Part 1: Introduction”…subjects having no law but the will of their master, and their master no restraint but his passions, all notions of good and all principles of equity again vanish.”– Jean Jacques Rousseau, [“A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men,” by Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1754, Translated by G. D. H. Cole, Second Part.]
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I am an Anarchist. This means that I believe that authority,What does the Government have to Fear of the People? Articles or all non-defensive forms of coercion, are antagonistic towards the public good. When it comes to politics, this means that I am a Libertarian; I advocate a social order that allows for the greatest amount of personal independence, a system where the laws are determined wholly by the people. Of course there will be insults to the decision-making ability of the common people. But, it is only the people who can be trusted to look after their own interests genuinely. It’s not really a question of who is more capable, more intelligent, or more willing — in fact, these are all wonderful characteristics of famous leaders throughout history, but it was their exceptional skill which allowed them to oppress their people effectively. The question of politics is a matter of who determines the law. Is it the people, the ones who the law is made for, or is it the governors, those who always find themselves avoiding the penalties of crime simply by their position? We must be free of any and all political tyrants. They are the persons who abuse the good will of the people and manipulate the flow of information, only that they may build their own personal greatness on the suffering of the multitudes.
When it comes to the issue of commerce, trade, and the economy, being an Anarchist means I am a Socialist. A political authority that bans literature, imprisons dissidents, and murders the innocent is a threat to the common people of society. It is equally unjust when an economic authority pays so little to the workers that they must work sixteen hours shifts, hiring their children to sacrifice their life and limbs operating dangerous machinery. What is it that makes an economic or political authority? One is made an authority when they possess the ability to coerce others to their whim. All oppressive, totalitarian authorities use force as a method of gaining the compliance of the masses. Under threat, people are required to change their behaviors so that nothing they do can harm or otherwise change the system. A political authority’s strength lies in the ability to imprison or kill. It is recognized immediately as a threat. An economic authority, however, will compel society to its wishes by threatening the same thing: if you do not adhere to our demands, you will not be given money, and you will therefore not be able to purchase the necessities of life.
The force behind both political and economic authorities then is distinctly violent and cruel in nature. For those who are in control, the only goal they can have is the maintenance and development of their power. And this translates to creating masterful, new systems of social control. The greater the compulsion, the stronger the authority.
I believe in the abolition of authority and the removal of those who victimize the people. This is the definition of an Anarchist.
Part 2: People Need the Government”Man’s greatest battles have been waged against man-made obstacles and artificial handicaps imposed upon him to paralyze his growth and development. Human thought has always been falsified by tradition and custom, and perverted false education in the interests of those who held power and enjoyed privileges.”– Emma Goldman, [“The Place of the Individual in Society,” by Emma Goldman, sponsored by the Free Society Forum, 1940.] In nearly every public address that George Bush has given, he has used the word “terrorist” multiple times; he uses phrases like, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” or “If we stop now, the terrorists will win,” or “The United States government is constantly combating terrorism.” It’s a very rare occurrence to see the president speaking in public without using the word “terrorist” once. And since the horrible destruction that happened on September 11 of 2002, the word “terrorist” has taken on a completely new and reformed image in the hearts and minds of Americans. The 9-11 Commission investigated the matter and accused the FBI of having the fault of “…perceived legal barriers to sharing information…” [Section: “Problems in the FBI.”] From an outside perspective, this actually translates to: The intelligence agencies in the United States were all fully aware of the attacks that were going to take place on the World Trade Center. Those who held the reigns of power, however, had so much more to gain from the bombings than those terrorists could ever think they were accomplishing. While the militants and extremists started to celebrate the deaths of our children, the Bush administration and other government officials also had a reason to celebrate: now the people will become more obedient to government, they will sacrifice civil liberties for a perceived sense of justice, they will blindly follow the law — patriotism starts to flow through the veins of Americans again as the one thing necessary for oppression and tyranny rises: people having a stronger sense of needing their “protector.” There is really no excuse for what the Bush administration allowed to happen on that fateful day. A few politicians talked about “information sharing problems between intelligence agencies.” Again, more lies fed to us by our government. Is this really the first time that the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA had information about a national disaster and then did nothing? Well, there is the case of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International…”
