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It Is Worth Fighting … Even When There Is No Hope of Winning
Preface: The only people who should read this are folks who want a better world. Everyone else - please ignore it ... it will be a TOTAL waste of time ...
Our Actions Are More Powerful Than We Realize
David Swanson writes today:
Almost every [history of past activism] includes belated discoveries of the extent to which government officials were influenced by activist groups even while pretending to ignore popular pressure.
These revelations can be found in the memoirs of the government officials as well, such as in George W. Bush’s recollection of how seriously the Republican Senate Majority Leader was taking public pressure against the war on Iraq in 2006.
Of course, activism that appears ineffectual at the time can succeed in a great many ways, including by influencing others, even young children, who go on to become effective activists — or by influencing firm opponents who begin to change their minds and eventually switch sides.
The beautiful thing about nonviolent activism is that, while risking no harm, it has the potential to do good in ways small and large that ripple out from it in directions we cannot track or measure.
Wittner participated in his first political demonstration in 1961. The USSR was withdrawing from a moratorium on nuclear testing. A protest at the White House urged President Kennedy not to follow suit:
“Picking up what I considered a very clever sign (‘Kennedy, Don’t Mimic the Russians!’), I joined the others (supplemented by a second busload of students from a Quaker college in the Midwest) circling around a couple of trees outside the White House. Mike and I — as new and zealous recruits — circled all day without taking a lunch or a dinner break.
“For decades I looked back on this venture as a trifle ridiculous. After all, we and other small bands of protesters couldn’t have had any impact on U.S. policy, could we? Then in the mid-1990s, while doing research at the Kennedy Library on the history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, I stumbled onto an oral history interview with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was explaining why Kennedy delayed resuming atmospheric nuclear tests until April 1962. Kennedy personally wanted to resume such tests, Fisher recalled, ‘but he also recognized that there were a lot of people that were going to be deeply offended by the United States resuming atmospheric testing. We had people picketing the White House, and there was a lot of excitement about it — just because the Russians do it, why do we have to do it?’”
Yes, Kennedy delayed a horrible action. He didn’t, at that time, block it permanently. But if the picketers in 1961 had had the slightest notion that Kennedy was being influenced by them, their numbers would have multiplied 10-fold, as would the delay have correspondingly lengthened.
Yes, our government was more responsive to public opinion in the 1960s than now, but part of the reason is that more people were active then. And another reason is that government officials are doing a better job now of hiding any responsiveness to public sentiment, which helps convince the public it has no impact, which reduces activism further. We also focus far too much on the most difficult individuals to move, such as presidents.
In 1973-1974, Wittner visited GI coffee houses in Japan including in Yokusaka, where the Midway aircraft carrier was in port. The Japanese were protesting the ship’s carrying of nuclear weapons, which was illegal in Japan, and which the U.S. military, of course, lied about. But U.S. soldiers with whom Wittner and other activists had talked, brought them onto the ship and showed them the nukes. The following summer, when Wittner read in a newspaper that,
“a substantial number of American GIs had refused to board the Midway for a mission to South Korea, then swept by popular protest against the U.S.-backed dictatorship, it occurred to me that I might have played some small role in inspiring their mutiny.”
Soldiers can still be reached much more easily than presidents, more easily in many cases in fact than the average citizen. War lies are harder to sell to the people who have been fighting the wars.
In the late 1990s, Wittner was researching the anti-nuclear movement of decades past. He interviewed Robert “Bud” McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan’s former national security advisor:
“Other administration officials had claimed that they had barely noticed the nuclear freeze movement. But when I asked McFarlane about it, he lit up and began outlining a massive administration campaign to counter and discredit the freeze — one that he had directed. . . . A month later, I interviewed Edwin Meese, a top White House staffer and U.S. attorney general during the Reagan administration. When I asked him about the administration’s response to the freeze campaign, he followed the usual line by saying that there was little official notice taken of it. In response, I recounted what McFarlane had revealed. A sheepish grin now spread across this former government official’s face, and I knew that I had caught him. ‘If Bud says that,’ he remarked tactfully, ‘it must be true.’”
When someone tells you to stop imagining that you’re having an impact, ask them to please redirect their energy into getting 10 friends to join you in doing what needs to be done. If it has no impact, you’ll have gone down trying. If it has an impact, nobody will tell you for many years.
