Tag Archives: state violence

An Open Letter to the People of the United States: Election or Revolution?

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(Editor’s note: While we do believe positive change is possible on a local level through grass-roots campaigns and voter initiatives, until major systemic changes are forced into existence we have no reason to expect anything from presidential politics other than what we’ve been subjected to for the past few decades.)

By Robert J. Burrowes

As citizens of the USA with a presidential election approaching you have a wonderful opportunity to ponder whether to participate in this election or to participate in the ongoing American Revolution.

Your first revolution might have overthrown the authority of the British monarchy and aristocracy but the one in progress must remove the US elite which has executed a political coup against your government. And you cannot remove elite coupmakers in a fraudulently conducted election in which the ‘choice’ is essentially between two violently insane individuals, each of whom represents the violently insane US elite. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane‘ and ‘Why Violence?‘

The real value of this second revolution, which moves along steadily with routine outbreaks over a multitude of peace, environmental and social justice issues and occasional ‘uprisings’, such as the Occupy Movement in 2011 which spawned a range of new and visionary initiatives, is that it could give citizens of your country the chance to finally reclaim the Republic for those people who genuinely care about ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. And, just as importantly, have sufficient vision to regard these aspirations as something to be shared with the entire US population, starting with Native Americans, and even those of us in the rest of the world including those countries that are currently victims of US elite violence, whether it be wars, drone strikes, coups, economic exploitation or ecological destruction.

Such a revolution might rewrite your constitution and replace the second amendment ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’ with the right to live free of the fear of gun violence. It might result in a form of social organization that distributes wealth equitably (perhaps by actually taxing the wealthy and outlawing the use of offshore tax havens) while reallocating the annual military (killing) budget to life-enhancing projects such as poverty alleviation, affordable housing, free education, free healthcare, clean water, renewable energy technologies, and a substantial budget for compensation to those countries that the US elite has systematically exploited or simply destroyed during the past 200 years. This would allow the 50 million US citizens who live in poverty, and another billion people around the world who also live in poverty, the chance to live a decent life.

Now, you might ask, ‘How are we, the ordinary citizens of the United States, even with our handguns, rifles and assault weapons, going to take on the US military and police to remove elite control of our government?’ Well, the answer is that you do not need even one weapon for this ongoing revolution and, in fact, you are vastly better off without them. Weapons have only one use – to kill people – and any revolution worth the name has a more profoundly ambitious aim than this.

What you need is intelligence, commitment, courage and a sound nonviolent strategy. The US elite controls your government and has crippled your republic because, over successive generations, you have let them. Every time you cooperate with the elite, because you are scared, by paying your taxes (more than 50% of which finances US wars and other military violence), putting your money into their corporate banks, shopping at their corporate shopping malls, buying and consuming the ‘news’ presented by their corporate media, rationalizing their policies as reasonable, participating in their unjust and violent legal system, fighting (as an enlisted person or as a mercenary) in their military forces, working in their prison system, accepting exploited employment of any kind, eating their poisoned and genetically mutilated foods (GMOs), going along with their endless attempts to divide you along racial, class, religious and other lines, you simply consent to their control. Why?

You have a simple alternative. Consciously and systematically participate in the ongoing nonviolent revolution that is already taking place and give it added life by your presence. Remake the US republic as you want it by withdrawing your cooperation with elite structures and processes while creating alternatives that meet your needs and the needs of those around you.

Join those US visionaries who are creating cooperatives where people are both managers and valued workers, take your money out of elite banks and put it into financial organizations that exist or which you create to serve the interests of their members (or, if you prefer, use LETSystems), refuse to participate in or pay for (with your taxes) US imperialism (and win friends all over the world), grow or buy healthy locally-grown organic/biodynamic (and, if you are concerned about the climate catastrophe as well, vegetarian) food, read progressive news outlets so that you know what is really going on in the USA and the world, read literature that deepens your understanding and concern for humanity and doesn’t just offer you a distraction from the horror in which you live, and support or even become one of those many fine nonviolent activists in your country who take personal risks in the struggle to create a better world.

If you want more of what you have, then you should vote and/or buy a gun. They have an equivalent outcome: they both legitimize elite violence and exploitation directed at you and those you love.

