The Therese Defarge school of Social evo

History for those engaged in creating it. Comprehensive activism and applied memetics.

Why americans remain ignorant of thier shame

         Ignorant is an interesting concept rooted in the word ignore. Ignorance is a choice not to know information which is available but left un revealed. Most americans maintain a state of forgetfulness that we have occupation troops stationed in both Afghanistan and Iraq, most americans maintain a fog around the growing mass of evidence that demonstrate war crimes that are both brutal and obscene. Yesterday in Toronto Joshua Key, a deserter from the US military who served in Iraq appeared before an immigration and refugee board hearing seeking refugee status in Canada becoming the first deserter from Iraq to do so. The 27 year old Key had joined to army to support and gain access to health care for his family. Key reports atrocities including members of the florida national guard playing soccer with the severed head of an Iraqi and a US army squad leader blowing the foot off an unarmed man for making an offensive gesture.

        Mr Key testimony is not alone, many veterans who have turned against the war have said that it has become a regular practice to carry spades (shovels) in thier vehicles. After indescrimate killings of civilians the spades are planted on the body to provide "evidence" that they were digging a hole for a bomb. Most of the world is growing more and more aware of immoral and inhuman practices fostered by the Bush administration and yet most americans choose to remain ignorant. Ignorance remains a choice, for while the mainstream press ignores the war, ignores the lies that brought us into the war and the barbaric actions through which the war has been carried out the american people have not demanded more from them.  While the democrats have played it safe and then postured to gain on Bush losses while not endangering thier corporate campaign funding, americans have not demanded more from them. While peace activist have called for an end of the war or impeachment few have called for accountability on a scale comeserate with the crimes being commited as a result of policies generated by the Bush administration.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 19:10 | link | comments (3) |

Gentrification and the war

          One way the middle class left is failing is in the refusal to grasph the reality of gentrification as the locale manifestation of oppression related in the end to a permanent war economy. As has always been the case in the face of growing homelessness, lack of housing is not an issue. the housing market contenues to be promoted in order to prop up a slowing economy, building high end housing that creates a shortage of affordable housing for those who are poor.  It is very common now for property managers to charge a non-refundable fee to those who submit and application to live in a rental property, credit checks, inquiries to current and former employers as well as landlords, police background checks  and a google search are included in the screening of possible tenants, who must then sign a lease with the names of all adults living in the house or apartment, as well as pay deposits in addition to rent. There is today an increasing number of displaced people growing in towns and cities throughout america and thier plight is ignored by many who express concerns for the poor and displaced people of other areas who overlook the reality of oppression occuring within thier own back yard.

       An effect of development and gentrification is that it destroys neighborhoods and communities. Those moving into new developements are likely to remain isolated from one another without the ties of traditional neighborhoods which are strong with bonds developed over time. This effects the potential for grassroots resistance to government policies and decisions.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 15:44 | link | comments |

Memetical understanding of systemics part 1

 

         For those unfamilier with the term a meme is based on a concept of evolution based on a self replicating idea, a super-meme being a self replicating idea that has influenced the world by creating a shift in the dominate paradigm. A paradigm is the idea through which individuals within a culture understand the world they live in, influencing how new information is processed into an understanding of reality. When early historians began documenting and describing past events with a critical understanding of cause an effect they created a paradigm that established a rational analysis of history. As those who embraced this paradigm became more effective in influencing the course of history the further developement of the practice of history was encouraged to the point were the use of historical analysis became a dominate paradigm amogst those seeking to effect thier world. Methodologically memetics is looking at the body of an idea through the framework of effective survival methodolgy as it promotes the promogation of the fit, or evolution applied to the developement of dominate paradigms.

        Google can be seen as a paradigm toward information categorization and dissemination define by key word search. Tied to survival method of financial input as words most often receiving hits are auctioned to the highest bidders keywords themselves go through an evolutionary process where as the popularity of the word as measured by searches grow the value of including that word as a metatag increases and it's frequency of use rises, while diluting any historical meaning. Google fit's into the post-modernist paradigm of epistomology (the field of philosophy that determines how we know what we know) by minimizing the effective change caused by new ideas by quickly co-opting the words that express them creating the concervative standardization of form within evolutionary development through a resistance to change.

           I remember one story told to me in the early 70's regarding the practical application of memetics. I don't know it's historic truths but saw it effectively used by Gino in graffittee and postering campaigns such as the trenton Rat offensive and the "EFWA is coming" tactic. According to the story Brahms Stoker once made a bet that with a friend that the friend could put any four letters together into a words and Stroker would insure that that word would be in common ussuage before the year was out. The letters Quiz where picked and stroker hired two men to graffittee the new word on wall all over a univercity town, on it's own a definition was developed and the word came to be. While this is not itself systemics or memetics it shows useful information about how an idea can be given a body.

 

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 16:07 | link | comments |

Looking at Afghanistan

       When I was leafletting in front of the polls
last November there was strong popular support for
holding our leaders accountable for crimes related
that brough us to war in Iraq, as well as those that
have happened since. But during the afternoon rush,
when those coming from 9-5 jobs came thier was a
rather scary space where people hesitated, not in
disagreement. At this point of the day people where
slow to realize what was being addressed, they
repeated the word war slowly, trying to place it to
current rhetoric where the word war is used
metaphorically then suddenly they remembered thier
nation was really and physically at war. It made me
realize that even amongst activist thier is little
realization that we still have a war and occupation,
going on in Afghanistan.
     UNICEF, whose deputy executive Director Ms. Rima
Salah has just begun a one week tour of the country,
has warn of a contenued threat to the woman and
children of afghanistan. It is estimated that 600
children under the age of 5 die everyday due to
preventable illness while 50 women a day die of
obstetric complications. Much of this situation can be
tied to the relatively recient war and US occupation
while the US is also implicated via policies of
destabilization going back to the late 70's. As the
current war in Iraq slowly spreads into Iran, so the
war in Afghanistan is slowly spreading into Pakistan
not unlike the spread of the Vietnam war into
Cambodia. 
     US politicians of both parties may speak words of
spreading democracy but we people must remain aware
that our government is not a nuetral party arbitrating
for the general good. We have conflicts of interest
due to our own goals and desire in the area, largely
oil but also in the area of social and political
policy. Afghanistan has a great shortage of medical
morphine, a horrible crisis in a war torn country. The
faultering economy forces many farmers to turn to
poppy production, granted most of this for export as
non-medical recreational drugs. Farmers are advanced
seeds as a loan in order to raise poppies for opiates
to make money to feed thier families. The Afghan
government, while not supporting opium production
realizes the needs of it's population and would itself
choose not to interfere, but under US control that is
not what happens. Commited politically to a "war on
drugs" the US destroys these crops from the air
leaving these farmers in debt. In order to pay for
this debt the farmers give up daughters, selling them
through marraige to older men in the families of thier
creditors. 
     This issue is driven by the conflict of interest
at the heart of our fruad when we say we fight to
bring democracies to other countries. The economic and
profit driven interest of our corporations are not
consistant with promoting democracy abroad and our
record shows us as a supporter of tyrany, a destroyer
of liberty and an imperalist government at heart.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba 