Mr. Swanson is right. I noted in 2009:
As MSNBC news correspondent Jonathan Capehart tells Dylan Ratigan, the main problem is that people aren’t making enough noise. Capehart says that the people not only have to “burn up the phone lines to Congress”, but also to hit the streets and protest in D.C.
Even though most politicians are totally corrupt, if many millions of Americans poured into the streets of D.C., a critical mass would be reached, and the politicians would start changing things in a hurry.
As [liberal] PhD economist Dean Baker points out:
The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination. More recently, the townhall meetings, dominated by people opposed to health care reform, have been a serious roadblock for those pushing reform….
A big turnout … can make a real difference.
Baker is right about Vietnam.
Specifically – according to Daniel Ellsberg and many others – Richard Nixon actually planned on dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam Nixon also said he didn’t care what the American people thought. He said that — no matter what the public did or said — he was going to escalate the war in Vietnam.
However, a well-known biographer says that Nixon backed off when hundreds of thousands of people turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest an escalation of the war.
And Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges pointed out recently:
I was in Leipzig on November 9, 1989 with leaders of East German opposition and they told me that – perhaps within a year – there would be free passes back and forth across the Berlin wall.
Within a few hours, the Berlin Wall, at least as far as an impediment to human traffic, did not exist.
Week after week, month after month, these clergy in Leipzig held these candlelit vigils. And it was slow at first … people forget. Just like the Egyptian revolution has been percolating for many many months, and even years.
And suddenly, it began to grow.
And Honecker – who had been in ruling East Germany since the time of the dinosaurs – sent down a paratroop division to Leipzig .. . and they won’t attack the demonstrators.
Part of the reason that our actions are more powerful than we thinks is that courage is contagious. So is the ability to think.
As we’ve previously noted:
[Studies show ] that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves. Specifically:
Solomon Asch, with experiments originally carried out in the 1950s and well-replicated since, highlighted a phenomenon now known as “conformity”. In the classic experiment, a subject sees a puzzle like the one in the nearby diagram: Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? Take a moment to determine your own answer…The gotcha is that the subject is seated alongside a number of other people looking at the diagram – seemingly other subjects, actually confederates of the experimenter. The other “subjects” in the experiment, one after the other, say that line C seems to be the same size as X. The real subject is seated next-to-last. How many people, placed in this situation, would say “C” – giving an obviously incorrect answer that agrees with the unanimous answer of the other subjects? What do you think the percentage would be?
Three-quarters of the subjects in Asch’s experiment gave a “conforming” answer at least once. A third of the subjects conformed more than half the time.
Get it so far? People tend to defer to what the herd thinks.
But here’s the good news:
Adding a single dissenter – just one other person who gives the correct answer, or even an incorrect answer that’s different from the group’s incorrect answer – reduces conformity very sharply, down to 5-10%.
Why is this important? Well, it means that one person who publicly speaks the truth can sway a group of people away from group-think.
If a group of people is leaning towards believing the government’s version of events, a single person who speaks the truth can help snap the group out of its trance.
There is an important point here regarding the web, as well. The above-cited article states that:
when subjects can respond in a way that will not be seen by the group, conformity also drops.What does that mean? Well, on the web, many people post anonymously. The anonymity gives people permission to “respond in a way that will not be seen by the group”. But most Americans still don’t get their news from the web, or only go to mainstream corporate news sites.
Away from the keyboard, we are not very anonymous. So that is where the conformity dynamic — and the need for courageous dissent — is vital. It is doubly important that we apply the same hard-hitting truthtelling we do on the Internet in our face-to-face interactions; because it is there that dissent is urgently needed.
Bottom line: Each person‘s voice has the power to snap entire groups out of their coma of irrational group-think. So go forth and be a light of rationality and truth among the sleeping masses.
And a recent study shows that when only 10% of a population have strongly-held beliefs, their belief will often be adopted by the majority of the society.
True, governments worldwide are cracking down on liberty with the iron fist of repression.
But some argue that this is actually a sign that we are winning.
As Truthout’s Matt Renner writes:
Recently I sat down with two of the young adults who organized and led the Egyptian resistance movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The media narrative said it took 18 days, when in fact, they had been organizing for over five years.
