Dear Bluegreen Earth Colleagues
A Plan to Save the US From a Dictatorial Police State
July 25, 2007
'Dear Bluegreen Earth Colleagues'
A Founding Father of Green Activism
Challenges the Environmental Movement
Commentary by Ponderosa Pine
[Feedback welcomed]
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| A very arch Druid -- Ponderosa Pine |
I was a founder (with Gary Snyder and Michael McClure) of the US environmental movement back in '69. I helped David Brower with his transition over into it from the earlier quaint conservation movement.
From this perspective I want to say that the movement began withering with Earth Day '70, which was a corporate kiss-of-death for eco street activism. Then, for the next few years, Brower played the central negative role in the degeneration of the movement from street activism to write-your-Congressperson.
Intimidations from outside the movement also were quite significant -- e.g. Kent State in '70 where the message to activists from the US military (since no one was punished) was: "We'll kill you whenever we wish and nobody can stop us." This caused activists to search for a respectable excuse to stop being activists. Some became yoga instructors, some bought into safe effete literary roles.
Of course, Earth First! gave us a few years of gallant resurgent activities in the '80s and there have been other temporarily encouraging interludes like Redwood Summer in the '90s.
But otherwise, there has been a steady withering of the movement for the past 37 years. For example, did you know that waaay back in '69, 1,500 people blocked traffic in downtown Eugene (OR) on behalf of an eco theme? From an activist rather than a bureaucratic viewpoint, this probably was the high-water-mark for the movement, which was then less than a year old.
No More War against Nature
So now I'm convinced that the best way to revive the movement is to bring it into coalition with the anti-war movement under the banner of "No More War Against Nature." This new mix of anthropocentric and biocentric activists will be an encouragement for both -- and thus both their activities will become stronger. (Let's hope that the feminist movement also will join: certainly the War Against Nature is not in their interests.)
Some may resist this by suggesting that the notion of an actual war against nature is an exaggeration. The best way to deal with this is to provide figures showing the number of people killed by Extreme Weather Events (EWEs) each year for the past twenty or thirty. (Conversely, it may be necessary to document the effects on nonhuman species of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- though hopefully we can merely remind the anti-war movement that humans are a part of nature.)
I remember writing the North Korean government about a decade ago (just after their agriculture had been devastated by EWEs for three or four consecutive years) to suggest that they demand "reparations". As I recall, between one million and two million North Koreans died in those EWEs. We must insist that their deaths were murder and that those mainly responsible for atmospheric pollution be brought to trial.
So I hope Bluegreeners have time to approach US anti-war leaders on this set of terms. But getting them to change won't be easy. In recent years they have failed to act on so many major opportunities for expansion (e.g., why haven't they told the whole truth about DU?) that we must conclude it's likely they've been infiltrated so thoroughly that the BOOsch Junta controls them.
I believe it was Webster Tarpley who said recently that the 9/11 Truth Movement is the Anti-War Movement with a brain. How true! The format for the next anti-war DC biggie is nearly identical to their format forty years ago! Assume they've done two DC biggies annually for forty years. Okay, then we can say that they deduce from the fact that their format has failed eighty consecutive times that they should try it an eighty-first time. This is indeed brainless -- except that it's the easiest way for the leaders to fund themselves. (Foundations and philanthropists much prefer repetition to flexibility, spontaneity)
Thus it is so naive (to give him the benefit of the doubt) of Danny Schechter to encourage a demo merely against the media's failure to provide honest estimates of anti-war turnouts. It is ten thousand times more important to have a demo against the movement's leaders so that on the eighty-second occasion they'll hugely improve their format.
This brings me to my paste job below -- which I'd sent yesterday to the Blue Green Earth list. I marked this "URGENT" above because I think we have very little time left to prove The Lovelock Prophecy (a 93% human die-back within decades) wrong. If you know people inside the US anti-war movement, please relay this info to them.
In any case, good luck!
Yours for the ethical treatment of trees,
Keith Lampe, Ro-Non-So-Te
A Plan to Save the US
From a Dictatorial Police State
The Philadelphia United Front Platform As on July 7, 2007
A Plan to save the USA, The Republic, The Constitution,
Voting Rights, Free Speech, Freedom, Criminal Justice System,
The Economy, Privacy
We meet in response to a grave political crisis. We see before us a society careening towards disaster. Bush-Cheney and their Republican allies flout the popular will and are determined to wage endless war, expanded beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran and other countries, including with nuclear weapons.
At the same time, they are transforming this country into an authoritarian police state. The Democrats, loyal to their own wealthy backers, ignore the Constitutional imperative of impeaching Bush and Cheney, despite crimes and abuses which cry out for impeachment. Now, the Democratic Party has voted to fund an escalated and expanded version of the very Iraq war they had pledged to end. Their excuse is that they did not have the votes. But they only needed to block the Iraq funding bill -- something Pelosi could have done by herself as Speaker of the House.
This massive betrayal has thrown the peace movement into disarray. Peace activists had taken seriously the Democrats' pledge to end the war, and this approach has proven ineffective. In the background there are rumblings of a financial panic set off by the mortgage crisis, and by the ongoing death agony of the US dollar, which increase the hysteria of the ruling circles.