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:03 | link | comments |

Rebel offensive well timed

        Tuesday's offensive, in which 100 sunni militants assualted a prison in retaliation to sundays operation swarm, follows a classic pattern of successful guerilla warfare. Last sunday the pentagon staged a photo-op mission in which 1,500 soldiers where landed into a farm area with little sign of resistance and arrested 48 suspects, 17 of whom where almost immidiately released. Claiming tactical surprice the pentagon claimed the area to have been subdued.

       For those without the historical background the military had claimed the veitcong where broken and would be beaten in 6 months when the Guerilla's launched the now famed Tet Offensive striking all major cities in the south at once. While not on such a grand scale Tuesdays offensive freed 33 prisioners including 18 who had been detained on Sunday. The attack soundly demonstrated an ability to successful operate in an area the Pentagon and Bush administartion had proclaimed last year as no longer being an insurgent stronghold.

         Also on Tuesday came President Bush announcement that US troops will stay in Iraq for years and it will be up to another president to deside to pull them out. Bush is contenuing to drop in the polls, but the reality is that if a democrat replaces him it is unlikely that a democractic president will pull troops out. Now that Bush has dropped so low in the poll's democracts will only use the issue as a bases to recapture the white house without ending the war policies. To the democrat's impeachment means only an opertunity to win the white house, while it must be seen as the calling into account an administration for it's actions and deceptions.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 15:04 | link | comments |

Karl Yundt, Gino and others

          Anarchist, correctly enough, dismiss the stareo-type of Karl Yundt as antithetical to the priniciple of anarchism. I think however it is worthwhile to understand that stereotypes, seen as an abstraction, have value in understanding the choices individuals make in given situations. If you read through the letters of Thomas Jefferson during the Jacobin "redscare", especially during the period in which Thomas Pain's age of reason was smuggled passed the Adams adminstartions censureship; you see the thinking of a man whose vision far exceeds his morale convictions. I think understanding individuals for thier choices is useful even if in the end we find fualt with thier decisions.

          First it helps to remember that the basics of organizing is to enable individuals to contribute to a mass action. Right now I am planning a rally in late April, I am hoping myself to focus on lining up speakers and running the canvass campaign both to get signature for our petision drive but also to promote the rally. For me to focus on lining on these areas I need someone to focus on others, such as co-ordinating the needing logistics for a sound system and setting up tables, recruiting tablers, co-ordinating press releases and dealing with the press, plus someone to deal with the authorities if needed. Even with individuals taking on these roles lining up speakers requires essembling an agenda of topics that need to be covered to satisfy the goal of the rally, while i will bne one of the speakers an effective program will require me to recruit others to speak to topic I wish covered. A good organizer enables others to participate to the best of thier ability in a way that is inclusive. yet thier is a fine line that can be crossed between such inclusive enabling and unprincipled manipulation, and it is at the point that such lines are crossed that Karl Yundts are born into reality.

        My now dead elder brother was capable of crossing this line. He was once under investigation after a police chief car was blown-up. I know he would never have the courage to do such a thing, but remember how years earlier in the 60's he had taught a friend of his who was interested in blowing things up how to make black powder. The police chief had apparrently done some act that made him widely unpopular (I myself was at NOC during this time so had little first hand knowledge of the details). It would be quite within my brothers bounderies to surf his various huants providing information about how to go about making this volitile statement, and spreading the information far enough he could be sure that at somepoint someone would act.

           Gino was not quite the coward my brother was, yet he was a coward when compared to the standard of his rhetoric. Looking at all the information I have seen about the early days of Natlfed and Largo before it, it seems clear that he understood that the SLA would be formed. This was not hard to have figure out, as the movement of the late 60's and early 70's moved toward arm struggle middle class activist balked around arm struggle in the same way the middle class balked around property destruction during the globalization movement. Vinceramous, spliting from the Bay area radical union over the need for non-violence sought to focus recruitment in the prisons and elsewere. It is no surprice that eventually they met someone like Cinque ready to lead a group like the SLA. Gino's mimiographed declaration of war connected him through some level of action with this moment of history, just as his checking writing scam against a locale witch hunter connected him through action to the resistance to the redscare of the McCarthy era. He had left the Bay area to begin building what was absent from the SLA, an area of mass popular support within the prolitariot = EFWA and later Natlfed. That this group then as well balked can be held against him, yet in the end it can't be held against him alone.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 15:48 | link | comments |

Remembering an early friend from Natlfed
       I remember when I first was sent to Philadelphia I met a cadre whose intitals could have been C.C., except that early on this caused a great deal of confusion since it was also the abbreviation for the central committee and so his middle initial G was stuck in thier. He was one of the three individuals I, as a submerged cadre working for politboro, was alerted too. He had been a former member of SDS and was the only cadre remaining from the intitial entity leap. The story I had been given was that Phily had been started without authorization, the organization had a strategic policy to avoid large cities and focus more on begining entities in smaller towns and cities (I strategy I still hold as being sound). The word had been that the original organizer, Josh I think was his name, was a trot. I heard two version of a story about Josh doing a meeting with a influential clegyman in which josh walked into the meeting with a red star on his beret. One version of the story expressed how foolish and imature it was of him and how the clergyman chucked him out, but another version said he was ordered to antagonies the clergyman who was something of a poverty pimp and we wanted to ensure he was not on our side so that thier would be a clear deliniatiopn between his policies and ours. The stories said that Josh was a trot, and by insinuation that C.G.C. was. Angus thought he wanted to organize "white people", refering to his desire to be transfered to the western Mass entity.
          I ended up working very closely with C.G.C. and becoming a close friend. I hate trots, I did so long before I entered the party because I understood the essential classist basis of trotskism, but i found C. was nothing of the sort. It seemed very much to me that the main reason he was in hot water with the party was because he was in love with a former ops-manager who had left, that and he was something of a better field organizer that angus was.
       He loved western mass, and had been offered the position of ops-manager thier if he forgot about his lover, whom he could still see if he stayed in Philly. One day while traveling to a bucket drive he talked to me about this, maybe some for advice but mostly just to have an ear. Western Mass had an interesting benefit based on cutting wood for heating, an issue related to this is that utility companies could shut people off in the winter time but were fined a couple hundred dollars. This meant that if the company would make more money cutting people off and paying the fine they would, placing a tangible dollar value on human life given the freezing cold of a western Mass winter. I loaned CGC $5 dollars to help him leave, and while he was packing his stuff angus "fired" him. A few weeks later he sent the money I loaned him back, angus gave me a nasty look when I mentioned he was a good comrade.