According to these young men, the moment they knew they had won was the day Mubarak’s government shut off the Internet and blocked cellphone communications. When people could no longer get updates about what was happening in Tahrir Square, they had to come out of their homes and see for themselves, tripling the size of the protests in one fell swoop.
The global plutocracy is terrified of dissent. In some places, the war on dissent is being fought with bullets. In others, the war on dissent targets social media and mobile communications, while repressing and deceiving communities of struggle. It’s already happening.
Indeed, the use of heavy-handed tactics – taking the velvet glove off of the iron fist – could backfire, as it will show the “emperor’s ruthlessness” for all to see.
The powers-that-be are terrified of political awakening and dissent. For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski – National Security Adviser to President Carter, creator of America’s strategy to lure Russia into Afghanistan, creator of America’s plans for Eurasia in general, and Obama’s former foreign affairs adviser – said:
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world.
***
America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world’s population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power.
***
[T]he central challenge of our time is posed not by global terrorism, but rather by the intensifying turbulence caused by the phenomenon of global political awakening. That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing.
It is no overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the population of much of the developing world is politically stirring and in many places seething with unrest. It is a population acutely conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree, and often resentful of its perceived lack of political dignity.
***
These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches.
***
The misdiagnosis [of foreign policy] pertains to a relatively vague, excessively abstract, highly emotional, semi-theological definition of the chief menace that we face today in the world, and the consequent slighting of what I view as the unprecedented global challenge arising out of the unique phenomenon of a truly massive global political awakening of mankind. We live in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically conscious and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is this condition which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.
That turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been throughout history. They have political consciousness.
***
The other major change in international affairs is that for the first time, in all of human history, mankind has been politically awakened. That is a total new reality – total new reality. It has not been so for most of human history until the last one hundred years. And in the course of the last one hundred years, the whole world has become politically awakened. And no matter where you go, politics is a matter of social engagement, and most people know what is generally going on –generally going on – in the world, and are consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation. Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring.
And a reader notes:
We do not understand our own power. Look around you. Almost everything you see was not only made, but created by people like yourselves. Most of the horrors existing on earth were engendered by the elites, WITH OUR CO-OPERATION. Without our consent, most of the terrifying situations existing in our world will cease to exist. Resist. It certainly may be difficult initially, but it grows easier moment by moment.
Some historical quotes may be helpful in illustrating the importance of struggling to make things better …
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert F . Kennedy
We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before; and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise; we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.
- George Washington
We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.
-Sonia Johnson
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
At certain points in history, the energy level of people, the indignation level of people rises. And at that point it becomes possible for people to organize and to agitate and to educate one another, and to create an atmosphere in which the government must do something.
- Howard Zinn, historian
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.
- Howard Zinn
Even If We Will Not Ultimately Win … We Must Do It Anyway
Czech leader Vaclav Havel said:
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
Chris Hedges – the Pulitizer-prize winning reporter who challenged the indefinite detention law and amazingly succeeded in having a judge strike down that law – writes:
In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, in a 68-page opinion, ruled Wednesday that Section 1021 of the NDAA was unconstitutional. It was a stunning and monumental victory.
***
Maybe the ruling won’t last. Maybe it will be overturned. But we and other Americans are freer today than we were a week ago. And there is something in this.
The government lawyers, despite being asked five times by the judge to guarantee that we plaintiffs would not be charged under the law for our activities, refused to give any assurances. They did not provide assurances because under the law there were none. We could, even they tacitly admitted, be subject to these coercive measures. We too could be swept away into a black hole. And this, I think, decided the case.
***
We pushed forward because all effort to impede the corporate state, however quixotic, is essential. Even if we ultimately fail we will be able to say we tried.
This law was, after all, not about foreign terrorism. It was about domestic dissent. If the state could link Occupy and other legitimate protest movements with terrorist groups (US Day of Rage suffered such an attempt), then the provisions in the NDAA could, in a period of instability, be used to “disappear” U.S. citizens into military gulags, including the government’s offshore
penal colonies.
***
The battles that must be fought may never be won in our lifetime. And there will always be new battles to define our struggle. Resistance to tyranny and evil is never ending. It is a way, rather, of defining our brief sojourn on the planet. Revolt, as Albert Camus reminded us, is the only acceptable definition of the moral life. Revolt, he wrote, is “a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. … It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.”
