Letter Never Sent

The Declaration of Independence is an amazing document. Since the American government has travelled down this dangerous path it becomes all the more important for us to take the words of the Declaration to heart. It is our duty to change a corrupt system, or if necessary, to overthrow it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• Full text here

From Al Martin RAW:

Imperial State Power in America

Now even US postage stamps will project the supremacy of American Imperial Power into the world. The new 57-cent stamp shows an eagle, which is an exact copy of the symbol of the Waffen SS, which in turn was taken from the Imperial Praetorian eagle of Ancient Rome. This is one of the first in a new series of postage stamps being released by the US Post Office to commemorate the New Age of State Power.

According to the Moh’s color chart, the color of the stamp used to be called Nordic or Aryan Blue — before the war. After the war, when those words became politically incorrect, the name of the blue was changed to the more neutral-sounding Icelandic Blue.

The stamp portrays an eagle resting on triple-perched pediments. It’s a beautifully executed design, if one wants to portray State Power. This eagle is man’s most ancient and recognizable symbol of State Power. The seven pediments on the eagle’s chevron shaped breastplate represent the seven hills of Rome. The three Ionic columned perch represents Order, Discipline and Obedience, which was the pledge undertaken by the Obsidian Order.

Any philatelist would recognize this eagle and any numismatist, who collects Third Reich or Caesarian coins, would also know it. This iconography is not original with the Third Reich, of course, since they borrowed it from the ancient Romans.

Deficits are back thanks to our fearless leader. To keep from defaulting on the national debt (which has never happened in American history!) the Bush gang is raiding federal employee retirement accounts. Sounds like Enronomics to me. Of course, the Clinton gang did the same thing in 1995. Where’s Matt Dillon when you need him?

What possible explanation can be used to justify this? Even according to the prosecution Lindh had nothing to do with the death of CIA spook, Johnny Spann. Everything about this whole situation reeks of scapegoating. The US is eager to have something to show for all the fireworks and made-for-tv crap when in reality they have done really nothing. Bombing third-world civilians doesn’t really qualify as a war in my opinion.

Why in God’s name are the Democrats on their knees to help Hollywood pass draconian copyright laws? I know Big Media gives them lots of money, but they could try to make it look a little less like blatant quid pro quo. Email, fax, and call your elected officials and make sure they oppose the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act. I may be forced to vote Republican this year. I’m becoming one of those hard-to-pin-down swing voters. Well, at least Patrick Leahy is opposing this bill. Vermont has the most interesting senators, Patrick Leahy and Jim Jeffords. In the house they have the only socialist, Bernie Sanders.

Related:

• Digital Consumer: Protecting Fair Rights

It’s nice to see the Arab states displaying some backbone by trying to undo the imminent invasion of Iraq by Bush Junior and his thugs.

Baghdad-Kuwait Accord — Support Is Rebuff to Bush’s Efforts

The government in Riyadh is sensitive to the idea that it would be once again seen as an ally in any attack by the United States on Iraq, a Muslim nation. That sensitivity is partly the result of a widespread domestic impression that America’s war on terrorism has actually been an assault on Islam.

In addition, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Saudis stressed repeatedly that the first step toward ending the terrorism inspired by Osama bin Laden was to solve the Palestinian conflict, which inspires many in the Arab world to take up arms against the United States and its Arab allies.

Today, the message from the Saudis seemed clear. They coordinated an unprecedented Arab peace initiative toward Israel on the very day they also pushed through a surprise Kuwaiti-Iraqi reconciliation, suggesting that if the former problem could be solved, the Iraqi issue could, too.

“I think the Saudis are basically sending a message to the Americans to solve the Palestinian question and things will fall into place,” said George Hawatmeh, the editor of the Jordanian daily Al Rai. “Take care of the Palestinian problem, the mother of all problems, and we will solve the rest in our own way. We will take care of Iraq.”