If you want to participate in this second and ongoing American revolution, then spend your time participating in the wholesome activities that many grassroots organizations already offer and in creating its next manifestations in your own neighborhood. It is the powerful conscience-based choices that you make as an individual that define your Self. And it is these choices that will have most impact on your family, neighborhood, community organization, trade union, religious organization and elsewhere and that will help decide the future of the USA and its role in the world.

Now you might say, I do some or even all of the sorts of things you mentioned above, so why not vote too? My answer is simply this: Voting is an act of disempowerment. It’s essential message is ‘I appoint you to govern for me’. I prefer to govern myself (both meanings intended). And you?

So what of those who present the ‘lesser evil’ argument: one candidate is so bad that it is better to have the other. This ‘argument’ is not worthy of scrutiny. If you are deceived by this argument, you will vote forever in the delusional hope that you will one day get a choice to vote for someone genuinely decent. In 2008, Barack Obama was supposed to be the candidate of hope and change. Did you get that hope and change? Are you going to get it with Clinton or Trump? Of course not. Elites simply ensure that change via the electoral system cannot happen; its function is to absorb and dissipate our dissent.

If you vote you are saying that you endorse this system of electoral exploitation. The tragedy is that even third-party candidates, who may be people of genuine principle, have no chance. Even worse, they add a veneer of legitimacy to your corrupt electoral system.

In essence, if you vote for the ‘lesser evil’ you are still voting for an ‘evil’ and, more importantly, you have participated in and endorsed an ‘evil’ system: one which denies you a genuine ‘free and fair’ choice to vote for a candidate who actually represents your interests and views and has a reasonable chance of winning. And, having won, is then able to actually implement their policies (rather than be stymied by a power structure that has no intention of letting this happen). Given your circumstances, ‘the only winning move is not to play’ their corrupt game and to put your energy into a genuinely winning move: working for the regeneration of American society.

Look at it this way. If there are two rotten eggs, would you choose the one that is less rotten and eat it? Presumably you would seek another option and only after you have identified and fixed what is causing the problem in the first place. The point is this: Unless you spend your time deeply contemplating the nature of the society in which you want to live and then devoting your time and energy into creating that society, you will never have it. And you have betrayed yourself.

The reality is that either Clinton or Trump is going to be president of the USA for the next four years and a lot of people (both in the US but particularly in foreign countries) are going to die because of it (through US military violence and corporate exploitation). What we can do is to invest our political energy into creating a United States in which, at some point in the future, the likes of Clinton and Trump, and those they represent, no longer drive outcomes in our world.

To reiterate: I am not saying ‘Don’t vote and do nothing’ (as so many people do already). I am suggesting that you ponder the dysfunctionality of your society, do some research into the secretive ‘deep state’ (or military-industrial complex or power elite or the 1% or however you wish to describe it) that controls your ‘republic’ with its electoral system designed to delude you into believing that you have a say in governing your nation, and then consider how you want to engage politically and act in accord with your conscience in doing so. It is only by doing this that we will have any chance of getting the society and the world that we want, even if it is beyond our lifetimes (and assuming we can avert extinction at our own hand in the meantime).

In summary, profound change only occurs from the ‘bottom up’ when enough ordinary people take the initiative to remake their own society. And if you are really interested in doing this, one important place to start is by reviewing the way in which you nurture children. See ‘My Promise to Children‘.

Other straightforward options, in addition to those mentioned above, include participation in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth‘ and signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World‘.

But for those of you who are serious strategic thinkers, I have outlined a strategy for removing coupmakers on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy which is a straightforward presentation of the more detailed explanation offered in the book
‘The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach‘.

Is our destiny in our own hands? Only if we have enough people of courage to accept responsibility for it. Are you one of them?

 

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding
and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in
an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a
nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?‘
His email address is flametree@riseup.net
and his website is at http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com

—
Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford
Victoria 3460
Australia
Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Why Independent 9/11 Research and Education Still Matters

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Editor’s note: This is a revised article from last year followed by recent podcasts and videos on the topic.

One of the ways corrupt people and institutions retain power is by discouraging criticism and discussions that could lead to organized opposition. A classic tactic is to vilify targets as unpatriotic, disloyal, traitorous, heretical, dangerous, crazy, etc. Think about what happened to critics of capitalism during the peak of the cold-war hysteria. George Orwell’s 1984 depicted how governments could also manipulate language, history, media and other information in order to diminish critical thought (which leads to critical speech and organizing) and to control thought. The creation of a Big Brother-style police/surveillance state is another way to create a climate of fear and foster a culture which discourages the sharing of knowledge about certain topics and prevents people from taking action.