“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object,” Camus warned. “But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”
***
Victory or defeat was not part of the equation. Not to challenge this law would have meant being complicit in its implementation. And once resistance defines a life it becomes reflexive.
***
Rebellion is an act that assures us of remaining free and independent human beings. Rebellion is not waged because it will work; indeed in its noblest form it is waged when we know it will fail. Our existence, as Camus wrote, must itself be “an act of rebellion.” Not to rebel, not to protect and nurture life even in the face of death, is spiritual and moral suicide. The Nazi concentration camp guards sought to break prisoners first and then kill them. They understood that even the power to choose the timing and circumstances of one’s death was an affirmation of personal freedom and dangerous to the status quo. So although the guards killed at random they went to great lengths to prevent people in the camps from committing suicide. Totalitarian systems, to perpetuate themselves, always seek to break autonomy and self-determination. This makes all acts of resistance a threat, even those acts that will not succeed. And this is why in all states that rule by force any act of rebellion, even one that is insignificant, must be ruthlessly crushed. The goal of the corporate state, like that of any totalitarian entity, is to create a society where no one has the capacity to resist.
***
We have to stop asking what is reasonable or practical, what the Democratic Party or the government can do for us, what will work or not work. We must refuse now to make any concessions, large or small. We must remember that the lesser of two evils is still evil. We must no longer let illusions pacify us. Hell is truth seen too late. In large and small ways we are called to resist, resist, resist ….
The great psychologist James Hillman agreed, writing that we should seek to help others and act with dignity even in impossible situations.
In other words, it is in the best interests of our dignity, our moral life, our sanity, and our spiritual well-being to struggle … even if the odds seem impossible.
But How Do We Know If Our Actions Will Be Successful … Or Will Only Help Us In a Spiritual Sense?
But how do we know if what we’re doing will really have an effect or not? How do we know if we are being called upon to struggle in order to succeed in changing things for the better … or for the heck of it?
As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
Hellen Keller pointed out:
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
We are called upon as part of our core purpose to struggle to try to make the world a better place. But we are not privy to fruits of our actions. We are not granted a view of the future … we will never know how many people we will help, and how we will change the course of history.
We are called upon to struggle, but we can never know the end result of our efforts … that is not for us mere mortals to know.
But we are only fully human, fully alive, reaching our potential, and most in tune with the universe if we try.
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Great Article! And, interesting comments below. I would just like to say that though I am not a believer in organized religion, because of my life experiences, I find this article very religious and believe it defines how we will be judged when we pass on. There are active evil doers in the world, psychopaths if you will, that seek only to improve their life by destroying the lives of others. But, I believe that most people make their biggest transgressions against God (if you believe in one) and humanity by failing to act.
Yes, inaction is the most frequent sin out there. Often this inaction results in the destruction of lives, health and often death on a massive scale. Momentum of any object, group think or country is hard to turn, and it takes a proactive approach. Think only of the inaction by our President on campaign promises made- end the war in Iraq for one. Then think of the last time you failed to stop what you were doing to help someone you thought was in trouble.....
It takes a proactive approach. When my wife and I were poisoned by our local government, we sought help from a neighbor. He said he knew we had all been harmed, but he did not want to see how bad it was as he was scared. Yes, he made a concious decision to stick his head in the sand and hope for the best. Others fled in a race to sell their homes before public knowlege made it so they could not sell.
So that is where the transgressions to humanity, earth and God lie---in the refusal to act!
God forgive me, for what I have done---and what I have failed to do!
But U.S. soldiers with whom Wittner and other activists had talked, brought them onto the ship and showed them the nukes.
BULL FUCKING SHIT. NO WAY THEY GOT ANY WHERE NEAR THE NUKES OR HAD A CHANCE TO SEE THEM. Wittner lied.
I was on the Midway, know where the nukes are kept and know for a fact that no soldier/sailor could get himself, let alone a civilian, past the Marine ARMED guard and into the nuke compartment unless God or the Gunny said they were authorized. They will beat you to the ground just for standing in front of the door to that compartment. EVERYONE stays clear of the hatchway and even the chow line has a big gap where that hatchway is. Wittner never saw any nukes in the Midway at least.