Sen. Hank Brown was exasperated. For hours, he and Sen. John Kerry had been grilling officials of the Central Intelligence Agency about the way they had handled information they received during the 1980s on wrongdoing at BCCI, in particular evidence that the bank illegally owned Washington’s First American Bank. The CIA officials had explained to the senators that they forwarded the information to various agencies in the federal government, but conceded that somehow they had failed to pass the information about First American onto the Federal Reserve — which oversees bank ownership. To Brown, that was a significant error. ‘If you know there’s a fire, you don’t call the city manager’s office, you call the fire department,’ the Colorado Republican complained. ‘They called the city manager’s office.'” [“Dirty Money,” by Mark Potts, Nicholas Kochan, and Robert Whittington, 1992, National Press Books, First Edition, page 251.] Of course the issue of BCCI is a very complicated one. The CIA and other intelligence agencies in the United States were all well aware that BCCI was stealing billions of dollars from those who banked with them. The records that were obtained from BCCI, however, showed that the CIA was pay rolling terrorists in Third World countries — they had a vested interest in keeping the oppressive syndicate alive and well. In the end, over ten billion dollars was stolen from the public, sparking the recession of the early 1990’s. The people of Pakistan made a wise choice when they voted in the Socialist Party; an initial move of Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was the nationalization of the banking system, since it was especially rife with this kind of abuse. Among the first corporations banned from his nation was the BCCI bank. His people were saved from a rate of unemployment and joblessness that debilitated the American economy. And of course there were politicians and “representatives of the people” at this time who claimed they worked to reform “information-sharing” among the intelligence agencies.
The deaths of thousands of Americans and then ten billion dollars stolen from those who banked with BCCI. But, no, the history of government manipulating information to make people need them doesn’t start in 1980 and end in 2002. There is the case of the Pentagon Papers, which still remain largely unpublished and unavailable to the public. The intelligence agencies of the United States government promised the public that America was winning the Vietnam War; one of the promises he made to the American people was a demilitarization of the efforts in that Southeast Asian nation. Journalists from our time would recall what had happened…”…the New York Times and the Washington Post published a secret government-written history about what the government leaders really knew and thought about the Vietnam War. Buried inside these documents, which came to be called the Pentagon Papers, was the substance of what McNamara in fact had reported to the president. Things were going to hell in Vietnam. Viet Cong reinforcements were outpacing Viet Cong casualties. More American troops were going to be needed, not less. All in all, it was a complete repudiation of everything he [President Lyndon B. Johnson] had said in his two public press conferences.” [“The Elements of Journalism,” by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, Three Rivers Press, New York, Pages 36 to 37.] The Spanish American War is accepted by most historians today as a simple matter of conquest and Imperialism. It was not a matter of defending the rights of American citizens or stopping a terrorist threat. The USS Maine was parked in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, where an explosion ripped through it and killed hundreds of men. The United States government had released official reports at that time from its intelligence agencies that the explosion was caused by the Spanish, which became their justification for war. It seems a little suspicious to anyone with an eye for the scientific method; the United States government places its soldiers and troops in another country “for non-military purposes,” and the result is their destruction from a nation that has showed absolutely no aggression towards Americans? Of course, a probe later would uncover that the explosion was internal; if one were so willed to the truth and dedicated to the evidence that history has furnished, they might come to the theory that there was a bomb placed on the USS Maine by American leaders. The Bush Administration relied on bad intelligence when invading Iraq as it has admitted, but there was sharp criticism of the evidence he had been using. The history of government repeats itself: the government encourages the people to believe that they are defending their rights, that everyone has something to fear from a foreign enemy, and in the end, every time, it is always the domestic government which has been the greatest and most unrelenting enemy of the people.