This should be kept in mind when discussing 9/11, because those who still have complete faith in government and corporate media (an increasingly shrinking number), have been conditioned to ignore, deny or dismiss any information that would lead them to question the official story. The most common knee-jerk reaction is to defend the official story by labeling all alternative narratives “conspiracy theory”. Though this argument is not as convincing today, when political scandals and crimes are almost a daily occurrence, the association between “conspiracy theories” and negative terms such as “crazy” and “wacko” are deeply ingrained in the culture, and not by accident.

The term “conspiracy theory” was not used as an ad hominem attack until shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Documented evidence shows the CIA needed to develop new and more effective ways to attack and discredit those who dared to question the Warren Commission Report. So when one counters questions about the official narrative with “That’s just a crazy conspiracy theory” they’re actually using a psy-op attack developed by and for a conspiracy. Because of experience and greater proliferation of information through the internet, fewer people are naive enough to deny extremely wealthy and powerful people would conspire to protect their position and interests. History and hard evidence shows it would be crazier to suppose that they don’t.

Another common argument is “The government is too incompetent to pull off something of that scale and keep it a secret”. It’s true that aspects of the government are incompetent, but the incompetence is generally limited to things they care little about such as medical and educational systems, the food system, domestic infrastructure, safety, financial regulation, disaster relief, fair elections, etc. When it comes to things they prioritize such as wars, bailouts, black budgets, black ops, cronyism, crowd control, surveillance, propaganda, etc., the US government is extremely effective. And the higher up the hierarchy, the easier it is to keep secrets. All it takes is a relatively small number of people in key positions, and through division of labor, compartmentalization, formation of policies conducive to conspiring, and covert actions and communications protected under the cloak of “national security” (with help from a mass culture of conformity, credulity and fear). One should also keep in mind that governments are not monolithic and are comprised of factions with conflicting interests which can be used, manipulated and/or compromised by players involved in the conspiracy (not just within U.S. government but in foreign governments and the private sector as well).

Some simply can’t accept that individuals and factions within U.S. government could intentionally cause an attack such as 9/11 or let it happen. This speaks to the power of corporate media and establishment propaganda on different levels. It shows how a significant majority of Americans can be kept completely ignorant of decades of violent imperialist policy around the world and how false flags have been used to start wars through history. There’s also a long history of state violence against its own people and on American soil going back to the genocide of Native Americans, murders of countless slaves and people of color, multiple massacres of labor activists, assassination of leaders such as JFK, RFK, MLK, Black Panthers, and MOVE, the 93 WTC bombing, WACO, OK City bombing, etc. There’s also ample documentation proving the US government has at least considered actions not dissimilar to 9/11 such as Operation Northwoods and Project for a New American Century. What this argument presupposes is that powerful and wealthy (mostly) white men are inherently more trustworthy, empathetic, and righteous than “Muslim fanatics” or any other “enemy” most Americans have been conditioned to fear and hate.

Other attacks against independent 9/11 researchers include dismissals like “9/11 is no longer relevant” and/or “there’s more important problems to deal with so we need to move on”. I would argue that when such crimes occur that have harmed and killed vast numbers of people and is responsible for countless casualties and elimination of civil liberties more than a decade after due to policies supposedly justified by the event, we have a moral obligation to uncover who did it and why. There’s no peace without justice and no justice as long as the truth behind such nation-changing crimes remains suppressed. Of course there’s always plenty of immediate and equally important issues to address, but those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it. More specifically, those who benefit most from historical events such as 9/11 are motivated to repeat it while those who only know a distorted version of history while remaining ignorant of the truth are more likely to let it happen again.

Because of the work of “conspiracy theorists” we are now more aware of the scope of government/corporate criminality and connections between government, wall street, war-profiteers, and the criminal underworld. For example, without the work of independent JFK researchers we wouldn’t be aware of Operation Northwoods which many now view as a false flag template used for 9/11. Gaining a better understanding of how and why 9/11 happened helps us put current geopolitical events in context while providing insight into how such operations work and how they can be counteracted.

There’s also the “straw man” argument which creates the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing an argument with a superficially similar yet non-equivalent proposition and refuting it without ever having refuted the original position. This is particularly easy to do with complex high profile incidents such as 9/11 and the JFK assassination, where there can be a wide array of theories and speculation due to the complexity of the narrative, widespread interest, deep secrecy and disinformation or misinformation from “useful idiots” and/or those who would benefit from keeping crucial information hidden.