Related:
1. The myth that Iraq gassed the Kurds straight from a Pentagon report in 1990. This libel against Iraq is openly expressed by the current administration despite the absence (according to this report) of evidence. It is suggested that Iran was actually responsible for the gas attacks. Of course, Iraq has no love for the independent Kurds, but then neither does Turkey, a strong US ally. The Kurds are surrounded by enemies. A Kurdish proverb says Kurds have “no friends but the mountains.” Turkey is not excited about the potential dissolution of Iraq because it fears this might lead to the creation of an independent Kurdish state which could end up taking a chunk out of Turkey’s borders and drastically change the balance of power in the region. The Kurdish people have an interesting history. The Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the world without a country of their own. The Muslim hero of the Crusades, Saladin (Salah al-Din Yusuf bin Ayub), was a Kurd as was the Persian King Darius.
2. More on the Kurds: The Kurd population numbers around 20-25 million and they make up roughly 23% of the Turkish population. Turkey has it’s own history of abuse against the Kurds:
   
   The Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which liquidated the Ottoman Empire, provided for the creation of an autonomous Kurdish state. Because of Turkey’s military revival under Kemal Atatürk, however, the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which superseded Sèvres, failed to mention the creation of a Kurdish nation. Revolts by the Kurds of Turkey in 1925 and 1930 were forcibly quelled. Later (1937–38) aerial bombardment, poison gas, and artillery shelling of Kurdish strongholds by the government resulted in the slaughter of many thousands of Turkey’s Kurds. The Kurds in Iran also rebelled during the 1920s, and at the end of World War II a Soviet-backed Kurdish “republic” existed briefly.

   With the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, the Kurds hoped for greater administration and development projects, which the new Ba’athist government failed to grant. Agitation among Iraq’s Kurds for a unified and autonomous Kurdistan led in the 1960s to prolonged warfare between Iraqi troops and the Kurds under Mustafa al-Barzani. In 1970, Iraq finally promised local self-rule to the Kurds, with the city of Erbil as the capital of the Kurdish area. The Kurds refused to accept the terms of the agreement, however, contending that the president of Iraq would retain real authority and demanding that Kirkuk, an important oil center, be included in the autonomous Kurdish region.

   In 1974 the Iraqi government sought to impose its plan for limited autonomy in Kurdistan. It was rejected by the Kurds, and heavy fighting erupted. After the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran (1979), the government there launched a murderous campaign against its Kurdish inhabitants as well as a program to assassinate Kurdish leaders. Iraqi attacks on the Kurds continued throughout the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), culminating (1988) in poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages to quash resistance and in the rounding up and execution of male Kurds, all of which resulted in the killing of some 200,000 in that year alone.

   With the end of the Persian Gulf War (1991), yet another Kurdish uprising against Iraqi rule was crushed by Iraqi forces; nearly 500,000 Kurds fled to the Iraq-Turkey border, and more than one million fled to Iran. Thousands of Kurds subsequently returned to their homes under UN protection. In 1992 the Kurds established an “autonomous region” in N Iraq and held a general election. However, the Kurds were split into two opposed groups, the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which engaged in sporadic warfare. In 1999 the two groups agreed to end hostilities.

   In Turkey, where the government has long attempted to suppress Kurdish culture, fighting erupted in the mid-1980s, mainly in SE Turkey, between government forces and guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was established in 1984. The PKK has also engaged in terrorist attacks. In 1992 the Turkish government again mounted a concerted attack on its Kurdish minority, killing more than 20,000 and creating about two million refugees. In 1995, Turkey waged a military campaign against PKK base camps in northern Iraq, and in 1999 it captured the guerrillas’ leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who was subsequently condemned to death. Some 23,000–30,000 people are thought to have died in the 15-year war. The legal People’s Democracy party is now the principal civilian voice of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. The PKK announced in Feb., 2000, that they would end their attacks, but the arrest the same month of the Kurdish mayors of Diyarbakir and other towns on charges of aiding the rebels threatened to revive the unrest. There were also clashes in the 1990s between the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq.
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Bush Junior and his crew are concerned with what the women think about the ‘war on terror’. Concerned that Americans are losing their taste for world domination the Bush gang has tried to enlist Oprah Winfrey to steer the opinions of her estimated 22 million predominantly female viewers. They had hoped to stake their claim on television as the world liberators of oppressed women. Unfortunately, this claim is laughable. The US actively supports governments like in Saudi Arabia who are as bad or worse as the Taliban with regards to gender equality. This attempt to justify the US actions in terms of increasing the freedom of Afghan women is really funny. Every time I see someone on TV speaking earnestly about how the US has freed Afghan women I have to be cynical. A scant few months ago the US was an active supporter of the Taliban regime.