Elizabeth

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 23:38 | link | comments |

late St patrick day's notes on Trinity.

        I drank a toast to Strugglers memory yesterday, she had been proud of her irish american heritage as well as her catholicism, I remember how she use to weave cross' from palms after easter. I remember how she use to sing "plow boy" stamping out the beat with her bare feet.

          When traveling with the US military I had time to read, but Lenin and Stalin would not have been the best choice of reading matter. Instead I once brought along a copy of Leon Uris "Trinity", I recommend it not just for it's Irish history but also as a better understanding of how I took the genesis story, as an oral tradition of how a people or folk moved along history incarnating themselfs as one organization practicing a strategy and theory to another. Our current age does not have that tribal sense of self, especially amongst the middle class', which is perhaps why so many seem to have understood the genesis as being about gino and his credentials rather than an understanding of the motion of history.

         I remember when Bobby Sands, of the provisional IRA was on hunger strike onto death. Bobby was protesting that his status as a prisoner of war be recognized. He wore a blanket over his naked body rather than were a prison uniformprotesting that he could not were an IRA uniform. When Bobby died officers of the party wore black armbands. At the St Patricks day parade that year I remember some of my friends in the US military were shouting out in favor of the IRA and down to the British. It was something that hit a cord with them. 9 more would die in the hunger strike, and somehow it shows a basic problem with the nature of the modern non-violent movement that while shorter term, non-lethal hunger stikes by Gandi moved the world so little of the world was moved by 9 hunger strikes onto death. The Issue is not unlike that at Guantanamo and George Bush creation of an enemy combatant status. With the proliferation of the 4th generation warfare doctrine establishing the presedence of enemy combatant status facilatates the use of crimes against humanity in the suppression of resistance. As well this is facilatated by a non-violence movement that devalues the lifes of those they see as violent.

 

Elizabeth Parenti Soba 

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:39 | link | comments (1) |

DLC remains one of Bush's most important ally!

          "Resolved that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, president of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans within the United States without obtaining the court orders required." Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution to Censure President Bush

             Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said he had not read it (the censure resolution) either and wasn't inclined simply to scold the president.

    "I'd prefer to see us solve the problem," Lieberman told reporters.

      Remember that Sen. Lieberman, former chair of the DLC (Democractic leadership council) was one of those who voted without perpose against Judge Alito after having failed to support the filibuster that would have stoped his nomination from going forward; only 41 votes where needed to substain the filibuster and the day after it failed 42 votes where cast to late against Alito. Now Joe Lieberman wants a "solution" to the concerns over warrantless wiretaps and other parts of the presidents domestic spy program that does not call for accountability.

        This is a basic concern with the DLC control over democratic party policies at a time when a growing number of americans want to see the president held accountable for his actions against the Constitution that have caused death and despair world wide. Many people are calling for the presidents impeachment, but for many that means only removing George Bush from office, and for the democratic leadership council it means regaining the White House without any major change in the policies the american people do not support but corporate america does.

           The patriot's campaign to restore constitutional democracy calls for the war to end, for the president to be impeached in order to be held accountable for his crimes and for braking the DLC control of the democratic party. As the DLC remains behind the seens it is a very difficult target to single out politically, our answer has been to connect it to an anti-corporate personhood petition asking locale city councils to banned corporate donations to political campaigns;

Where as; corporate funded entities such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the Progressive Policy institute and the Project for the New American Century have eroded the traditional two party system.

I recommend the following site for understanding more about the corporate personhood issue

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

     Since the petition is being circulated in a "Dillon's rule" state it is very likely that it will be challenged under dillon's rule before the concerns with corporate personhood is addressed in higher courts, giving time and potential to expand the campaign into at least one "Home Rule" state.  A useful article on Dillon's rule is suggested below;

 

http://www2.trincoll.edu/~bgermano/

 

Have to head off now, anyone interested in beging a locale petition drive feel free to contact me. dead_rose_rising@yahoo.com

 

Elizabeth

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:46 | link | comments |

More on The progressive Policy Institute

       I wanted to get back to my work today, which involves the patriots campaign to restore constitutional democracy. To remind readers The progressive Policy institute, once billed as Bill Clintons Idea mill and yet having many ties with the neo-con think tank "Project for the new american century" which has strong ties to the Bush administration. The PPI shares office space with the Democratic leadership council and it's staff of senoir fellows produce BluePrint the official publication of the DLC. Below is the staff bio of one senoir fellow Fred Siegel;

Fred Siegel is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. He handles urban policy and politics with an emphasis on developing innovative strategies to revitalize cities and municipal government. Dr. Siegel is currently a professor of history and humanities at The Cooper Union in Manhattan. In addition to his weekly column in the New York Post, he is a frequent contributor to publications such as The New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Tikkun, and Commonwealth. A former fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Siegel has been a campaign advisor to numerous Democratic candidates and to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

      I found it somewhat disturbing that A major shaper of urban policy for the democratic party had been a campaign advisor to republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. New York had nearly a million homeless people living on the street. This sizable portion of New Yorks population were driven underground by brutal policies Mayor Giuliani employed. Under these policies Homelessness became a crime, and it became police policy to check homeless shelters on deadly cold nights for those with outstanding warrants for vagrancy. This policy forced homeless people away from life saving shelter into life threatening cold. Homeless people disappeared from new york streets, and when a million people or displaced by such a brutal campaign there can be no doubt many disappeared into the morgue.

