Remember to drip!

Don't
Reelect
Incumbent
Politicians

I'd stay away from out-of-office wannabes, too.

As Cliff says, get rid of the professionals of either party. They're already bought and paid for.

In the English Parliamentary system (Canada's, too) Independents of several parties will form a coalition to outvote the major parties. We could do that also, if we just quit fighting amongst ourselves and looked at the big picture. The Republicrats know they have nothing to fear as they watch us self destruct on our own tiny special interests.

I can see only two viable solutions. The first, and probably the most effective, but liable to a declaration of martial law (which would bring the truth into the open, if nothing else). A national strike. Nobody moves. Leave the cars in the garage, have some good books handy. Nothing happens, nobody goes to work, nobody buys anything, ships and planes don't leave, shops are empty of both customers and help. No gas or diesel sold, the trucks are parked. This has worked to get the attention of some European governments. They quickly realize who is in charge. The People!

The second is to work very hard to form a coalition of independent parties to select an un-bought leader for each public office and support him/her/them against the huge Dumbican machine. It would work if We the People didn't fall for the divide and conquer strategy of the Big Two and its Propaganda Machine, the Mass Media.

Remember, Goebbels and Goering summed it up very concisely and this gang has taken the ball and are running with it.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
And:
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
Joseph Goebbels, MiniProp for Hitler’s Third Reich
1897-1945

"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same for any country."
Herman Goering to Gustave Gilbert at Nuremberg, 18 April, 1946

I think it is worth a try. Otherwise, we will just get dragged further into the snake hole dug by the current rulers, to devour whatever remains of us.

Hmmmm, "White man speak with forked tongue." Ah well, close enough.

What is more useless to the government than a used up soldier? In the Napoleonic wars, the pubs all had a few crippled soldiers and sailors begging for a few coppers to buy another mug of painkiller. In those armies and navies, you fought in battle after battle until you were killed, or lost a limb or were blinded. Then you were turned out on a few pence a month if you were lucky, to fend for yourself.

Press gangs roamed the streets, picking up any warm body they found, who were promptly sworn in and became cannon fodder. Families were left to starve, often not even knowing what happened to husband of father.

Our empire is no different. When we read of veterans who reenlist for the bonus, then get killed and the family is billed for the prorated amount left because he didn't complete his enlistment; when we read about veterans who were wounded because of, say, an IED and their rifle is buried in the rubble. The body armor is cut off in the aid station to treat his injuries. He is later billed for the ruined armor and the lost weapon. Meanwhile, the families left behind are eking out their existence with food stamps and trying to pay their rent.

These guys are supposed to keep their mouths shut and do what they are told. As above, many are so shattered by wounds and diseases that they should be retired, but they are sent back into combat time and again, rotation after rotation. Finally, many snap. If one stands up to principles, if one is sickened by what he or she has seen and done, the alternative is imprisonment and harassment until they finally obey.

We will see no end of this until the Oligarchy is broken up and there is no more profit in war, or until they find a more profitable business than war. That is certainly not in the foreseeable future.

Times and empires do not change. Finally the old ones wither and new ones scrabble to take their places. The people bear the brunt of it all, striving to make ends meet in increasing poverty, praying that the current empire will expire and that the new rulers will be more benevolent. That is a rare event. Only two or three examples in all of recorded history.

Meanwhile, "Ein volk, ein fuhrer, ein vaterland. Sieg heil! Seig heil! Seig heil!" The only difference between one empire and another is the language.

Women from Rongalap and the Marshal Islands often bear what they call squids. The babies are born with no bones, come out like jelly. Many women have themselves sterilized so they won't bear any more.

Here is a link to an article written by me when the strategy of "Bunker Buster" attacks on Iran were first made known.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&amp...

The aracnet link has been terminated. I think most of the rest of the links still work.

I wrote this poem around the start of the second Iraqi war. It is posted on the Poets Against the War site.