The 9-11 Commission’s report was a bit historically inaccurate. In one part, it reads: “It would be able to influence the leadership and the budgets of the counterterrorism operating arms of the CIA, the FBI, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.” [Section: Unity of Effort: A National Counterterrorism Center.] One might say that the entire report is invalid if its writers truly believe this. If the CIA is truly a “counterterrorism” organization, then why do we have extensive and undeniable evidence of them pay rolling terrorists in other countries? Are bombings and executions acceptable, so long as they are inflicted only upon those who are not Americans? Does that not count as “terrorism”? The governments of the world are much more interested in pitting people against other people; if the masses ever realized who was truly threatening their culture, their society, and their way of life, all governments would be dissolved in a matter of days or weeks.
[IMAGE BY DOCTOR SUESS!!!!!!!!] Can the governments of the world be trusted? Can our faith be safely placed in to the hands of nation states? World War One was raging for years before the United States entered the battle. German forces sank the Lusitania, a luxury ship carrying nearly 1,200 passengers, many of them Americans. Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech to his people, saying, “Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle:
” [Woodrow Wilson before congress, April 2, 1917.] The American people were led in to this great world war, with the unflinching belief that there was a superpower that had threatened them and their way of life. What was neglected in all of the mainstream newspapers at that time was that the Lusitania was also carrying munitions and weapon supplies to England. The US government had involved the entire nation in a world war on the false premise that its ships weren’t being used to give military aid to England during the war. But when the government repeats over and over again, that terrorists, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Cuba, Grenada, Haiti, Guatemala, Vietnam, Korea, China, and Russia are a threat to the people of America, the citizenry is raised up in arms. Fifty thousand Americans were sent to their deaths; and they only marched willingly because the government and the mainstream media had constantly perpetuated the false notion that Germany was attacking America’s ships without cause.
The Treaty of Versailles effectively crippled and destroyed the economy of Germany, creating the perfect conditions for the rise of a militarist dictator who had less than half of the support of his own country. The sight of concentration camps, of tens of millions enslaved and executed, of governments slaughtering their people openly in the streets — all of this might have been avoided if someone was willing and strong enough to expose the lies of Woodrow Wilson. But, there were dissidents. Big Bill Haywood and over one hundred others were convicted and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment, because they promoted the truth: the idea that war is a tool of governments, to satisfy the interests of the economic and political elites, at the great cost of human life. [Siitonen, Harry (March, 2005). The IWW – Its First 100 Years. Industrial Workers of the World. URL accessed on 2006-03-31.] Once again, wartime brought with it a suspension of civil liberties and civil rights. Looking at history as it happened and not as our presidents so slyly elude to will change your perception of the world as it happens today. George Bush constantly makes references to the Patriot Act as a tool of America to defeat the enemies of its people. And, of course the title “Patriot Act” is used, because anyone who would oppose the United States fighting terrorists must not be a patriot. The games the government plays today are hardly new. In fact, they perfectly capture the activities of organized states as they have been carried out for centuries. Perhaps George Bush’s violation of personal liberties and freedoms will be enough to spark another international war — and Americans will only have to blame themselves when rain of nuclear fire strikes them, because their government involved them in a war after repeatedly lying to them and then imprisoning those who try to tell the truth.
Part 3: Opinion-Setting Campaigns”An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established; the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason…”– David Hume, “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” by David Hume, 1754.
On American currency, one can find the phrase “E Pluribus Unum,” which translated directly from Latin reads: “One out of more.” There are few phrases more worthy of describing a real Democracy, but since the Enlightenment, people have started to believe that the government was made for them and that they were not made for the government. The policy of the state has since changed, from an aggressive and enslaving tone to a sympathetic and quietly coercive manner: the orders of the state no longer carrying the seal of the church, god, and the army, but they all come with the message that the people need its government to be strong and powerful. The people, our masters tell us, need the army, the navy, the air force, the police, congress, parliament, the president, and all other authoritarian aspects of the state. People start to believe that an authority with power is the greatest tool in defeating the things which threaten their lives and their culture; few people stop to think that such a great tool will also be used against them.