       Following in the same path is an article Fred Siegel wrote for PPI support of racist dutch politician  Geert Wilders entitled Letter from Amsterdam

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?contentid=253257&knlgAreaID=128&subsecid=187

       It gives a fairly clear understanding were Fred is coming from, justifying hate politics with an attack on social services.

 

Elizabeth Parenti Soba 

      

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 19:28 | link | comments |

Association of Military Professional's

          For those who have not read ten days that shock the world the largest question facing insurrectionist is how to out gun an imperial size military. One of the key to the bolshivics success was that the St Petersberg revolt was supported by a sizable contigent from the near by naval barracks. A short time before I had joined the party thier had been a failed attempt to establish a trade union in the navy. Understanding union politics is difficult in the US were only yellow unions are allowed. Yellow refers to the social democratic ideal of a trade union that barters for a better share of the pie, whereas a red union is one attempting to gain control of the means of production. The failed union attempt was a yellow union that, had it been successful, would have, perhaps, gained some better wages and more individual liberties (like growing ones beard).

          The Association of Military professional's was proposed by my self to the central committee based on the dialectic that any attempt at armed struggle would need to be consistant with revolutionary progress and not inconsistent with contenued growth and survival. It was based on the concept that a member of the military was not a wage laboror but was a professional, expressing a truth based on an outh into the world. As a military professional myself I understood that all Soldier's Sailors and Marines within the US were pledge by an outh of service to defend the US constitution and to obey appropriate orders given by lawful superriors, appropriate in this case assuming they are consistent with upholding the constitution. The Focus of AMP was the defence of the constitution, in itself a potential revolutionary goal in the face of the threat it faced from then Reagan and now Bush administrations.

            Membership in the AMP was $5.00 and included a subscription to a newsletter Written by myself, Old, with some additional articles cut by Lisa A from other publications. Outreach was done by leafletting cars in post exchange parking lots, and with free copies left available at appopriate places on naval bases. 

         Like many fairly sound and aggressive campaigns begun by field cadre, it was eventually sabotaged by NOC which controled it's treasury. The bases for closing down AMP was that it had attracted too much attention, thier had been something of an attack on me at Fort Drum, a military base in upstate new york. I had heard that another cadre working with the military had some difficulty in Frankford and may have gone AWOL as a result. Some work still contenued and I will try to cover that on another day. 

 

Elizabeth Parenti Soba  

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 18:25 | link | comments |

Five Days in Quebec City

      I am going to present matereal today that is not my own, but an account from one of Ice Gnomon's affinity group during the FTAA protest in quebec city a few years back. I do this for a number of reasons, one is that the account might help some former cadre understand the connection between Ice and myself. As well I can see this as a possible bridge between movements. Many former Cadre, as well as many anarchist might recognize Ice, who in Quebec was using the name "Rag Dawg".

"Live From Quebec City, Day One

 

Hi!!

Well, I picked my brains for friends who might be excited about where I am and what I’m doing (or at least friends who wouldn’t think I'd gone stark raving mad), and guess whose names I came up with? 

     I’m in Quebec City, protesting the FTAA!  Me and a van of 7 quite hippie looking people actually made it across the border, although _how_ we did that is a very amusing story unto itself, but one which I’m going to stay away from now.  We’re staying at the home of a fantastic French speaking family, right on the St. Lawrence River.  Yesterday we went downtown and hooked up with all the other protesters (thousands of them).  In the evening we marched from the University to near the security perimeter, amidst drums and chants in French, English, and Spanish. It started small (1000 or so?), but grew with each passing block, as people came down from their houses to join us.  Amazing.  And today?  We’ll see. 

     Why on earth have I started protesting?  Well, I wasn’t going to, but then I made the plan-altering decision to read the official FTAA website, and by the end I was so distressed that I couldn’t _not_ go.  Don’t worry, I’m not planning on getting arrested, teargassed, or beaten up.  Hopefully, I'll have other news to tell you, but I just wanted _someone_ to know I was here, because no one else does, except two of my roommates who came along.  Right now I have to get ready to catch the ferry, but I'll try to write again later.  I hope all is well with you.  I'll see you.

love from Canada

 

Live From Quebec City, Day 2

 

    Wow.

 

     So, I don’t know what the media is saying, but here’s my side of it.  It has been one of the most amazing days of my entire life.  (Oh, and the FTAA is the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a western hemisphere version of NAFTA, which I’m opposed to because, among other things, it allows corporations to sue governments if, for example, that government’s environmental or labor laws are hurting that company’s profits.  The company can claim discrimination and obstruction of 'fair' trade. ) 

     The group I came up with call ourselves Niagara Fallout, because we crossed the border at Niagara Falls, posing as tourists, since the border was tightened because of the protests.  Since we decided in the (mostly) unlikely event we get arrested not to give our names, we’ve been going by (don’t laugh) Peacespeaker (that’s me!), Fish (Poisson), Rag Dawg, Annie Tree, Wave, Mystery, and Sub Commindante Ho-Ho.  Since we’re different in what sort of actions we want to do, we split up today, and Annie Tree and I joined the Living River, which was organized by Starhawk.  (_The_ Starhawk, who’s in my Oxford Dictionary of World Religions under 'neopaganism'.)  It was amazing.  It was exactly what I wanted to do. [Hmm, first let me tell you a little about “protest etiquette,” as backdrop to the whole thing.   There are green, yellow, and red places/actions.  Green is a place or activity where there’s no (or very little) risk of arrest, either because there’s a permit for it or it’s away from trouble (in this case, the fence).  Yellow is a place /action where there’s some risk, often because of supporting red actions, or doing peaceful civil disobedience.  And red is where people are very willing to risk arrest, through civil disobedience or, at this protest, storming the fence and trying to bring it down, which let me just say made the cops very unhappy.] 