Possibly, possibly not, but as someone who served in the military (several branches as a matter of fact) including service in Vietnam (which I was than ignorant about, and do not claim pride in, even though I didn't do anything overtly to be ashamed of) and in Israel during the Yom Kippur War, I distinctly recall, and may have even observed, any number of mutinies at that time.
Whether it was an admiral's son and comrades taking over a supply vessel in the Navy, or those personnel refusing duty at Travis AFB, and individuals refusing a mission during Vietnam duty, quite a number of pushback actions occurred back during the draft and the military in foreign combat.
So I definitely would not discount what he said.
True story - one of the most suppressed forms of dissent is dissent from the armed forces. Many are lead to believe that the military is a mindless mob of people who obey whatever orders they are given. The media have completely covered up many stories, throughout recent history, where soldiers refused to obey. During the Korean War, for instance, there were huge military strikes - which is why the war was stopped. Many other military strikes have occured throughout the years, but the corporate media hates this and refuses to report it
It was called 'MASH'...it ran forever. Just sayin.
It often starts with those famous words, "You take point, L-T."
Ah, but the courts are still active, as mentioned:
THE OBAMA RECORD
Overturned: About a year and a month ago, President Obama went on national television supporting the firing of Black-American teachers in Chicago.
Fortunately, a federal judge ruled their firing to be unlawful termination.
Overturned: Sometime back, Shirley Sherrod was unethically dismissed from the Agriculture Department, and her unlawful termination was settled out of court to her satisfaction.
Overturned: The other week, Dr. Cate Jenkins, who was unethically terminated from the EPA under the Obama administration (she was a heroic whistleblower during the Bush administration), was reinstated to her position, with back pay, by a federal court.
Overturned: A U.S. District Court in New York has blocked provisions in last year’s Defense authorization bill that allow for military detention for terror suspects, throwing a wrench in the debate that will take place on the House floor Thursday.
District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled against the U.S. government and in favor of a group of civilian activists and journalists who had sued over the detention provisions in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, according to Reuters. The plaintiffs had said they feared being detained indefinitely by the law.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/17/ndaa-sect...
Hmmmmm....... How do you propose to wage such a fight against the system?
I see lots of comments on ZH saying we gotta straighten the government out, take America back, restore the constituion, etc.
But nobody has a clue how to do it and not enough people care to do it. THAT'S why it won't happen.
GW tries to paint it in some sort of christian context.
But I don't find in my bible any indication Christ made any sort of attempt to straighten out the Roman system occupying Israel at that time.
He said render unto Ceaser what is Ceaser's, and unto God what is God's.
He said submit to those in authority over you. He made no comment about whether said authority is legitimate or not, indicating it didn't matter to him.
Under the Roman occupation of Israel, Christ had no rights, and there's no mention in scripture he had a problem with it. He went about his business within the freedom Roman occupiers gave him.
Paul used the rights he had as a Roman citizen, taking his appeal all the way up the chain. But he accepted their ruling, whatever it was, and spent his prison time continuing his apostleship to whatever extent he could.
All the apostles except John were executed (without cause), and John was exiled (without cause). Christ never intervened from heaven as far as we know.
Christ's example makes clear, this life is not about this life. We weren't put here to make the most comfortable situation for ourselves, bring about a government we approve of, etc, because it's all going to end at our death.
Cranky,
The bible does give a big clue as to what should be done. Read about Christ's example with the money changers.
Cranky-old-Geezer- You seem like a nice guy, and if you are really old I am sorry to be the first to break this to you, but the text of the Bible has been cleansed and changed many times. This is why I do not like organized religion. Most are frauds.
How do you think the conversions of the "uncivilized" would have gone if the white evangelists told the natives to fight for their rights? Do not submit to governments or economic systems forced on you?
Oh, that would of helped the Spanish Conquistadors and Monks greatly!!!!!
Read this first...before the "bible".
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gthlamb.html
Warning about false ideas/memes/beliefs/laws and how they are used against you. Applies to the mixed up christian "bible" as published:
(35) Jesus said, "It is not possible for anyone to enter the house of a strong man and take it by force unless he binds his hands; then he will (be able to) ransack his house."
Of course...you can disagree with me. And probably will. It's all baked in:
"(16) Jesus said, "Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world. They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war. For there will be five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three, the father against the son, and the son against the father. And they will stand solitary."