Bush’s political advisers are concerned that some key voting groups, while supportive of the war on terrorism, may be growing weary of the constant talk of killing and brutality. The Oprah strategy was devised to dampen the images of global violence.

Despite the rebuff from Winfrey, the president has begun to push that message. He told audiences in three states this week how the young girls finally have been liberated from Taliban rule and are resuming their studies after being banned from schoolrooms in 1996.

“I like to assure my fellow citizens that we don’t seek revenge, we seek justice,” Bush told a Dallas political gathering Thursday, taking a break from his Easter vacation at his Texas ranch. “And it’s important for the young in America to understand that when we went into Afghanistan, we went in not as conquerors, but as liberators.”

Don’t you feel like a liberator? I’m sure all the thousands and millions of Afghans who have had their country invaded and their homes bombed and their families murdered by US bombs feel ‘liberated’.

There have been further reports of American troops abusing Afghans. The soldiers beat them and kicked them. Then shaved their hair and beards, which they are required by their religion to wear, before releasing them four days later. Classy. Makes you proud to be an American.

In an effort to shift focus away from the Government’s development and mishandling of anthrax there comes a timely story in the New York Times. As more evidence comes out that the anthrax that killed 3 people was developed by the United States it becomes necessary to remove scrutiny and place it back onto the mysterious and elusive Al Quaeda. The New York Times article, “US Says It Found Quaeda Lab Being Built to Produce Anthrax”, contains the routine half-truths and innuendo common to US propaganda. It is necessary to interpret the language carefully in order to derive any really useful information.

In an article that suggests Al Quaeda had plans to develop chemical/biological weapons there is astonishingly little substance. The news value is low and the ‘news’ consists mainly of statements of belief attributed to government officials. You hear these sort of phrases often: ‘US says’, ‘Government believes’, ‘According to a confidential assessment’, ‘American officials have repeatedly asserted’. None of those who speak for our government, these officials, are named. So in this case, vague statements are made, the statements consist mainly of the juxtaposition of the words anthrax and Al Quaeda, there is the absence of evidence, and the statements are anonymous. The conclusion is that this is just your ordinary manipulation of public opinion. The sort of thing once practiced in the Soviet Union. The story turns out not to be what Al Quaeda is really doing, but what the US wants to make sure we think they’re really doing. The New York Times journalist does point out the lack of evidence to support these claims by the government, but the overwhelming theme is that these ghostly terrorists are out to develop germ weapons. That’s not to say I think Al Quaeda (if it even exists) or any other terrorist organization would be above using chemical or biological agents. I would not put the use of biological weapons past any group who wished to do violence against others. However, even as Al Quaeda is suspected of planning to develop chemical weapons we know for certain that the US has. The US biological weapons program is advanced and well financed. And unlike any shadowy terrorist organization the United States has shown the proven ability to develop and use chemical and biological weapons against human beings. If you can drop atom bombs or fly planes into buildings you would most likely not be troubled by biological agents.

The point is, I suppose, that the US has no credibility in leading the fight against terrorism. No matter how often it tries to portray itself as the champion of freedom and goodness, the truth remains. Instead of the military acting to defend the people of the United States from violence they have become hired killers and tools of a machiavellian foreign policy.