          I was in the blue bloc, which was Starhawk’s version of the red, the people who were willing to risk arrest doing civil disobedience, even go through the fence if we could (although no one there was pondering _making_ the hole…), but the really wonderful thing for me was that no one in the group was angry, and everyone was _very_ peaceful.   So what happened was, we were marching in a green zone and we got word that the anarchists had brought down part of the fence.  Our group split into those willing to go near and those who wished to stay green, and so I found myself marching beside Starhawk up the hill towards the perimeter.  When we got several blocks away, we started meeting people running down the hill, eyes clenched shut from teargas, which was a frightening image.  We helped people who we could by flushing out their eyes with water, and then continued on, taking up the chant “Hold on, hold on, hold the vision, ‘til it’s born,” which at the time was so powerful because it gave hope in a frightening, disheartening situation.  We would stop and chant and spiral dance, and then move closer, and stop and do it again, and each time more and more people joined us.  So many people joined us, and some of them were crying (no, not from teargas J), because in the midst of a lot of anger and bitterness and frustration we were singing a message of hope and encouragement.  It was tremendously moving.  By the time we got about a block away, even the anarchist drum corps had joined in, and every time someone came up to me and asked if they could join the circle, I knew I was helping make a difference, even if a small one.  There was a man there, an Anglican Deacon named Dave, in long white robes, and he and I were both chanting at the top of our lungs, completely dedicated to the moment, which was more powerful than anything I’ve experienced in a long time.  So, perhaps we had been chanting for forty-five minutes or an hour, and the circle kept getting bigger and bigger, and I don’t know where it would have stopped, except that all of a sudden, with no warning at all, I felt like there was a rod down my throat, and I couldn’t take a breath, and my eyes were burning and tearing, and so chanting was completely out of the question.  I didn’t think I'd get teargassed, especially not there, but there it was.  It was pretty intense, and quite painful.  I doubled over, trying to see, as I heard and felt people scattering around me, and it was then that I learned the importance of a buddy.  Annie Tree, who had goggles on and could see, grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out of there.  I was so happy that she didn’t abandon me that I almost got more teary eyed than I already was.

     Anyway, we regrouped a small distance away, and some people helped me flush my eyes with water, and told me to swish some in my mouth and spit it out, and then I was okay, except that where my tears had run down my face, my skin burned in tracks.  In a way, I felt sort of glad I got to have the experience, although it seemed a bit unfair that they’d gas us, since we weren’t doing anything wrong.  That was the worst I’ve had so far.  Tomorrow may be more intense.  I wanted to take up our chant again, since it seemed to have such a heartening effect on people, but we fell back.  Tomorrow we are planning on doing it again. 

    After that I got back together with my affinity group, and we went to where Food Not Bombs was (graffiti park, under a big overpass) to get dinner.  They give it out for free to all the protesters, which I think is amazing.  After that I paired up with Rag Dawg and went to the fence again, to where a bunch of people had gathered.  Shortly after we got there they started shooting teargas over the fence at everyone, but it was not extremely aggressive.  They would fire some, and the crowd would fall back, and then there would be a lull and the crowd would come forward again, and then they would lob some more, etc.  He and I stayed as close to the fence as we could, just watching and talking.  There was a line of cops outside the fence, and I went near them, just so amazed to be facing a line of cops in full riot gear that I couldn’t even find it in myself to be nervous.  For their part, the cops were amazingly outnumbered (20,000 or so protesters today, and it’s not even the weekend), and clearly tense and ready, but they didn’t make a move, even though some anarchists threw a few rocks and bottles. I got a lot of teargas in the hour we were there.  At one point I was standing about three or four feet from Rag Dawg, and I have the image frozen in my brain, of looking down and seeing a teargas canister come to rest right under his feet.  Even though it was painful, it’s easy to avoid the worst of it, because it moves slowly and you can see it coming.  Even in the air after they’ve been fired, the canisters make a slow lazy arc that’s easy to follow and predict.  And, believe me, I’m learning about what to do when you get teargassed.  I wear an orange bandana around my neck, which when I pull it up shows either a smiling face or a gagged face behind a fence.  So far I’ve always worn the smiley.  In the daytime I had it soaked with lime juice and apple cider vinegar, both of which help, but at night I'd run out and just had to breath through the bandana and my hand.  In my pocket, eye drops, lemon peel, and water, water, water.  I have a blue rain poncho, and my hair is up under a long blue scarf wrapped around my head like a turban.  My old boots had holes the size of silver dollars in them, so right before I left I got some new ones secondhand, and I call them my `revolution boots`, black lace up scaled down versions of combat boots.  Strange for me.  Add to that a (real) CMAQ press pass, for the people’s press, and a (semi-legal) FTAA press pass, and my camera, and you have what I look like these days.  It’s pretty laughable, but I like it. 

     Hanging around the CMAQ press room, we’ve been able to hear a lot of news right as is comes in, and in some cases we’ve _been_ the news, as Mystery carried a video camera for them today, and Poisson has been working for them.  There are rumors of some cops taking off their gear and joining the protesters, although I don’t know how true that is.  On the other side, a volunteer medic told me his partner got hit with a teargas canister as they were trying to treat someone, so who knows.  If my pictures come out, they might be really good.  There’s black and white film in my camera, and today I shot different pictures of the scenes on the streets, and also two close-ups - a young anarchist with a colander strapped to her head, which sounds funny but was very moving, and Mystery on the ground being treated for teargas by a medic in a gas mask.  Don’t get your hopes up, but there’s potential. 

     So, that’s my version of the Quebec City protests.  It may get much more serious tomorrow, but I promise I'll be careful.  Thank god the teargas doesn’t set off my asthma, and the police have promised they won’t use pepper spray, so I should be okay.  If there’s an FTAA protest near you guys, go!!  Almost every native Québecian (non-protester) that we pass on the street or outside their home waves and smiles and gives us the thumbs up.  There may only be 20,000 protesters, but there are many, many more sympathizers. It’s very encouraging.  I don’t think most people want the FTAA, or the WTO, or any sort of large corporate international rule-making.  You may think it’s hopeless to oppose it, but something has happened to make me think that’s not true.  A few weeks ago I was talking to Alexis about activism, telling him that maybe the reason I was never an activist was because I didn’t truly believe things could change, and he said that in his experience, the people who feel the most hopeless and cynical usually aren’t acting.  If you act, he said, those feelings will go away.  I’m beginning to see the truth of his words.  Power to the people!

I’ve got to go take a shower, as I’m writing this still reeking of teargas, but if I have any time I'll write more.  I hope you are all well.  Take care, and I promise to, too.  bye for now

From the Flueve dé Saint Lawrence,

Peacespeaker

 

Live From Quebec City, Day 3

 

                This one’s delayed a bit, `cause last night I came home exhausted, scared, and with my clothes and skin contaminated from a teargas much worse than what they were using Friday, but I’m up early today, `cause I want to tell you guys my stories while they’re still fresh in my mind.  Last night we checked the news, though.  CNN, ABC, NBC, and the New York Times, and we were amazed.  We were on the front page of everything, and they actually gave us coverage that was fairy accurate, and not unfavorable.  There was much rejoicing.