Depleted Uranium
by
Steve Osborn

Depleted Uranium, the new panacea
The Arms Maker’s choice with a half-life of only 4.5 billion years.
Workers in DU must wear exposure suits and respirators
Just a creative use of atomic leftovers.

Dense, hard, it punches through armor like tissue,
Vaporizes and fragments into dust and tiny chunks.
Dust to be breathed and chunks to be imbedded
As shrapnel or become buried in earth.

Battle tested in Desert Storm and Kosovo,
Now everyone is making them, and selling them,
To armies around the globe, eager for the latest thing.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi desert and Kosovo are laden with tons.

Pay no attention to the sick and the dying.
The Government says it is anything but DU.
Agent Orange was all in the mind, too.
Birth defects and cancer are coincidence in Govspeak.

A hundred or a thousand years from now,
When Hussein and Imperial America are long forgotten,
Or are but spooky tales told around the campfire,
As a new civilization tries to grow.

Peasants, trying to coax food from the ground will stir up clouds of dust.
They, their children and their animals will slowly sicken and die,
And they will know not why.
Just collateral damage from a weapon long ago.

19 February 2003

Remember, to the Pentagon and the US Government (there's a difference?) DU is just like Agent Orange and Purple. Pay no attention to the sick and dying, it is all in their heads.

This government has no empathy, no compassion, and no care for the future except to keep gaining military strength and improving the enormous profits to the Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex through our endless wars.

There are few of us left who have witnessed and been subjected to exposure to nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Our ranks grow thinner every day.

When the atmospheric teasting was begun in Nevada, the government classified the primarily ranching and herding people of Eastern Nevada, Utah and Southern Idaho as “underutilized segments of the population” and used them to study the effects of fallout and radiation. Cancers and birth defects appeared in families that had excellent health for generations. Animals sickened and died, crops were covered in dust. The testing went on for years.

The new gang in Washington and the Pentagon have no idea what they are unleashing on not only us, but the world. They neither know nor care about the horrible effects radiation has had upon the Marshall Islanders and their atoll homes. They don’t remember, or pay attention to Chernobyl. That was not a nuclear explosion, just a very stubborn fire in nuclear fuel. The area surrounding Chernobyl is uninhabitable for from three to six hundred years! There are still areas in Europe and Scandinavia where food and livestock must be tested for radiation before being sold for food. Hitting a reactor complex and knocking out the controls with conventional weapons could result in more Chernobyls.

We’ve used DU in both gulf wars, we are using it in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and used it in the Balkans. It is turning up in atmospheric filters around the world. The half-life of DU is over three-and-a-half billion years! We’ve only been on the planet as homo sapiens for perhaps three or four hundred thousand. So, we seem to have succeeded in poisoning our own planet, our only home. Yet, the military and the NRC want to declare all of this safe because it might interfere with profits, and we can’t have that, can we?

As the birth defects and cancers continue to rise, as our troops return damaged forever, as battered nations are poisoned wholesale, We the Sheeple, who no longer seem to have input into what happens to us, apparently just have to listen to the propagandists who tell us it is all right, we don’t have to worry.

If We the People don’t wake up and start acting soon, we, too, shall go the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon, but the Oligarchy will die with all the wealth and that is all that matters to them.

The Fascist moves very carefully in a constitutional republic. He tries one small trial balloon after another, waiting for one that clicks. Then he presses on, a little more boldly, but still with caution. When he finally is able to press the most abominable concepts without major censure, then he can move in the open, unleashing his venom to poison all the surviving shreds of democracy.

We are very close to that point, but I'm not sure which side of the point we are on. The blatancy of the judiciary in twisting the rule of law makes me think we've perhaps gone a bridge too far already. When the three "checks and balances" that were written into the Constitution to protect us from a dictatorship are all bought and paid for by a small, elite, group, then I fear we have what our founders were concerned about.