And yes, he even mentioned ZH. And how it helps us all:
"(103) Jesus said, "Fortunate is the man who knows where the brigands will enter, so that he may get up, muster his domain, and arm himself before they invade."
Real Christians Fight Against Injustice
No GW, only pseudo make-believe christians (small "c") fight against injustice, clearly ignoring Christ's example.
Your religion has nothing to do with Christ at all, zero.
In fact it contradicts nearly everything Christ taught and stood for.
...which is why everyone in your religion is lost, including you.
Clearly that moneychanger incident had nothing to do with injustice and defending the adulteress about to be stoned...no sense of justice there either.
Idjit.
Please Read Your Bible ...
"your" bible? Way to make an assumption.
Please go away and stop posting your BULLSHIT on ZeroHedge you dumbass.
"He said submit to those in authority over you. He made no comment about whether said authority is legitimate or not, indicating it didn't matter to him."
Slaves following a slave religion.
The actual quote is, (NIV) Colossians 3:22 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord." So, not only does Jesus advocate slavery, but he also states clearly that God actually reveres a slave's unquestioning obedience to the master. It logically follows, that since we are all slaves to the Corptocracy, it is our duty before God to obey our masters. You are not free; or maybe you don't think you're a slave? Right. And to take it a step further, since we've pretty much all decided that slavery is wrong, then we're all pretty much telling God to fuck off and that we'll make our own rules, aren't we? Christians can all go to hell in their pathetic hypocrisy for all I care. Their stupid little book has very little to offer other than, "Love thy neighbor," the rest is pure indefensible shit.
Someone needs more fiber.
does taco bell count?
memes are more important than people.
Hope and change, bitchez!
Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.
- Studs Terkel
Silly
I believe it was TS Elliot who said no cause is ever truly lost because no cause is ever permanently won
Just be patient but dont give up
Or...the Buddha.
One true leader is worth 10,000 activists.
Of course, one true leader could perhaps be inspired by a single activist.
Sometimes a nut job is just a nut job.
And today's nutjob is...?
Probably me ... I like this rebel-patriot kind of crap. But every time I get all William Wallace-Like, I learn that leaders often end up being figuratively, if not literally, hung, drawn and quartered.
Christ, just when I had decided to choose the path to happiness by shutting up, stopping my dissent, and conforming, you come along and blow sunshine up my ass to re-awaken my inner rebel. So, now, am I conforming by conforming, or does not conforming make me a conformer?
Ordering a slightly different latte qualifies as non-conforming these days
Put down that nutmeg you philistine.
Right, just like the 60's - my generation did a great job of "being held accountable" didn't we?
My idea is strave the beast - drop out.
Avoid taxes as much as possible, barter and trade so you don't have to pay taxes.
Leave the coutry and work for cash - don't reprot a fricken dime to the MF's.
Let the beast starve - or we starve and get beat up by the policeman! And thrown out of the homes that the banksters own - what a great country!
Screw the powers that be! Let them have their fiat and lies.
Pack up and leave!
Cheers
thanks for the advanced warning on the read, there is not going to be a better world, it's only going to get worse, so suck it up!
What president in the past 100 years has done any good for the people, or done any act that outweighs the bad with legal or lasting change or repealed anything that limited governmental powers and passed it (without getting assassinated prior to that).
Answer, None.
Is that going to change in November? Answer: no, its not going to.
It's a waste of time. Just get a second passport and move away- it's better than trying to fight the inevitable, and getting you and your family locked up or killed. We are really not here for that long of a time, so enjoy your time.
billsykes,
~//~
In the Grand Scheme of Things
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLcWwFcZOsk (6:18)
You, billsykes, need to seriously do two things:
(1) read David Talbot's Brothers: The Hidden History of The Kennedy Years; and,
(2) read President Kennedy's final budget he sumbitted to congress right before he was assassinated.
(You're not the same Bill Sykes I once served with who inquired:
"The North Koreans, are they our allies or the enemy?")
Thanx 4 link.
Anyone interested can watch http://fora.tv/2007/05/21/A_Hidden_History_of_the_Kennedy_Years
No not the same my name is a nom de guerre, Sargent Doom.
I do know about the #2 and do think it is kick ass and probably the reason he got wacked. Which is why I said any president who was able to PASS the legislation, not just submit it.