I don’t know how much time I’m going to have to write, so I'll try to make it brief.  We started yesterday in a HUGE march.  The news says 30,000 or so.  I'd say, at least, but probably more.  There were 25,000 union workers alone, without even counting the environmentalists, students, and anarchists.  The main march went nowhere near the fence, but even so, all the marchers were subjected to teargas wafting down from the hill.  Old ladies and kids even were walking through it as they marched, which is kinda sad in one way, but maybe helped people who wouldn’t otherwise have felt it to find sympathy for what protesters (not all of whom were destructive in the slightest) near the fence were going through.  

     The march, as planned by protesters, split into two groups early on, with the main group heading away from the fence, and others heading up to it.  I was with the living river again, and we had to make a choice what to do, which was difficult, because we knew that things were going to be very intense up by the fence.  It took a long time to decide, but in the end we went up.  And it was intense to say the slightest, although I never even got near most of it.  As we were walking up I got my first real whiff of the new teargas, and even those few faint breaths were enough to affect me so much that I had to walk with my eyes shut tightly, supported by my friend, or suffer intense pain.  It was a frightening experience. 

                So, here is what the living river did.  One of our scouts brought us news that there was a breach in the fence near us, and so we went there, and it was at the end of a narrow alley, with rows of riot police and a large armored vehicle guarding the hole, and what could without too much imagination be called a potentially angry mob in the alleyway and outside it.  We decided to do what the river does best, and try to change the energy of the place to a more peaceful one, so with Starhawk right in the front we walked right down the alley to where the police were, drumming and singing.  At that point, I was terrified, even though I was holding hands with Annie Tree on one side, and Poisson (who’d materialized out of the crowd) on the other.  All the cops came out from behind the fence and formed rows facing us, about 10 feet away, and an extreme tension was palpable in the air.  I was in the 4^th row of people, and I knew that if the cops decided to come at us, or gas us, I'd have absolutely nowhere to go.  If that had happened I could have been in the hospital right now and not here writing this, but it didn’t.  Instead, we indicated to the cops our peaceful intent, and slowly, just singing our “Hold on, hold on.  Hold the vision ‘til it’s born” chant, things actually started to calm down.  The protesters who were there when we got there started to join in, and the angry chants (in French) against the state died down.  But the police weren’t convinced.  I’m glad I didn’t see this, or I would have been scared far worse than I was, but Poisson told me one of the cops had his finger on the pin of a gas canister, ready to throw it at us.  He didn’t, though.  What happened instead was that at that moment everyone just sat down.  It was amazing.  Just sat down on the ground, which had a tremendous effect on the tension.  There was a lot of ohming, and humming, and the police relaxed, and we all relaxed, and then there was almost absolute silence, and I thought, wow, we did this.  It’s totally different in here than 10 minutes ago.  People all around were making the peace sign at the cops, and smiling, and it was really a wonderful feeling, a little oasis in the midst of chaos.  And then we had the declaration we carry with us, against the privatization of water, read in French to the police by some people who had already been in the alley when we got there, which was unexpected and heartening.  I wish you guys could have been there. 

                So _then_, just when things seemed really good, a brick came flying out of the crowd behind us, and hit the cops.  Things could have gone really badly then, but all the people in the front of the alley turned around and shouted, “No!  Peace!,” and the cops (copious blessings on them J) didn’t move, and things went back as they had been.  So we sat there for a while, and then we just quietly got up and left, and went to do the same thing at the next fence breach down the street.  And it was very cool, when we came out into the alley into the main crowd, even _they_ were unusually quiet and calm, making peace signs, not shouting against the police.  It really felt like what we were doing made a difference. And it was where I wanted to be, right near the fence, but with people committed to getting their message across without anger.  So we had a little party there, and sang and danced and drummed, and life was good. (grin) 

                I had to meet my affinity group for dinner, so I didn’t go with the river, but I heard they did the same thing at the next breach, so that’s really good.  After dinner some people stayed at the CMAQ (people’s press) office, which has been our main base of operation, to help them with news, some people went down to a street party, and Dawg and Annie Tree and I went to see what was happening at the fence.  We walked up the street to where Dawg and I had been the night before, and we could see that up ahead the police were using a water cannon, but we went a bit closer, and then they started gassing the hell out of that area, so we decided to turn back and go elsewhere; but then the road behind us started getting gassed, too.   At that point we thought they were going to close in and arrest us all, and we decided we didn’t want to be arrested for just standing around.  Dangit, if we’re going to get arrested, we’re going to get arrested DOING something.  So we cut down a side street and down some stairs, and headed back to the CMAQ office.  But as we approached there was major commotion there, and tear gas.  We went closer, and cops were at the top of a long stairway above the office (the same stairway we’d walked up with no problem 10 minutes before) throwing teargas down it.  There were a bunch of angry people at the bottom of the stairs, and we joined them, chanting my favorite French chant, "So so so, solidarité!"  Solidarity.  We thought they might be going to raid the CMAQ office, which would have been awful, because they are committed to telling it like they see it, which is very valuable.  A bunch of volunteer medics came down the stairs then, with their hands up, asking the crowd to be calm so they didn’t get gassed on the stairs, which are long and very steep.  I was terrified, a common feeling for yesterday, but I probably would have stayed to show my support for CMAQ, but I got overcome by teargas.  That new stuff is terrible.  Annie Tree wears goggles, and Dawg used to be in the marines and so doesn’t even feel the stuff, but I have no eye protection and can’t handle it at all.  Dawg took me to the CMAQ door, and they drug me inside blind and got a medic to flush out my eyes.  I was stuck there for a while then.  The medics all came in and started using the lobby to treat people.  The CMAQ people were guarding the door and only letting in people who needed help medically.  Thank God, Mystery and Poisson were there too.  Poisson was helping CMAQ, and Mystery had, like me, been overcome by teargas.  He had collapsed outside the office door. 

