If we wanted to shake free of the dummies running this country, getting lifetime full salary pensions, spending your tax dollars on sustaining the armies and intelligence services of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq..., we'd have to at least do what our forefathers did. They did the Revolutionary war, step by step, all of it relatively unintended, accidentally -- as they were just seeking to shake free of a few taxes that George III hit 'em with. Those pesky GEORGES! They always make the mistakes born of hubris: DUMB RESOURCE WARS, COSTLY, LENGTHY, GENOCIDAL PIRATE PLUNDERING of third world countries and then they leave the folks at home so taxed & starving that they'd gnaw chalk! Or bullets.
GEORGE III (as in the Madness of...) was running the MOST COSTLY WAR in British HISTORY against the French over Brit need to steal CANADA. The American colonists didn't feel that THEY should pay for England's war. It was time to make a FIST.
They started by doing the one thing that nobody TODAY has thought of doing: SETTING UP OUR OWN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNMENT! We could easily create, as they did, our OWN CONGRESS. THE PEOPLE's GOVERNMENT, a volunteer vigilante force for the tough times we're in and elect smart representatives like Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Brown, Fonda and her ex, (two exes back,) Jon Stewart (and give me expose journalist researchers of your choice puhleeze to email addie below)
The 1776 colonists created an actual ALT GOV, called it the VIRGINIA CONGRESS -- as the real Government at that time was British. Everyone here was technically BRITISH. To show KING GEORGE that the Colonlists meant business, they BOYCOTTED every product that came from Britain which made those London Merchants take a hit, overnight. Doing that took enormous sacrifice because a diet without those imported, continental goodies got stale fast.
Today's Analogue would have us giving up American new cars. We would buy used cars from village mechanics. We'd give up American new furniture and appliances and have village mechanics fix the old models and we'd create community artisans. We'd give up American big chain banks and turn to local people's banks. We'd give up american food chain super markets and buy from village farmers' markets. Wouldn't take long. All those big Wall Street corporations would fall over on their lying noses. How to hit the other Biggest businesses? The illegal Drug trade and the immoral Pharm industry? Stop all self medicating. Go holistic. How to hit the WAR TOY INDUSTRY/ First thing the ALT Gov does is create a mandate: all war is illegal, all politicos who vote for war get the electric chair for KILLING human beings. As we don't own electric chairs, then the noose.
Third, they had to spin their own cloth, called HOMESPUN. I thought Mohandas Gandhi invented that strategy, along with salt digging, --turns out he took homespun from the Colonists. Women spun thread, wove suiting and made their husband's clothing. For today's gals, not a problem. We just start making our family's clothing. Every woman I know has trunkfuls of fabric left over when the days when home sewing was a big thing. We all have Singer sewing machines in the garage. Week-ends, while we watch movies, we sew in the back of the den.
Next, and this is something we Americans possibly couldn't get the hang of, unless we scrunch up our nerve and really try --- the Colonists beat up, burned and shot at the King's INCOME TAX gatherers. What they did was tantamount to arson at IRS dudes' homes, a few bullets sprayed through windows. Not a whole lot of murder but it gave the early tax officials a scare. Nobody went looking for THAT job, anymore.
Next you need propagandists and pamphleteers. That is a historical term for someone who creates or distributes pamphlets. Pamphlets were used to broadcast the group's opinions on an issue, for example, in order to get people to come to meetings, vote for a liberal politician or espouse a particular political ideology.
A famous pamphleteer of the American Revolutionary War was Thomas Paine. Today a pamphleteer might communicate his missives by way of guerilla posters, a weblog, tweeting, but before the advent of telecommunications, those with access to a printing press and a supply of paper used the pamphlet as a means of mass communications outside of newspapers or full-fledged books.
NEXT, of course, the usual stuff uprisings are made of, look at France in the 18th century, 60s anti-war demonstrations, MLK's marches, Tahrir square in Egypt, the riots against Khadafi in Libya, and pro-union Wisconsin pickets today. And imagine the peaceful pickets that Jim Hightower mentions in his article, (below) written for 4th of July 2009. Mobs would protest specific levies, taxes, licensing fees, stamp acts tea tariffs and such. Now, as our cities, states and federal government have, in the post FDR years, given the disenfranchised certain reliable aid and succor and made such practices 'custom', their PIKING AROUND on stipends is cause for a picket as well. Ahnold just took back medical/ dental/ optical aid for adults in California. The Fed just took back 20% of all Social Security stipends. And state taxes are going up. Go ask a senior who now has to pay 10% tax on top of any pharm purchase how happy he is about that! Not a whole lot of very.
They will keep screwing
us unless we screw back. They have created this revolt
with their execrable manners,
their odious laws, their hubris and greed.
