust our command and had a general mistrust and distaste of this occupation from its inception. I could also speak to the personal attacks veterans, including myself and many others, had to encounter once we were willing to be treated for PTSD within our unit. The idea of being a real Marine that does not complain when coming back home and who sucks it up and just does the job that we were tasked to do, this mentality resulted in many of the Marines I served with, including myself, turning to drugs and alcohol to cope with the horrors of this bloody occupation." Marine Sergeant Adam Kokesh: "The rules of engagement contradict themselves and put Marines in a situation where their morals, as defined by those rules, are put at odds with their survival instincts. And I think that it�s fundamentally criminal to put brave young Americans in that situation.... There was a checkpoint shooting to the west of our position where a man coming home from work at the end of the day did not see the newly emplaced Humvee, desert-colored, against the desert background, manned by Marines wearing desert-colored camouflage. And a Marine there decided that he was approaching at too fast a rate of speed and emptied into the vehicle with a 50 caliber machine gun�. The second round hit this Iraqi gentleman in his chest, hit him so hard that it broke his chair and knocked him back in his seat�. This is a picture I�m very ashamed of, having posed with this dead Iraqi as a trophy picture. But what felt awkward to me at the time was not that�not so much that I was taking the picture, but rather that I had not killed this man, and I was almost�I was taking a trophy of someone else�s kill. And my entire team was present for this, including a major�. At the first Winter Soldier investigation in 1971, one of the Vietnam veterans held up a similar photograph and said, �Don�t ever let your government do this to you. Don�t ever let your government put you in a position where this attitude towards death and this disregard for human life is acceptable or common.� And yet, we are still doing this to service members every day, as long as the occupation continues.... At one point during the siege of Fallujah, it was decided that we were going to allow women and children to leave the city. We thought this was the most magnanimous thing we could have done, and yet our rules were to let only women and children out. And so, any male over the age of fourteen was too old to get out of the city, was turned away. And so, my responsibility during this time at certain points was to go out on this bridge and turn away families. However, it�s clear that we�re giving these families an impossible choice, whether they could stay together with their families intact or split their families up.... During the siege of Fallujah, our rules of engagement changed so often� anyone who was described as a suspicious observer would be a legitimate target: anyone holding a cell phone, binoculars or, at one point, anyone out after curfew. And this led to an incident where Marines were firing at firefighters and cops silhouetted against a fire that our indirect fire had caused who were trying to help outside the civilians�. After the siege of Fallujah, my team was tasked with setting up a checkpoint� where we detained various personnel� many of whom were harassed unnecessarily." Marine Sergeant Adam Kokesh: "We didn�t go into the city of Fallujah for the second battle until after the presidential elections of 2004, because I believe that the President knew he could not get elected with the headline of twenty Marines dead in downtown Fallujah�. Numerous Americans died unnecessarily in that battle�. Almost one hundred Americans lost their lives in that battle. Numerous Marines died every single day throughout the summer of 2004�. I think the manipulations that led to the unnecessary deaths in Fallujah happened at the highest policymaking levels. There were State Department personnel present during the negotiations that created the Fallujah Brigade, and that led to those deaths. I don�t think even the generals who were conducting those battles had any say in the timing or the actual conduct.... But the way that the siege was handled absolutely led to unnecessary deaths of civilians. One of the things we were tasked with at our Civil Military Operations Center was paying of Silatia payments, or battle damage claims, as we called them. And we distributed a couple million dollars that way. I was interviewed by Al Jazeera, because doing something like this was historically unprecedented. But we would turn around and pay people what it would cost to rebuild their homes, had we destroyed their home by accident, so somebody coming to our facility filing a claim might get $25,000 for the home that we accidentally dropped a bomb on, and $2,500 for the son that was killed in that accident. And that just goes to show the relative value of life that Americans place on Iraqi lives.... We call for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces�. I was manning a checkpoint when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, and I had to go out the next day and face crowds of Iraqi people. And for us, it was�it felt as though we had been betrayed by the policy that resulted in that scandal�. The new challenge I had that day was to go out and convince the Iraqi people that we were there to help them." FREYAKORPS WAR PHOTOS Henry David Thoreau, �Civil Disobedience� 1848 "This American government: It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished, and we would have done somewhat more if the government had not got in our way. I believe we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as respect for the right: Law never made men one whit more just.... �See a file of soldiers marching over hill and dale off to the wars, against their common sense and conscience, which makes it very steep marching indeed. They have no doubt it is a damnable business. Now what are they? Men at all? Visit the Navy Yard and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make with its black arts, a mere shadow of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, yet already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment.... �I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, sit down with their hands in their pockets and say they don�t know what to do, and do nothing. At most, they give only a cheap vote. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.... "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison: It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them, on that separate but more free and honorable ground, the only house in a Slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.... "Some years ago, the State commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman: 'Pay,� it said, �or be locked up in jail.' I declined to pay. I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing: 'Know by all ye men present that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any society that I have not joined.' This I gave to the town clerk, and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of any church, has never made a like demand on me since.... "I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into jail once on this account, for one night, and as I stood there considering the walls of solid stone two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron a foot thick, and the iron grating straining the light, I was struck by the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones to be locked up. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of mortar and stone. As the State could not reach me, it had resolved to punish my body, just as boys, if they cannot come against some man whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, and lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.... "The authority of government must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute monarchy to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is progress toward true respect for the individual. There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as the higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived. A State which bore this kind of fruit would pave the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which I have also imagined, but not yet anywhere seen." Howard Zinn, Lecture at Binghamton University, NY, Nov 8 2008 "A single-payer health system will be sort of run like Social Security. It won�t depend on middle people, on insurance companies. You won�t have to fill out forms and pay and figure out whether you have a preexisting medical condition.... No, something happens, you just go to a doctor, you go to a hospital, you�re taken care of, period. The government will pay for it. That�s what governments are for. They do that for the military. The military has free insurance. I was once in the military. I didn�t have to fool around with deciding what health plan I�m in.... But when you ask that the government do this for everybody else, they cry, �That�s socialism!� Well, if that�s socialism, it must mean socialism is good.... I was really gratified when Obama said, �Let�s tax the rich more; let�s tax the poor and middle class less.� And they said, �That�s socialism.� And I thought, �Finally, socialism is getting a good name.�... "Newspapers this morning report highest unemployment in decades. The government needs to create jobs. Private enterprise is not going to create jobs. Private enterprise fails, the so-called free market system fails again and again. When the Depression hit in the 1930s, Roosevelt and the New Deal created jobs for millions of people. And there were people out there on the fringe who yelled, �Socialism!� Didn�t matter. People needed it.... "Obama should have been saying, �Let�s take that $700 billion, let�s give it to people who can�t pay their mortgages. Let�s create jobs.� You know, instead of pouring $700 billion into the top and hoping it will trickle down to the bottom, no, go right to the bottom, where people need it.... "Roosevelt did challenge economic interests, boldly. He called them economic royalists. He wasn�t worried people would say, �Oh, you�re appealing to class conflict,� you know, as if there hasn�t always been class conflict.... �You�re creating class conflict. We�ve never had class conflict. We�ve always all been one happy family.�... "The other factor that stands in the way of a real bold economic and social program is the war, you know, a $600 billion military budget. Now, how can you call for the government to take over the healthcare system? How can you call for the government to give jobs to millions of people? How can you offer free education, free higher education? We should have free higher education. How can you do all these things, which will do away with poverty in the United States? It all costs money. Where�s that money going to come from? Well, it can come from two sources. One is the tax structure.... You have a tax system where 200 of the richest corporations pay no taxes.... Don�t we need $600 billion for a military budget? Don�t we have to fight two wars? No. We don�t have to fight any wars.... They�re horrible, and they�re absurd. You know, the deaths and the mangled limbs and the blindness and the three million people in Iraq losing their homes, having to leave their homes, three million people having to look elsewhere to live because of our occupation, because of our war for democracy, our war for liberty.... "The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons.... In one hundred different countries we have military bases. That doesn�t look like a peace-loving country. What do we need those bases for? We have to declare ourselves a peaceful nation. We don�t have to be a military superpower. We don�t have to be a military power at all, you see? We can be a humanitarian superpower. We�ll still be powerful. We�ll still be rich. But we can use that power and that wealth to help people all over the world.... "There was a British Empire, a Russian Empire, a German Empire, a Japanese Empire, a French Empire, a Belgian Empire, a Dutch Empire and a Spanish Empire. And now there�s the American Empire.... Our history shows expansion: Doubling our territory with the Louisiana Purchase, which I remember on our school maps looked very benign. �Oh, there�s all that empty land, and now we have it.� It wasn�t empty! Hundreds of Indian tribes were living there, you see? And if it�s going to be ours, we�ve got to get rid of them. And we did. And then we instigated a war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848, and at the end of the war we take almost half of Mexico. And why? Well, we wanted that land. That�s very simple. We want things. And the United States has done that again and again. Then we expanded into the Caribbean, then we expanded out into the Pacific into Hawaii and the Philippines.... And now in the Middle East, everywhere. An expansionist country, an imperialist power. For what? To do good things for these other people? No. We�re an empire like other empires. We�re as aggressive and brutal and violent as the Belgians were in the Congo, as the British were in India, and all these other empires. Yeah, we�re just like them. We have to face it. And when you face that, you sober up a little, and then you don�t think you can just go all over the world and say, �We�re doing this for liberty and democracy,� because then, if you know your history, you know how many times that was said: �We�re going into the Philippines to bring civilization and Christianity to the Filipinos.