As for north Korea- who cares, they are Asia problem China is way more invested in a good outcome- let them deal w. it.
Imagine if the military (inc. DEA, CIA, FBI, and NSA) spent- what a normal country spends, how much better off USA would be?
Ummm... let's see... there was the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s spearheaded by Johnson; the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts in the 1970s spearheaded by Nixon; the Apollo program inspired by Kennedy and carried forward by Johnson and Nixon; the Nimbus Satellite/GPS system in the 1960s thru 1980s supported and advanced by many presidents; the SALT/START treaties of the 1970s thru 1990s; also spearheaded by a number of presidents; the Peace Corps in the 1960s promoted by Kennedy. Oh, and did I mention the Internet -- the forum that makes this discussion possible -- started as a DARPA project in the late 1980s, then nurtured and shepherded into the public domain by Gore (almost a president)?
I could go on, but you get the point. Either that or you never will.
The fact is that you can run, but I'm not sure for how long, and I'm even less sure whether you'll be able to hide once you get wherever it is you're going. What we are really seeing here is a failure of leadership -- the kind that marshalls and channels the energy of the people in positive and productive directions, and makes them feel like they're a part of something good and noble.
What we are really saying when we give in to hopelessness is that neither we ourselves nor anyone we know is both willing and able to carry the mantle of true leadership. And for lack thereof, what we see instead is self-dealing, despair, and decay.
Step up to the plate, dude! Or throw your support behind someone who will.
Nixon- took country off gold standard. No more countering needed.
Kennedy- Apollo- didn't happen. Waste of money even if it did. Should have been spent on R&D, & infrastructure. They wanted to show they can dominate from space. 240,000 Km on a computer the size of a Casio in a tin can and BACK, come on.
Civil Rights Act- it took USA 100 years to get off slavery AFTER everyone else did- then in the 60's they had colored this and white that- when everyone else in the entire world got over it. real progress- as you can tell black people are still makeing a big deal over a black president- who cares what pigment his skin is.
Water- LA's water is not even safe to shower in anymore- http://projects.nytimes.com/toxic-waters/contaminants/ca/los-angeles
GPS- who cares, it was a military weapon for a long time, conceived by the military for war.
Salt/start- nuclear war- everyone can read how close they got in the 60's shouldn't have happened in the first place- USA gave money to the Russians to make this "cold" war happen Hint defense contractors (hint look at the start of BAE in WWI) .
Peace corps were a tool Kennedy used to help convince countries to stop the spread of communism. (again going against the constitution by playing world cop) and had an effective "feet on the street" way to get intelligence locally.
Internet- again military use still owned by the US government, and they can turn it on, censor it, control and restrict it. The rest of the world has been urging arrpa/darrpa to give up control of the root servers but no the government wants to control it. You can already see the lack of privacy people are giving up to use it. not that great.
Gore- total scumbag, if it was really a fair election do you think he would have conceded so quickly without getting a recount- fixed.
You are living in a BS world- you are the type to give up your neighbor when the fit hits the shan, to you the US can do no wrong.
"makes them feel like they're a part of something good and noble."
Just watch that video posted today and watch how countries change- then start to think if your boy went to war and died to fight for a country that wasn't around even if they did win.
Watch the shifting borders. Patriotism is a tool used to manipulate (the word isn't even English).
Do you want to die for something in your head only- the American public has been so dumbed down they don't even have the capacity to understand your stance- let alone mine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mmVHfOvKWc
Hmm... I see. Focus on the bad stuff. Well, I can't deny that there's been a whole lot of that here lately. But IIRC, your original question was "What president in the past 100 years has done any good for the people." I just rattled off six or eight instances off the top of my head of things that I thought were good, naming Presidents both Democrat and Republican who were instrumental in bringing them about.
So, the Civil Rights Act -- Maybe you think that we should have left the legacy of slavery behind a lot sooner than we did. Well quite frankly, so do I. But the fact of the matter is, we didn't and still haven't, but at least the Civil Rights Act banned institutionalized racism. I think that's a step in the right direction.