Discussing controversial subjects is never easy but it’s always rewarding when people turn out to be more receptive and thoughtful than one might suspect. Though corporate media does its best to defend the official stories, more people than ever are waking up. On this 9/11 anniversary with the potential for another war on the horizon, it’s as good a day as any to talk about it, share this information and help others wake up.

9/11/14 Update:

On the 9/3/14 episode of “Guns and Butter” Tod Fletcher uses a contextual approach to analyzing events at the Pentagon, explores origins and elements of the hijacker story (ie. telephone calls from the planes, analysis of eyewitness reports, physical debris, photo/video evidence, black boxes and FBI involvement) and investigates means, motive and opportunity.


audio http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20140903-Wed1300.mp3

This episode was followed by the 9/10/14 Guns and Butter: “9/11 and the Politics of Deception” with Christopher Bollyn.


http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20140910-Wed1300.mp3

Project Censored 9/8/14: With the anniversary of the September 11 attacks at hand, Peter and Mickey speak with Ken Jenkins, organizers of the annual 911 Film Festival in Oakland, California, about questions that still linger 13 years after the attacks. Then Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee talks about the scope and implications of the ongoing federal surveillance activities against Americans, and how to resist them. The program concludes with Robbie Martin of Media Roots, speaking about his new documentary “American Anthrax.”

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Pcradiodos/Project+Censored+090514.mp3

9/11: The Mother of All Big Lies by Stephen Lendman

9/11 Truth, Inner Consciousness, and the Public Mind by James Tracy

Thirteen Years After the September 11 Attacks, Blindness Persists by Thierry Meyssan

Ferguson: No Justice in the American Police State

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: Foreign Policy Journal

There are reports that American police kill 500 or more Americans every year. Few of these murdered Americans posed a threat to police. Police murder Americans for totally implausible reasons.  For example, a few days before Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson, John Crawford picked up a toy gun from a WalMart shelf in the toy department and was shot and killed on the spot by police goons.

Less than four miles from Ferguson, goon thugs murdered another black man on August 19. The police claims of “threat” are disproved by the video of the murder released by the police.

Five hundred is more than one killing by police per day.  Yet the reports of the shootings seldom get beyond the local news.  Why then has the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing of Michael Brown gone international?

Probably the answer is the large multi-day protests of the black community in Ferguson that led to the state police being sent to Ferguson and now the National Guard.  Also, domestic police in full military combat gear with armored personnel carriers and tanks pointing numerous rifles in the faces of unarmed civilians and arresting and threatening journalists make good video copy.  The “land of the free” looks like a Gestapo Nazi state. To much of the world, which has grown to hate American bullying, the bullying of Americans by their own police is poetic justice.

For those who have long protested racial profiling and police brutality toward racial minorities, the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson is just another in a history of racists murders.  Rob Urie is correct that blacks receive disproportionate punishment from the white criminal justice (sic) system.  See, for example here.

Myself, former US Representative Dennis Kucinich, and others see Michael Brown’s murder as reflective of the militarization of the police and police training that creates a hostile police attitude toward the public.  The police are taught to view the public as threats against whom the use of violence is the safest course for the police officers.

This doesn’t mean that racism is not also involved.  Polls show that a majority of white Americans are content with the police justification for the killing.  Police apologists are flooding the Internet with arguments against those of the opposite persuasion.  Only those who regard the police excuse as unconvincing are accused of jumping to conclusions before the jury’s verdict is in. Those who jump to conclusions favorable to the police are regarded as proper Americans.

What I address in this article is non-evidential considerations that determine a jury’s verdict and the incompetence of Ferguson’s government that caused the riots and looting.

Unless the US Department of Justice makes Michael Brown’s killing a federal case, the black community in Ferguson is powerless to prevent a cover-up.

What usually happens in these cases is that the police concoct a story protective of the police officer(s) and the prosecutor does not bring an indictment.  As Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, are partially black (in skin color alone), the black majority community in Ferguson, Missouri, might have hopes from Holder’s visit. However, nothing could be more clear than the fact that Obama and Holder, along with the rest of “black leadership,” have been co-opted by the white power structure.  How else would Obama and Holder be in office? Do you think that the white power structure puts in office people who want justice for minorities or for anyone other than the mega-rich?