                We got the word then that the standoff was over and the office wasn’t going to be raided.  They were letting people leave, so believe me, we did.  Annie Tree and Dawg were outside the door still, so we grabbed them, found the rest of our people at the street party in the park, and decided it was time to go.  The city was descending into angry madness fast.  We figured we’d proven out point, and to protest more tomorrow when things were calmer.  I mean, I’m here to have my voice heard, not to get my ass completely kicked.  Annie Tree and Sub Commindante Ho-Ho did decide to come back, and this morning they told us things got really bad.  The cops teargassed the party, which really makes me mad because those people weren’t doing anything wrong, and apparently there were fires everywhere in the street, and many people very angry.  There’s a rumor that a protestor got killed by a rubber bullet, but I don’t know if it’s true. 

                So, there ends day 3.  Today is our last day here.  I might go with the river again, if they’re out, because I like what they’re doing, or try to find the Anglican Dave (easy to spot in his priest robes), because I keep running into him and he’s always doing something to rally people to solidarity.  I hope things aren’t worse than yesterday, in terms of violence.  Yesterday was hard.  Anyway, I’m alive and I plan on staying that way.  I'll probably stay out of jail, too.  Just the teargas, which is ubiquitous.  I love the smell of teargas in the morning!  And afternoon, and evening….

                Thanks for being my ear to bounce this stuff off of.  I will get back to you when I can.  Lots of love your way.  Take good care.

Peacespeaker

 

Quebec City Update

 

Hey everyone, we're leaving Canada this morning.  We’re all safe, no one got arrested, and we all feel good about our time here.  I'll write you all the rest when I get home. 

Love,

Peacespeaker

 

Quebec, Day 4 and Aftermath

 

                Hey all.

     Well, I'm back in Virginia, in one piece.  I feel a little ill and my throat hurts like crazy, but other than that I'm fantastic.  So, before I forget it all, here's the rest of the story:

     Sunday morning we got up pretty late, since Annie Tree and Sub. Comdt. Ho-Ho had stayed in the city ‘til 3am.  The stories they told were of cops gassing everyone everywhere, and fires in the streets (one in graffiti park as big as a house).  We went to graffiti park 1st, 'cause Annie Tree called Starhawk and she clued us in of a meeting there.  When we arrived, it was in progress, a group of people discussing tactics for the day, which included 2 main parts - a big cleanup effort organized by the Sierra Club ('cause our gripe was with the FTAA and the fence, not the city, and besides, it was Earth Day) and a jail solidarity action outside the prison where they were keeping arrested activists.  Graffiti park was weird.  It looked a lot better than we expected, as did most of the city.  In fact, the damage was actually pretty minimal, a lot less than what I thought we’d see.  Just lots of amazing graffiti all over the streets.  But on the Food Not Bombs shelter someone had spraypainted an account of the cops raiding them (at 6am that morning) and arresting half the cooks.  "Go to the prison," it said.  "If you liked our food, you'll love our bail hearings." 

     Our group split up, and Annie Tree went to clean, Poisson went to help at the (unraided!!) CMAQ office, and the rest of us put as many activists as we could in our van and drove out to the prison, about 20 minutes outside of the city.  The police there let us in the compound, and directed us where to park.  There were a bunch of people there, and they had vowed to have a force there until everyone was released.  We drummed and danced and chanted in the parking lot, and at first they had two lines of cops facing us, but after a while they chilled out and the cops just sort of milled around, keeping an eye on us.  We weren't a very threatening crowd, just loud as hell.  Every five minutes or so we would scream and cheer as loudly as we could for the people inside, and bang on every available surface, hoping they could hear us and know we were supporting them.  And while we were there they were actually releasing people, and those people told us that yes, they could hear inside, which just spurred us on.

     Our group stayed for the afternoon, and then decided to go see how the cleanup was going.  We had extra room in out van, and we wound up driving three other people home - a guy from the jail support crowd, a released prisoner (unrelated to the protest) that we picked up on the onramp, and Ben from Toronto, a released protester who told us his story.  He was a fantastic guy, and everyone in our group really liked him a lot.  He was young, and had short black curly hair and an innocent face.  He'd been picked up Friday night, as he was walking away from a group of police.  He wasn't doing anything wrong, he claimed, and I am inclined to believe him.  His problem was that he looked the part - black clothes, gas mask, big sign reading "This is what democracy looks like."  They hit him from behind and threw him in a bus for a few hours, with his hands tied behind his back.  Then he went into a holding cell where he stayed alone until Sunday morning, when they threw a bunch of people in with him.  _Those_ people had had it really bad.  They'd been on busses all night with no food or water or bathrooms, and near enough the teargas that they were all affected, but couldn't do anything about it.  A lot of people, it seems, had that happen to them.  We heard another story about a photographer from Time magazine who got arrested and kept in conditions he called worse than third world.  We are all very pleased knowing that this guy is gonna raise hell, and has the media voice to do it.  Anyway, our friend Ben was given one bologna sandwich a day, and some water.  He was _so_ happy to be out that he just kept thanking us profusely over and over.  He seemed amazingly malice free, considering his weekend, and he said that he's been to Quebec City many times before, and it's really a great city, and we should see it some other time.  When we dropped him off he hugged every one of us.  I actually kinda miss that guy.

     After that we regrouped, and some of us wanted to go up to the fence.  It was so strange up there.  Seeing it, I got really sad, in a weird way.  It was so _quiet_.  The cops were still there, but they were out of riot gear, and it was the strangest thing, being able to see their faces after staring down masks for 3 days.  The "normal" people of Quebec had come out of hiding, and were milling around, tourists at the aftermath.  I thought, "It's over," and part of me was saying, "no, it's NOT over.  All these people think it is, but the FTAA is still going on, and so is the opposition to it."  It was a huge coming down from stress.  Maybe this is a poor analogy, but I always get sad after final exams are over, and this was like that.  Post-stress depression. 

     We walked near the fence, right up to it.  Part of me kept expecting to get teargassed again, just for being so close, but all that was over.  Near us two Quebecians were peering through the fence.  A police officer walked up to them and handed something to them through the fence, saying "souvenir."  It was the firing cartridge to a teargas canister.  I wasn't mad, really, but a strange feeling came over me, like how can it be a souvenir when it hurt so many people?  I've been hearing more and more in the aftermath, and one of Dawg's friends had her leg fractured, 'cause the cops started firing teargas canisters _right at_ people, instead of up into the air.  Everyone got so mad, it became about hurting one another.  The guy we’d heard rumors was dead wasn’t, or isn’t yet, but he had to have an emergency tracheotomy when he was hit in the neck with a rubber bullet.  So for some people things were really bad, and we are all aware that it could have been us.  Anyway, we were standing there, and it was very clear we _weren't_ tourists.  I still had my bandana around my neck, soaked in cider vinegar, and a big anti-FTAA pin on my coat, and Dawg was dressed like he always does, in bold red and black, anarchist colors.  And a cop came over to where we were standing, and he looked at us, and we looked back.  And nothing at all was said, but he silently slid a firing cartridge to Wave through the fence.  It was like a moment out of time for me.  In some ways it felt like a weird peace offering, as twisted as that may sound.  We all just looked at each other, mildly, and then we all walked away.