� �We�re going to bring civilization to the Mexicans.�... "When government does bad things, the most patriotic thing you can do is to criticize the government, because that�s our basic democratic charter. The Declaration of Independence says governments are set up by the people to ensure certain rights, the equal right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So when governments become destructive of those ends, the Declaration said, �it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish� the government. It�s OK to abolish the government when the government violates its trust.... "We need to redefine �terrorism.�... Terrorism means that you kill people for some belief that you have.... But if that�s the definition: War is Terrorism.... There�s the interest of the president of the United States, and then there�s the interest of the young person he sends to war. They�re different interests, you see? There is the interest of Exxon and Halliburton, and there�s the interest of the worker, the nurse�s aide, the teacher, the factory worker. Those are different interests.... No, the government is not looking out for your interest. The government has its own interests, and they�re not the interests of the people.... Governments do not represent the interests of their people. See? That�s why governments keep getting overthrown.... That's why governments lie. They have to lie, because their interests are different than the interests of ordinary people. If they told the truth, they would be out of office.... "I was in World War II as an Air Force bombardier. I dropped bombs on various cities in Europe.... I was an enthusiastic enlistee in the Air Force. I wanted to be in the war against fascism, the �good war,� right? But at the end of the war, I looked around and thought about what I had done and learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden and Hamburg and learned things I didn�t even realize while I was bombing, because when you�re involved in a military operation, you don�t think. You're just an automaton, really, you�re not questioning why. �Why are they sending me to bomb this little town? The war is almost over, there�s no reason for dropping bombs on several thousand people.� No, you don�t think. Well, I began to think after the war that this good war is not good. This best of wars, no.... "You make an interesting psychological jump: Since they�re the bad guys, you must be the good guys. No, they may very well be the bad guys. They may be fascists and dictators and really bad guys. That doesn�t mean you�re good, you know? And when I began to look at it that way, I realized that wars are fought by evils on both sides. You know, one is a little more evil than the other. But even though you start in a war with sort of good intentions�we�re going to defeat fascism�you end up killing a lot of innocent people, because you�ve decided from the beginning that you�re right.... Then you can kill 100,000 people in Dresden.... �Oh, now we�re rid of fascism. Now we�re going to have a good world, a peaceful world. Now the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 50 million people died in World War II, but now it�s going to be OK. Well, you�ve lived these years since World War II. Has it been OK?... War wastes people. It wastes wealth. It�s an enormous, enormous waste.... "If you don�t know history, it�s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything, you have no way of checking up on it. History is very important. I don�t mean formal history, what you learn in a classroom. Go to the library and learn history.... History tells us injustices have not been remedied by the three branches of government. They�ve been remedied by great social movements, which then push and force and pressure and threaten the three branches of government until they finally do something.... "If you look at history, you see people felt powerless until they organized, and they got together, and they persisted, and they didn�t give up, and they built social movements. Whether it was the anti-slavery movement or the black movement of the 1960s or the antiwar movement in Vietnam or the women�s movement, they started small and apparently helpless; they became powerful.... We�re not powerless. We just have to be persistent.... If you join some group, it will make you feel better.... Life becomes more interesting and rewarding when you become involved with other people in some great social cause." FREYAKORPS WAR PHOTOS Cindy Sheehan, January 2007 "I am tired of warmongers making war with our children. I am tired of our tired troops being sent over to do the dirty work for mob bosses who are going to squeeze the life out of Iraq and not leave until every asset and resource has been raped from the country. I am tired of seeing Iraqis burying their loved ones and hearing the screams of mothers all over our own country who are being destroyed for the benefit of a very few. You tell me the truth. You tell me my son died for oil. You tell me my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of Pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that. You don't tell me my son died for freedom and democracy. You get America out of Iraq. You get Israel out of Palestine. Our country has been taken over by murderous thugs, gangsters who lust after fortunes and power. The US is now ruled by murderous criminals who should be arrested!" Mike Malloy, 2006 �Republicans are just vile. All Republicans are liars, cheats, sneaks. They are immoral; they have no ethical structure. I don't care if they're members of Congress or your momma. If they are Republican, they are thugs. They support mass murder. They support the destruction of this country. The Bush Crime Family is deep in blood, blood, blood. You sons of bitches. I just hate you. I hate you to the depths of my soul. I will hate you a million years after I am dead. My hatred will be a star in the firmament that will shine down on your Republican asses forever. That's how deep my hatred is, because of what you are doing to my country." Hunter Thompson, KINGDOM OF FEAR, 2004 �The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of the world as we know it. Doom is the operative ethic. We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for oil and power, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history shall judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush, they are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak to all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character.