Unfortunately, it is our own damned fault! Jefferson and Franklin amongst others warned us that the price of our liberty was unceasing vigilance. We the People have been too concerned with sitcoms and ballgames on our wall sized TV screens to bother. We "let George do it," and unfortunately, he did. The many who have been trying to awaken the American Sheeple are, for the most part, either ignored or vilified. As I've said before, the American Sheeple are sleepily following the nice goat with the bell right up the ramp and through the door.

Gee, just think what might happen if the Congress took a mere ten percent off the top of the Pentagon's bloated budget. The nation could once again afford good education and decent housing, medical care and maybe, with some decent legislation, could bring the jobs back to the United States. We could probably repair our infrastructure.

Nah, never happen. Up the Junkers, er, Oligarchy! Up the Wehrmacht, er, Pentagon!

Let's take a look at history. The Crusades were ostensibly to "Free the Holy Land" from the Muslims. The various Knightly Orders came primarily for loot and land. The slaughter of Muslims was horrendous. It was rumored that they (and the Jews) swallowed their valuables to keep them from the invaders. Hence, the captured were routinely disemboweled and their viscera searched for gems and gold. When Jerusalem was finally taken and the slaughter begun, one of the officers asked his commander, "There are Christians and Jews amongst the captives, how do we sort them out?" After a pause, the commander said, "Kill them all and let God sort them out." And they did.

The Muslims had their own disputes, mainly Sunni vs Shiite, but when it became obvious what was going on, they set aside their differences to fight the common foe. Eventually it became a stalemate. The Templars made a treaty with the Muslims to allow trade to resume so all could profit. For a short time, peace reigned, then the commander of one of the other orders could not stand seeing goods and riches transiting "his land" and attacked and destroyed a caravan. After this had happened a few times, the treaty was over and the war recommenced. The Christian Knights tried playing one sect off against the other, often fighting for one or the other alongside the Muslims.

Eventually, it was decided that "White man speak with forked tongue," as the American Indians found to be true centuries later. Finally, the "Christian invaders" were driven out of the Holy Land.

Not much changes though. We're doing the same thing yet again (with the possible exception of disemboweling prisoners for their gold) and uniting the Muslims against us. As the Crusaders were defeated in part by their long supply lines, so we are being bankrupted trying to maintain ours.

Despite our propaganda to the contrary, those who have studied the Holy Qur'an find that it is a loving, very humanistic and caring religion. About the only warlike parts are concerning the Islamic struggle for survival during Mohamed's lifetime. Those calling for Jihad and war are not unlike our own religious right who take parts of the Old Testament with its wars and slaughters (in the name of God) to stir up hate and war against "the infidel."

If more religious leaders throughout the world would carefully read and practice the tenets of their faith, perhaps these wars would dry up and die as anachronisms. Remember, almost every religion has a version of "Do not unto others as you would not have done unto you." And yet we slaughter and are slaughtered despite this.

As I have posted elsewhere, The Constitution has been shredded and only a handful of legislators even give it lip service. Now, the mis-named "Patriot Act" has been strengthened and the sunset clause revoked. More restrictive legislation is being created and signed into law. The concentration camps are built, NorthCom is training returning combat brigades in "suppressing civil dissent," The government is approving ever more money to our "Wehrmacht" in the Pentagon, while allowing the banksters to now pick up whatever is left. Millions are homeless, banks are tearing down foreclosed homes so no one can live in them as winter approaches.

I think about the only thing left is a national strike. Shut the country down. Nothing moves, nothing bought and sold, Cars left in the garage, no oil profits. It has worked in other countries. Eventually, the government has to recognize the people, or fall from its own weight and the dry rot within.

Gandhi brought the British Raj to its knees because millions believed in him and his gentle message. They peacefully took to the streets. Of course one of the reasons they succeeded was that the British didn't consider it sporting to hose down peaceful crowds with machine gun fire. That might not be the case here, but it is still worth the effort.