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On getting along
By Howard Zinn
Mar. 7— You ask how I manage to stay involved and remain
seemingly happy and adjusted to this awful world where the efforts of
caring people pale in comparison to those who have power?
It’s easy. First, don’t let “those who have power”
intimidate you. No matter how much power they have they cannot prevent
you from living your life, speaking your mind, thinking independently,
having relationships with people as you like. (Read Emma Goldman’s
autobiography Living My Life. Harassed, even imprisoned by authority,
she insisted on living her life, speaking out, however she felt like.0
Second: find people to be with who have your values, your commitments,
but who also have a sense of humor. That combination is a necessity!
Third: (notice how precise is my advice that I can confidently number
it, the way scientists number things), understand that the major media
will not tell you of all the acts of resistance taking place every day
in the society, the strikes, the protests, the individual acts of courage
in the face of authority. Look around (and you will certainly find it)
for the evidence of these unreported acts. And for the little you find,
extrapolate from that and assume there must be a thousand times as much
as what you’ve found.
Fourth: Note that throughout history people have felt powerless before
authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing,
acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to change the
world around them, even if a little. That is the history of the labor
movement, of the women’s movement, of the anti-Vietnam war movement,
the disabled persons movement, the gay and lesbian movement, and the
movement of black people in the South.
Fifth: Remember that those who have power, and who seem invulnerable,
are in fact quite vulnerable, that their power depends on the obedience
of others, and when those others begin withholding that obedience, begin
defying authority, that power at the top turns out to be very fragile.
Generals become powerless when their soldiers refuse to fight, industrialists
become powerless when their workers leave the jobs or occupy the factories.
Sixth: When we forget the fragility of that power on top we become astounded
when it crumbles in the face of rebellion. We have had many such surprises
in our time, both in the United States and in other countries.
Seventh: Don’t look for a moment of total triumph. See it as an
ongoing struggle, with victories and defeats, but in the long run the
consciousness of people growing. So you need patience, persistence,
and need to understand that even when you don’t “win,”
there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that you have been involved,
with other good people, in something worthwhile.
Okay, seven pieces of profound advice should be enough.
Source: Z Magazine
Pin heads
By Chris Floyd
Mar. 12 — One of the sticking points in crafting the
just-signed “interim constitution” of the Pentagon cash
cow formerly known as Iraq was the question of acknowledging Islam
as the fundamental source of law. After much wrangling, a fudge was
worked out that cites the Koran as a fundamental source of legal authority,
with the proviso that no law can be passed that conflicts with Islam.
We in the enlightened West smile at such theocratic quibbling, of
course.
Imagine, national leaders insisting that a modern state be governed
solely by divine authority! Governments guaranteeing the right of
religious extremists to impose their views on society! What next —
debates about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Oh,
those poor, ignorant barbarians in Babylon!
Well, wipe that smile off your face. For even now, the ignorant barbarians
in Washington are pushing a law through Congress that would “acknowledge
God as the sovereign source of law, liberty [and] government”
in the United States. What’s more, it would forbid all legal
challenges to government officials who use the power of the state
to enforce their own view of “God’s sovereign authority.”
Any judge who dared even hear such a challenge could be removed from
office.
The “Constitution Restoration Act of 2004” is no joke; it
was introduced last month by some of the Bush Regime’s most powerful
Congressional sycophants. If enacted, it will effectively transform
the American republic into a theocracy, where the arbitrary dictates
of a “higher power” — as interpreted by a judge, policeman,
bureaucrat or president — can override the rule of law.
The Act — drafted by a minion of television evangelist Pat Robertson
— is the fruit of decades of work by a group of extremists known
broadly as “Dominionists.” Their openly expressed aim is
to establish “biblical rule” over every aspect of society
— placing “the state, the school, the arts and sciences,
law, economics, and every other sphere under Christ the King.”
Or as Attorney General John Ashcroft — the nation’s chief
law enforcement officer — has often proclaimed: “America
has no king but Jesus!” According to Dominionist literature,
“biblical rule” means execution — preferably by stoning
— of homosexuals and other “revelers in licentiousness;”
massive tax cuts for the rich (because “wealth is a mark of God’s
favor”); the elimination of government programs to alleviate
poverty and sickness (because these depend on “confiscation of
wealth”); and enslavement for debtors. No legal challenges to
“God’s order” will be allowed. And because this order
is divinely ordained, the “elect” can use any means necessary
to establish it, including deception, subversion, even violence. As
Robertson himself adjures the faithful: “Zealous men force their
way in.”
Again, this is no tiny band of cranks meeting in some basement in
Alabama, as recent reports by investigators Karen Yurica and David
Neiwert make clear. The Dominionists are bankrolled and directed by
deep-pocketed, well-connected business moguls and political operatives
who have engineered a takeover of the Republican Party and are now
at the heart of the US government. They’ve made common cause
with the “American Empire” faction — Cheney, Rumsfeld,
the neo-conservatives — who seek “full-spectrum dominance”
over the globe. The Dominionists provide money and domestic political
muscle for the Dominators’ imperial ambitions; in return, the
Dominators provide a practical vehicle — overwhelming military
might and state power — for making the Dominionists’ dreams
a reality. The Dominionist movement was founded by the late R.J. Rushdoony,
a busy beaver who also co-founded the Council for National Policy.
The CNP is the politburo of the American conservative movement, filled
with top-rank political and business leaders who set the national
agenda for the vast echo chamber of right-wing foundations, publishers,
media networks and universities that have schooled a whole generation
in obscurantist bile — just as the extremist Wahabbi religious
schools funded by Saudi billionaires have poisoned the Islamic world
with hatred and ignorance. One of the chief moneybags behind the rise
of Dominionism was tycoon Harold Ahmanson, Rushdoony’s protégé
and fellow CNP member. In addition to establishing theocracy in America,
Ahmanson has another abiding interest: computerized voting machines.
As reported here last year, Ahmanson, a fervent Bush backer, was instrumental
in establishing two of the Republican-controlled companies now rushing
to install their highly hackable machines — with untraceable,
unrecountable electronic ballots — across the country in time
for the November election.
The Dominionists also have strong backing on the Supreme Court, Yurica
notes. Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the unconstitutional ruling
that gave Bush the presidency, declared in the theological journal
First Things that the state derives its moral authority from God,
not the “consent of the governed,” as that old licentious
reveler Thomas Jefferson held in the Declaration of Independence.
No, government “is the ‘minister of God’ with powers
to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even
wrath by the sword,” Scalia wrote. He railed against the “tendency
of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government.”
Meanwhile, the tools of dominion keep expanding. Just days after the
Congressional Bushists launched their theocratic missile, General
Ralph Eberhart, head of America’s first domestic military command,
said the Regime must now bring the experience learned on foreign battlefields
to the “Homeland” itself, including the integration of police,
military and intelligence forces, “wide-area surveillance of
the United States” and “urban warfare tactics,” GovExec.com
reports.
Put this juggernaut at the service of democracy-hating extremists
with no legal restraints on their enforcement of “God’s
sovereign authority” — plus a proven track record of subverting
the law to gain political power — and what would you have? A
mullah state? A military theocracy? Or should we just call it “a
second term?”
Source: Moscow Times
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