� Noam Chomsky, KUOW Seattle, April 2005 "The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and make your grandchildren pay for it all. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening now." Hugo Chavez, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 2005 "When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force. The attacks on Venezuela are a sign of weakness, ideological weakness. Nowadays almost nobody defends neoliberalism. Up until three years ago, just Fidel Castro and I raised these criticisms at Presidential meetings. We felt lonely, as if we infiltrated those meetings. Just look at the internal repression inside the United States, the Patriot Act, which is a repressive law against US citizens. They put into jail a group of journalists for not revealing their sources. They won't allow them to take pictures of the dead soldiers coming home from Iraq, many of them Latinos. Those are signs of Goliath's weaknesses. The south also exists. The future of the north depends on the south. If we don�t make that better world possible, if we fail, and through the rifles of the US Marines, and through Mr. Bush's murderous bombs, if there is no south to resist the offensive of neo-imperialism, and the Bush doctrine is imposed upon the world, the world shall be destroyed. Every day I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind: It is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism cannot be transcended from itself, but only through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I�m convinced it is possible to do in a democracy, but not in the type of democracy imposed from Washington. We have to re-invent socialism: It cannot be the kind of socialism we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems built on cooperation, not competition. Privatization is a neoliberal imperialist plan. Healthcare cannot be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity, other essential public services. They cannot be surrendered to private capital that denies the people of their rights!" �Did did did did you see the frightened ones, did did did did you see the falling bombs, did did did did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a Brave New World unfurled beneath a clear blue sky? The flames are all long gone but the pain lingers on�. Goodbye blue sky, goodbye blue sky, goodbye, goodbye.� Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, �Goodbye Blue Sky� Malcolm X, January 1965, MALCOLM X SPEAKS, edited by George Breitman, p. 217 �You put the government on the spot when you even mention Vietnam. They feel embarrassed. It's just a trap they let themselves get into. But they're trapped, they can't get out. You notice I said 'they.' THEY are trapped, THEY can't get out. If they pour more men in, they'll get deeper. If they pull men out, it's a defeat. And they should have known that in the first place. France had about 200,000 Frenchmen over there, the most highly mechanized modern army sitting on this earth. And those little rice farmers ate them up, and their tanks, and everything else. Yes they did, and France was deeply entrenched, had been there a hundred years. Now, if she couldn't stay there and was entrenched, why, you are out of your mind if you think Sam can. But we're not supposed to say that. They put Diem over there. Diem took all their money, all their war equipment and everything else, and got them trapped. Then they killed him. Yes, they killed him, murdered him in cold blood, him and his brother, Madame Nhu's husband, because they were embarrassed. They had made him strong and he was turning against them. You know, when the puppet starts talking back to the puppeteer, the puppeteer is in bad shape.� Martin Luther King, New York City, April 1967 "This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Over the past two years, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path: Why are you speaking about Vietnam, Dr. King? I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live." Hunter Thompson, "September," FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 �If current polls are reliable, Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls also indicate Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states�. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it� that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose.... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?� Hunter Thompson, "November," FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 �It was eerie, you'd walk out of the press room, through the lobby out of the elevators, into the bar.... There'd be a huge crowd in the lobby and only one person talking and you'd hear this voice saying, 'The mood at McGovern headquarters is extremely solemn and shocked, one of shock and depression right now. Illinois has just fallen, California is gone, New York is gone...' They'd read this list of disasters and you knew their faces and what they were saying was on TV screens all over the country. It was like a televised funeral.... I was feeling depressed.... And John Holum came in. I could see that he'd been crying, and he's not the kind of person you'd expect to see walking around in public with tears all over his face.... That was the only time McGovern cracked. For about a minute he broke down and� and� and couldn't talk for a few minutes. Then he got himself together. He was actually the coolest person in the place from then on. Other people were cracking all around�. Stunned, wall-eyed. There was nothing to say, just a helluva shock� a fantastic beating�. I remember when Agnew came on, throwing something at the television set. It was a beer can�. That was the last flight of the Dakota Queen and also last flight of the Zoo Plane. It was the trip back to Washington from Sioux Falls, which borders on one of the worst trips I've ever taken in my life.... Jesus Christ, it was easily the worst scene of the campaign.... There was something� total� something very undermining about the McGovern defeat.... There was a very unexplained kind of� ominous quality to it� weeping chaos. People you'd never expect to break down stumbled off the plane in tears�. It was such a shock to me that although I'd gone back to Washington to analyze, I saw how ripped up people were�. I decided to hell with this�. So I just went right around to the main terminal and got on another plane and went back to Colorado.� |