And are you saying that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts weren't good things? They might not have gone far enough, but at least now we're talking about where the lines are drawn and how they can be enforced. If you don't think they've had a positive influence, perhaps you should visit Peking, where such regulations are non-existent, and where the city had to be shut down for two weeks before the 2008 Olympics so the air would be fit for athletes to breathe. Or maybe you should spend some time in Mimamata, where mercury pollution in the river got so bad that it took an epidemic of birth defects to spur some official action. Maybe the LA water situation indicates that we still have a long way to go. So what are you waiting for? For someone else to shoulder the wheel?
And you sneer at the SALT/START treaties because in a perfect world we would never have gotten that far along? The sad fact is that it's not anywhere close to a perfect world, even less so when capable people become cynical and drop out, and we got way too far down a very dangerous path. SALT/START poured oil on the waves, helping to forstall nuclear disaster for over two decades. That's not a good thing?
And say what you will about the Peace Corps being a cover for US espionage activities, but I can tell you from personal experience that both the volunteers who served and the people whom they worked with both benefitted from the program.
Now, as for Apollo never happening... believe what you will. Nothing I can say here is going to change anyone's mind about that.
And last but not least, I hope you appreciate the irony of trashing the internet -- the platform on which we're having this "discussion". No matter. But as far as the backbone being "still owned by the US Government", it's simply not true. The US Government currently controls only three of the thirteen root servers, two by the military and one by NASA. The rest are owned and operated by corporations or private organizations. I don't know about you, but I like the internet. I recognize that it's a public forum and whatever I do on it can be observed by others for whatever purposes they might have. Just like when I'm out in public in any other sense of the phrase. So I behave accordingly.
So this all adds up to me "living in a BS world?" I'm the "type to give up [my] neighbor when the fit hits the shan?" To me "the US can do no wrong?" Dude, you're the one living in a BS world when you start slinging crap like that at people you don't even know. It so happens that I know, like, and respect neighbors and work with them on a regular basis. All of them. And I'm here to tell you that if the shit hits the fan, giving up my neighbors is about the last thing I'll do.
And I also happen to think that the US does plenty wrong. Your posts suggest that you do too. And leadership is the issue. You've said as much through questions such as "what president in the past 100 years has done any good for the people?" And I've just come right out and said it. Where we differ is on how to respond to this state of affairs. The options are lead, follow, or get out of the way. My view is you either take a leadership role yourself if you're so inclined, or find a leader whom you can support. The third option just guarantees the least desirable outcome -- a continued decline from an already dismal state of affairs.
well at least the positive is that today we are able to talk openly about these things that are not perfect, that did do some good as well as the follies that have occurred.
I'd like to believe that this were true, and GW presents an interesting collection of evidence here.
But here's my counter-example:
I personally spent days if not weeks emailing, phoning, and even writing Congress in the days leading up to TARP. Various reports compiled have overall opposition to TARP running as high as 9:1 to 9.6:1 against.
And yet, when it came time for the rubber to meet the road, one of the greatest outright thefts of taxpayer money occurred on October 3, 2008, as Dubya signed it into law.
Today, people have mostly forgotten about TARP. And some statist charlatans even try to argue that the taxpayer "made money" on the deal. And in the meanwhile, QE and Twist and the various other names for Ctrl+P continue unabated.
" ...personally spent days if not weeks emailing, phoning, and even writing Congress ...."
Well, of course, nothing was accomplished --- you must contact their lobbyists --- they never pay attention to anyone other than their lobbyists, big guy!
Begin by mortally threatening their lobbyists --- first identify them, find out where they live, their daily habits and interests, those drinks they may prefer or order, etc.
Know thy enemy, then, a little something slipped into a bottle of their preferred liquor, sent to them under a friend's name.....
You get the idean?
I like photos of them consorting with prostitutes.
And a lot of politicians had to retire or face defeat in primaries against the tea party which held them accountable for their vote
They cant afford any more such victories. The point was made. We willl draw blood even if we cant quite kill you.
I dont think another bank will be bailed out so cheaply in the future.
Will you refuse a slice of bread because you cant have the whole loaf? Come! Be men!
Really? TP then went to JewLand (DC), and got co-opted w/in 5 months. >50 of the 80 new TP members of the House voted to increase the debt limit. This System is utterly broken. Politically. Economically. Morally. It will soon be swept away. By bullets. Not ballots.
Well at the very least, when this chapter in our history is written, it will be noted that a substantial number (the TP) tried the non-violent route first.
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."
H. L. Mencken