The French revolutionaries led by Robespierre and the American colonists did networking They called it 'solidarity', the spirit that enabled Lech Walensa to throw Russia out of Poland.. Everybody did a King's X, made the peace, rival factions like labor and management had to quit duking it out. The American Colonists picked other colonies with gripes, there were 13 right? With dissenting needs, views. They sent diplomats like Franklin and Jefferson to do networking across the sea in Paris. Jamaica was another ally and made treaties with them. . (The Allies didn't invent that either, in WWII) The colonists didn't go so far as to embrace their own internal, disenting groups like the black slaves. No rainbow coalitions in those days! In fact, they stepped up the vigilante brigades in slave town, went right down into the barracks to check for rumor of rumbles as the slaves knew that in times of turmoil, they could step off the plantation and never be found.
If Americans today failed to create a rainbow coalition, the disenfranchised would use the New R(evolution) as an opportunity to come into your house and cook your poodle. No telling what they'd do to your daughter as the police would almost certainly be deployed elsewhere. Civil Chaos could result. So before we try a r(evolution) here, the firmest of educational programs to prepare truant youth should be undertaken. There need to be friendly, linked coalitions built first, clear friendships and treaties made between the barrio and the hood and a clear understanding that when the shooting starts, Kings X, no rival factions! No plundering. The rich Yuppie liberals will send food crates to the slums and take care of you. In fact, deputize you as mercenaries, vigilantes, but start pillaging and looting, all bets are off.. Behave yourself and any family members already jailed might be let loose. Incentive, no?
It would also be important to inviite in the most disenfranchised sectors: the sane among the homeless, though the insane have possibilities, too, ---the ethnics just thrown off welfare, the students with no more grants, the post grads with no jobs waiting for them. Those jailed for non-violent crimes. That crowd. Oh and the Gray panthers. That pharm tax must hurt worse than a bum hip.
Last, LET US always, every step of the way, HONOR the sincere intent and bravery of the COLONISTS. The first Virginia Congress (i.e. the first stab at an Alt Gov,) was in Baltimore, Maryland. We could do worse that convene our own first New Revolutionary Government Congress there, in the same building if possible, and wear peruques just for the morning session as tokens of respect to our nervy forefathers.
The Colonists' last move, the one I didn't want to mention? Forming their own militia. That was the biggie that made most of the reasonable colonists tremble and gasp with fear but it had to be done as their colonizer had a standing army right there on top of them, the infamous Red Coats. I left that one off as today, our police and armies have way worse weapons than we could get hold of. Hugely worse. So that last option may not play.
But I don't think it would take ALL of the above to get back our country. It wouldn't take all of those actions to grab the REAL GOV by the throat, instruct it to quit doing TRANSNATIONAL CORP BIDDING, quit all oil wars in places with sweet, familial, religious, Muslims sitting on oil fields. There is about one stoning per million people a year there. We have a million rapes per year here. Killing Muslims to lay pipe across Muslim deserts was a bad idea, and fifty trillion bucks later, a costly one. Now that they're taking that war out of OUR pockets, it's time to stop them. We're a little late, for all the morally reprehsible reasons but we can make up for our lack of class in SASS. Waddya say we hold a R(EVOLUTION), guys?
Remember the Spanish Anarchist Collectives. Hemingway and many progressive Americans went to SPAIN to fight alongside the people against a suppressive General, FRANCO. They were routed and did not succeed. Franco just kept having every rebel killed. still, look at what a group can do! Look at Lenin kicking out the CZAR whose soldiers were helpless against the unarmed people of Russia in 1917. competent philosopher rebels go back five hundred years. Read about them in the gripping book "FINLAND STATION" by Edmund Wilson. You can buy it used at AbEBOOKS for a dollar
Bone up on revolution as we are entering an era of severe resource scarcity in which centralised and globalised systems will fail to provide for us. They in fact will double food prices, heating prices every few years. We will have to develop highly localized economies. It is these thousands of little groups, food co-ops, boarding houses, group farms where people are inspired to unite their will and find that ACTIVISM is suddenly exhilarating, fun.. Most people would probably doubt that we could organize satisfactory communities without vast state bureaucracies and corporations. The achievements of the Spanish Anarchist workers collectives in the 1930s and Marxist Leninists in 1917 show what miracles ordinary people can do & what's ordinary about us and our current PC TOOLS?
http://groups.google.com/group/newslog/t/f9244e8da7178b27?hl=en
JIM HIGHTOWER wrote the column below in honor of the 4th of July.stating that we should create change with mob pickets. Now that worked in the 60s and got Nixon trembling in the Oval Office but he still bombed Cambodia behind your backs. We will need a stronger brew today. But read Jim Hightower's Map for revolution He is a NATIONAL TREASURE, right behind Will Rogers and MOLLY IVINS, his idea of a takeover start up kit is kind of a cross between an ABC SIT COM and an after-school special. See for yourself, below.