The 1960s were a time of black leadership, but that leadership was assassinated (Martin Luther King) or co-opted. Black leaders sold out for prestige appointments and corporate board memberships. Today black leadership is marginalized and exists only at local levels if at all.

If the cop who killed Brown is indicted and he is tried in Ferguson, the jury will contain whites who live in Ferguson.  Unless there is a huge change in white sentiment about the killing, no white juror can vote to convict the white cop and continue to live in Ferguson.  The hostility of the white community toward white jurors who took the side of a “black hoodlum who stole cigars” against the white police officer would make life for the jurors impossible in Ferguson.

The trouble with purely racial explanations of police using excessive force is that cops don’t limit their excesses to racial minorities.  White people suffer them also. Remember the recent case of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy protester who was brutalized by a white good thug with a record of using excessive force.  McMillan is a young white woman.

Her breasts were seized from behind, and when she swung around her elbow reflexively and instinctively came up and hit the goon thug.  She was arrested for assaulting a police officer and sentenced by a jury to a term in jail.  The prosecutor and judge made certain that no evidence could be presented in her defense.  Medical evidence of the bruises on her breast and the police officer’s record of police brutality were not allowed as evidence in her show trial, the purpose of which was to intimidate Occupy protesters.

In America white jurors are usually sheep who do whatever the prosecutor wants.  As Cecily McMillan, a white woman, could not get justice, it is even less likely that the black family of Michael Brown will.  Those who are awaiting a jury’s verdict to decide Michael Brown’s case are awaiting a cover-up and the complicity of the US criminal justice (sic) system in murder.

If there is a federal indictment of the police officer, and the trial is held in a distant jurisdiction, there is a better chance that a jury would consider the facts.  But even these precautions would not eliminate the racist element in white jurors’ decisions.

The situation in Ferguson was so badly handled it almost seems like the police state, in responding to the shooting, intended to provoke violence so that the American public could become accustomed to military force being applied to unarmed civilian protests.

Ferguson brings to mind the Boston Marathon Bombing.  Two brothers of foreign extraction allegedly set off a “pressure cooker bomb” left in a backpack that killed and injured race participants or observers. The two brothers were deemed, without any evidence, to be so dangerous that the entirety of Boston and its suburbs were “locked down” while 10,000 heavily armed police and military patrolled the streets in military vehicles conducting door-to-door searches forcing residents from their homes at gun point, while the police ransacked homes where it was totally obvious the brothers were not hiding.  Not a single family evicted from their residences at gunpoint said:  “Thank God you are here. The bombers are hiding in our home.”

The excessive display of force and warrantless police home intrusions is the reason that aware and thoughtful Americans do not believe one word of the official account of the Boston Marathon Bombing.  Thoughtful people wonder why every American does not see the bombing as an orchestrated state act of terror in order to accustom Americans to the lock-down of a city and police intrusion into their homes.  Logistically, it is impossible to assemble 10,000 armed troops so quickly. The obvious indication is that the readiness of the troops indicates pre-planning.

In Ferguson, all that was needed to prevent mass protests and looting was for the police chief, mayor or governor to immediately announce that there would be a full investigation by a civic committee independent of the police and that the black community should select the members it wished to serve on the investigative committee.

Instead, the name of the cop who killed Michael Brown was withheld for days, a video allegedly of Michael Brown taking cigars from a store was released as a justification for his murder by police. These responses and a variety of other stupid police and government responses convinced the black community, which already knew in its bones, that there would be a coverup.

It is entirely possible that the police chief, mayor, and governor lacked the intelligence and judgment to deal with the occasion. In other words, perhaps they are too stupid to be in public office. The incapacity of the American public to elect qualified representatives is world-renown.  But it is also possible that Michael Brown’s killing provided another opportunity to accustom Americans to the need for military violence to be deployed against the civilian population in order to protect us from threats.

Occupy Wall Street was white, and these whites were overwhelmed by police violence.

This is why I conclude that more is involved in Ferguson than white racist attitudes toward blacks.

The founding fathers warned against allowing US military forces to be deployed against the American people, and the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the use of military forces against civilians.  These restrictions designed to protect liberty have been subverted by the George W. Bush and Obama regimes.

Today Americans have no more protection against state violence than Germans had under National Socialism.

Far from being a “light unto the world,” America is descending into cold hard tyranny.

Who will liberate us?