    

     We went home to our hosts' house, and Mystery and Wave cooked a huge dinner.  We'd been living off junk food and Food Not Bombs "teargas soup" all weekend, and it felt great to all sit down together and have a fantastic meal.  Our hosts are the nicest people in the world, and we all told stories in French and English of what we had been through, watching the lights along the St. Lawrence River.  Camaraderie abounded.  It was wonderful, though I was still feeling a twinge of sorrow.  We really became close to each other, through shared experience.  The only person who was unable to share it all with us then was Dawg.  He has multiple personalities, and he had been keeping up his tough face all that time, and after it was over he went into his soft innocent selves.  He didn't remember anything.  He had been the one who led me to the CMAQ office when I couldn't see, and he stuck with me when teargas was landing all around us, and he helped us be ready always to get out of tough situations, and at dinner we were talking about teargas, and he looked at me and asked, very quietly, "did it hurt?"  "Yeah," I said.  Ho-Ho asked him, "do you remember?"  "No," he replied.  "And is that okay?" Ho-Ho asked, and Dawg said it was, Ho-Ho and I held him for a while, and I loved Dawg with all my heart right then.  I'm awfully glad he's my friend.

     The next morning, we drove home.  The border crossing was as easy as could be.  I was driving, and the customs woman asked, how many were travelling with us, and I said 7.  "Where have you been?" she asked, and I smiled my biggest smile at her and said "Quebec City."  "Are there really 7 people in there?" she asked, peering in at us.  When she had assured herself that it was true, she waved us through.  We didn't cheer like we had on the way in, but we were very happy. 

     So, that's it.  We got in at 3am and our house was still standing.  Then we went to sleep.  I am so glad I went to this protest, I can't even tell you.  My feelings of hopelessness are melting away, and I am ready to help Alexis work on Trade Local, his project here of teaching consumers how to put their money where their conscience is.  I'm not entirely sure yet, but this may have been a pivotal point in my life.  Annie Tree had her tarot deck there, and just for fun I asked the question "What card best represents me now, having been through this weekend?" and I pulled one.  I kid you not, the description of that card was the "crusading activist." 

 Power to the people. :) "

That is the end of the account.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

posted by: EzizabethParentiSoba at 14:40 | link | comments |

Patriots Campaign to restore constitutional democracy

   I will be trying to get more blogging done this week. As some of you know I have been in the hospital for a few weeks due to my PTSD. Despite this the rally I was involved in organizing came off well and follow-up has begun. For those who where involved in the Committee to defend the constitution some of the theory of this campaign will be familier. The rally is was based in part on a position paper I wrote that was endorsed by the core group of CAGE (Citizens Against Global Exploitation) which I will post today, and through the week I will post other documents involved in the locale campaign.

Elizabeth Parenti Soba

Formula to end the War As proposed By CAGE Citizens against Global Exploitation.

 

          I want to make clear that what I am writing hear is not about principle or Justice, but neither does it exclude them. I am thinking more about what actions will serve those of us whose world vision today hangs like a phantom mist around the nightmare world the current administration and it's loyal opposition have created and continue to create into the reality we are all forced to live with. Voting Bush out and replacing him with a democratic candidate carefully selected and promoted by the corporate controlled will not manifest a new or different world vision. To effectively end not just the war, but the imperialistic corporate expansion, we must link any call to end the war to both an impeachment campaigned aimed at the Bush administration and an independent investigation into the co-optation of the two party system by the Democratic Leadership Council.

         

         In terms of impeachment, at this stage we are very close to being in the same historic position as in the case of Watergate, or even historically behind. Like Nixon was then Bush is now already begun his second and last term as president, he is in fact rapidly approaching a successful completion of more of his presidency than Nixon was able to achieve, if success is measured only by his time in office. Nixon's Vice president Spiro Agnew was forced to resign, in part because a speech he gave prior to the Kent state massacre inspired the national guard to shoot into the mass of unarmed protesters. The slow process of impeachment, with damage control provided by his new press secretary George Bush Senior, allowed Nixon to recruit moderate republican Gerald Ford to be selected to replace Nixon as an unelected President of the United States of America. It later became clear that this was in exchange for an unprecedented unconditional pardon. This pardon did not omit or specify any crime but wrote a  retroactive black check pardoning Nixon for any crimes he may or may not have committed during his tenure as US President. After a brief public debate of only a few days the supreme court and the Senate decided they could not challenge this overt cover-up of the presidents crimes. In less than six years Reagan was president, with George Bush senior as his vice president and many former Nixonites in his administration, including the vice president. Many members of the Current administration can trace their political careers back to the Nixon white house.

       To move forward I want to suggest that we begin a mass call for the resignation of Vice president Chaney, with the understanding that any nominee put forth to replace him must be challenged tooth and nail and no vice president most be allowed to take office until the President is out of office or impeachment procedures are well underway. We are taking it for granted that the President's lying to justify the war in Iraq, his profiteering through corporations such as Haliburton, Dynacorp and the Cargile group, and his responsibility for the torture of individuals in Iraq, Cuba and Afghanistan constitute crimes against both the United states people and humanity across the world that justify his impeachment and a trial, perhaps in world court that must follow for the principles of democracy to be served.

         This cannot succeed as long as the corporate controlled neo-liberal DLC controls the policies of the democratic party. The  DLC post-mortem of the 2000 election was that he chanted populism and erred in speaking critically of Oil, HMO, Insurance and drug companies, an analysis that excludes concerns of voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio. Continuing to attribute all democratic losses to candidates being to far to the left the DLC push toward centrist neo-liberalism prevents any real opposition to the neo-conservative policies of the past 3 republican administration. We the people of america must no longer allow ourselves to be lied to by the illusion of a two party system controlled by neo-conservatives on the on