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This July 4th, Rebel
and Agitate for Change
By Jim Hightower, July 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141055/
Are
you an agitator? You know, one of those people who won't leave well enough
alone,
who's always questioning authority and trying to stir things up.
If
so, the Powers That Be detest you -- you ... you ... "agitator!" They spit
the term out as
a pejorative to brand anyone who dares to challenge the established order.
"Oh," they
scoff, "our people didn't mind living next to that toxic waste dump until
those environmental
agitators got them upset." Corporate chieftains routinely wail that "our
workers were
perfectly happy until those union agitators started messing with their
minds."
In
each case, the message is that America would be a fine country if only
we could get rid
of those pesky troublemakers who get the hoi polloi agitated about one
thing or another.
Bovine
excrement. Were it not for agitators, we wouldn't even have an America.
The
Fourth of July would be just another hot day, we'd be singing "God Save
the Queen," and
our government officials would be wearing white-powdered wigs.
Agitators
created America, and it's their feisty spirit and outright rebelliousness
that we
celebrate on our national holiday. I don't merely refer to the Founders,
either. Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Ben Franklin and the rest
certainly were
derring-do agitators when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, creating the framework for a democratic republic.
But they didn't
actually create much democracy. In the first presidential election, only
4 percent of the
people were even eligible to vote. No women allowed, no African Americans,
no
American Indians and no one who was landless.
So,
on the Fourth, it's neither the documents of democracy that we celebrate
nor the
authors of the documents. Rather, it's the intervening two-plus centuries
of ordinary
American agitators who have struggled mightily against formidable odds
to democratize
those documents.
America's
great rebellion didn't end with the British surrender at Yorktown. It was
only
getting started -- and the rebellion has moved through such great forces
of agitation as the
abolitionists and suffragists, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass,
the Populists and the
Wobblies, Fighting Bob La Follette and Huey Long, the Square Deal and New
Deal,
Mother Jones and Woodie Guthrie, Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader, Martin
Luther King
Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- and on into today's continuing fight for economic
fairness, social
justice and equal opportunity for all.
Without
agitators battling in politics, on the job, in the marketplace, for the
environment, on
Wall Street, in education, for civil liberties and rights, and all across
our society,
democratic progress doesn't just stall, it falls back.
The
Powers That Be -- especially America's overarching corporate and political
forces
(often the same) -- give lip service to democracy, but tend toward plutocracy,
autocracy
and kleptocracy. They prefer (and often demand) that We the People be passive
consumers of their economic and political policies. Don't rock the boat,
stay in your place,
go along to get along -- be quiet, they urge.
Be
quiet? Holy Thomas Paine! How could freedom-loving, democratic citizens
shrink into
quietude, especially when the Powers That Be feel so entitled to run roughshod
over us?
Even a dead fish can go with the flow. We've got to be livelier than that.
July
Fourth is a time to enjoy fireworks, flags, hotdogs, ballgames and such
-- but it's also
a time to remember who we are: agitators!
It's
not easy to stand against powerful interests. Sometimes it's lonely, and
you get to
feeling like the guy B.B. King sings about: "No one likes you but your
momma, and she
might be jiving you, too." It's not easy, but having those who dare to
stand up is essential if
our country is ever to achieve our ideals of fairness, justice and opportunity
for all.
And
when the establishment derisively assails you as an agitator, remember
this: The
agitator is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt
out.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker,
and author
of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With
the
Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown,"
co-edited by Phillip Frazer.
ANY IDEAS on how to do R(EVOLUTION)
Or did the COLONISTS GET IT RIGHT?
send your thoughts to me, Anita Sands at astrology@earthlink.net
These ideas came in:
1) BUY YOUR PALS' GUNS when they fall for the NO GUN LAWS. They will probably TURN IN their rifles and handGUNS for the measley 100$ gambit the cops are doing. Train at gun range. Buy Ammo when there's extra money. Worst comes to worse, you learn how to hunt wild turkey.
2.) You and the whole family get on a Spartan type body training. No sleeping outside at night with only a loin cloth but no junk food, no flour based foods, no trans fats, no 'supermarket shelf' food and no sugar. Start working out.
3.) Be friendly to all immigrants in particular newly arrived Muslims. Make them see the American point of view, complete with total freedom and choice for women. Then, the NSA/ CIA cannot accuse you of being a Muslim terrorist. You have a track record of believing in the American way. If you can, publish a great deal of Basic constitutionalist liberterian philosophy at your own website.
4.) Get into Guerilla Capitalism. Half your income
should not be predicated on a big corporative tit.
If recession bottom suddenly drops out, you'll
have a product/ service people need.
5.) Dump crazies. Don't hang with them. To me, that's people who buy the Washington Cherry Tree, vietnam was a good war jive.
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