The Republican presidential candidates eagerly debate the use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran -- a sure path to World War III -- while Giuliani preens himself as a future dictator, and Mrs. Clinton can hardly conceal her enthusiasm for the coming attacks on Iran and Sudan. But the American people deserve something better than a choice between competing Republican and Democratic warmonger elitist cliques. In her farewell message, Cindy Sheehan called on the peace movement to organize independently of the bankrupt two-party system. She also supported a new inquiry into 9/11.
The peace movement needs a new strategy, and we are here in Philadelphia because we have taken Cindy Sheehan's call seriously. We appeal to leftists, progressives, conservatives, libertarians, independents, and those entering or re-entering politics to transcend the artificial divisions that have diminished their impact.
The anti-war, impeachment, anti-globalization, labor, civil rights, veterans, anti-tax, civil liberties, honest election, and 9/11 truth movements -- along with civic and progressive religious groups and other issue groups -- have been weakened too long by single issues and narrow focus. It is time for these movements to unite as a national coalition on a common platform for independent action. We call for a united front of all organizations and persons of good will based on the following:
1. Impeach, remove, and indict Bush-Cheney and their henchmen (Gonzalez, Chertoff, and Rove) as an urgent measure to avoid wider wars, including, for illegal NSA wiretaps, the lies and war crimes of Iraq and Afghanistan, and their nonfeasance, malfeasance, and the misprision of treason around 9/11. Bush and Cheney may also be subjected to court martial. Break up the vote fraud machines, and impeach Supreme Court justices found to be complicit in the 2000 and 2004 stolen elections, such as Scalia. Restore legality starting with the government itself.
2. End all wars. All US troops must be brought home at once from Afghanistan and Iraq by any means necessary, including the immediate cutoff of funding. Stop all US acts of war and provocations against Iran, Somalia, Lebanon, and Sudan. No attacks, whether directly or by proxies, on Syria, Pakistan, Venezuela, North Korea.
The US must not seek confrontation with China, Russia, or any other nations, under any pretext whatsoever. End the US military posture of "Global Strike" preventive war. Restore the ABM treaty and respect existing disarmament treaties. No US star wars missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. No extension of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. No more color revolutions and CIA people power coups abroad.
The future of China and Taiwan should be solved by negotiation. Two state solution for Israel and Palestine according to the Geneva accords of November 2003. Stop US support for terrorism worldwide. Negotiate nuclear weapons disarmament with all nuclear powers, including Israel. All sanctions, embargoes, and economic warfare must be terminated. The US industrial-military complex must be drastically reduced.
3. No to Bush's police state dictatorship. We demand an immediate end to NSA wiretaps, tampering with the US mail, the Patriot Act, espionage against political dissidents, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon domestic spying, kidnappings, renditions, secret prisons, and the US gulag archipelago from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib. No person shall be held as an enemy combatant.
Restore full habeas corpus, respect the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention. Tear down all concentration camps built under US jurisdiction or control anywhere in the world. All precedents, signing statements and executive orders issued under Bush-Cheney must be abrogated, rescinded, and declared null and void -- with extreme prejudice.
4. Government by the people, not by cliques of bankers and financiers. End the power of the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements. No more government under the thumb of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Enterprise Institute, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bohemian Grove cult.
We must stop genocide and establish economic justice in the developing countries, including through monetary reform. Drive the neocons out of public life. The US population must be educated in the use of the general strike as a tool of self-defense against martial law, the suspension of elections, and illegal foreign wars. We intend to maintain a permanent presence in Washington DC through demonstrations, protests, and public agitation.
5. 9/11 truth. We reject the demagogy of fear, terror, and demonization. We condemn the fraud of the global war on terrorism as the basis for US national life. We demand immediate measures to end Cheney's campaign for a new 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction or a new Gulf of Tonkin incident, as outlined in Zbigniew Brzezinski's February 1, 2007 warning to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Publish the full 9/11 documentation, and re-open the investigation.
At minimum, we aim to shape the climate of public opinion. We may become the focal point of a new political regroupment. These questions will be decided in the struggles that lie ahead. We suggest that questions of economic and social policy be deferred for now, and that they become the object of ongoing discussion.
We also urge that organizational questions be postponed until a later time. We call on all organizations to join in launching the following urgent actions in support of the policies outlined:
A. We will nominate and support independent political candidates of public office at all levels of government in the 2007 and 2008 elections. Because of the problems of ballot access, such candidate may need to enter the primary elections of the Republican, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, or other political parties.
B. Truth squad interventions taking advantage of the new media (using camcorders to capture political content which is then posted on the internet) to intervene in the ongoing presidential primary campaigns of the Democrats, Republicans, and others, to focus public attention and political debate on the urgent questions outlined above, rather than on the divisive and artificial wedge issues preferred by the corporate media.
C. Mass political education, through internet web sites, conferences, books, DVDs, and a sustained effort to write our own fairness doctrine by using radio, cable access, and call-ins to take back the public air waves from the right-wing extremists and left gatekeepers.
D. This united front will exist as a process of political discussion, deliberation, mass organizing, and open debate open to political forces of all types who agree with its platform of ideas. Special attention will be given to campus organizing.
E. Carefully selected legal actions, as typified by the civil RICO suit against Bush-Cheney as a continuing criminal enterprise.
ANTIWAR COALITION FOR TRUTH
actindependent.org/
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