Targeting the reporters

Posted on September 2, 2008 by Tony Logan

The police in the US are targeting reporters. At the Democratic Party Convention they went after the ABC reporter, and now in Minnesota at the Republican Party Convention, they have gone after the news team from Democracy Now. It is getting just plain dangerous for any citizen to hold a camera in their hand these days, especially while exercising your Right to Free Speech and filming the police as they go about their daily duty of terrorizing people.

In Iraq, the Pentagon went after al jazeera’s reporters, as they had done previously in Yugoslavia when they bombed the Yugoslav television station during that war. In the West Bank, Israel targets those who do the reporting there about the Jewish abuse of Palestinians. Israeli army targets family over brutality film

Isn’t it always the same with dictatorships? In Mexico, they do the same, also, as in Colombia and all the other US Empire’s stooge states. Is there any real difference between the US government and the Chinese government in how political dissidence is targeted by the police for elimination? Especially when there is a camera in hand alongside a pen.

Your vote just doesn’t count in the two party dictatorship

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Tony Logan

Hydra …Dictatorships have gotten wise. It is easier to run a dictatorship when you present the public with two parties instead of one. Dictatorial Power no longer resides in just one single individual in today’s dictatorship, but within one power bloc instead. The public face of today’s dictatorship is a bureaucratic assemble of hacks, not just the face of one Supremo.

Take the current American dictatorship for an example (though Mexico’s current dictatorship is run exactly the same way, and if the American public was more familiar with Mexico would be just as illustrative as the American dictatorship itself is), where dictatorial power resides in a bureaucratic assemble of a bloc of bipartisan DP-RP hacks. We shall look at the present US government drive towards war with Russia as our example.

The public face of the American dictatorship comes in condensed form through the faces of about 6 individuals; Obama, Biden, Cheney, Bush, McCain, Lieberman (very possibly the VP selection by McCain). All have been appointed more than truly elected, and all are united in the need for the US to attack Russia. Russia confronts not El Supremo but rather a six headed hydra of global business domination centered in the US.

A modern day American dictatorship is the viper we can all see publicly, but it is multi-faced, and not that of just one Gran Prepotente (Big Shot). Unfortunately, the public has a hard time truly understanding that the face of America’ modern dictatorship is truly not much different from dictatorship’s of the past, where Mr. Power Hog ruled over all.

In the past, the dictator put on a show election, but that is still how it is done today with the multi-headed Dictator Bloc, too. The show currently is in the pageantry at Denver and St. Paul. In both cases, your vote really need not be bothered to be counted, since the selection was already made for you by raw economic power, which you have none of.

Dictatorship has always resided in ownership, and today’s multi-headed hydra dictatorship for all its apparent differences with the past is no different. The dictatorship owns all; press, soldiers, police, banks, oil, money supply, jobs, the water and air your life depends on. Rebel, and they’ll take off the shirt on your back and the pants you wear, and give you those of their own which they will now own.

Well what about our example of the American dictatorship confronting Russia? It is obvious to see for all that should look and think, that the 6 headed hydra of Obama, Biden, Cheney, Bush, McCain, Lieberman all have obtained ‘consensus’ to rule just like a one headed El Supremo style dictatorship would. They are all for using the Pentagon and NATO to attack Russia. Your vote doesn’t count in the 2 party dictatorship! It’s because the America you live in is a dictatorship. Vote if it makes you feel good but don’t be under any delusions about it.

HYDRA

Russia should no longer try to appease US/NATO imperialism

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Tony Logan

Atrocity Russia and China have been trying to stay out of the line of fire by appeasing the US/NATO drive for perpetual war, but it has not worked, will not work, and cannot work. Russia should not pull its troops out of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, areas considered by the US/NATO to be part of their new country of Georgia, which the US set up at the fall of the former Soviet Union. These regions are actually full of other nationalities other than just Georgians, and have absolutely no reason to be considered Georgian property at all by the rest of the world.

Further, the whole question of what exactly should be considered Georgia territory and what should be considered territory of other peoples is not the central question in this US versus Russia conflict. Much of the area surrounding the borders of Russia, as much of Russian territory itself, is a land where multi nationalities reside. This area of world territory lies far away from American territory and outside of the US, where our corporate dictatorship located in Washington DC now wants to dictate the fates of other peoples of the world.

The Pentagon and the US government that directs it is trying to position itself to win a world nuclear war that they might potentially decide to fight against Russia and/or China, and that’s really what this current flare up of US-Russian hostilities is actually about. The American people need to stop playing stupid about this and begin to more actively oppose the war drive of our government.

Russia should stand firm against this US sponsored aggression that began way before the last round in South Ossetia. It will not serve them or us to give in to the threats of the US government and NATO at this point, since every time in the past they have done so has simply just led to more bloodshed. Our corporate dictatorship in DC does not represent the interests of the American people, nor any peoples of the world today. It threatens us all with a future unlivable planet, and continual warfare on the road to that horrifying future for Planet Earth.

How the US and Georgia violated the South Ossetia peace plan

Posted on August 13, 2008 by Tony Logan

The Russians have issued a peace plan for Georgia and the US to accept, and SURPRISE!
It’s the same peace plan that was in place before, which the US and Georgia violated by entering and attacking South Ossetia. The peace plan calls for non- aggression in South Ossetia to be monitored by peacekeeping troops. FACTBOX-Peace plan for Georgia: what is it? This peace plan is essentially the same one that the European Union has already proposed and that was already once in place.

However, it is obvious to all that the US and Georgian governments do not feel in the least obligated to abide by this plan since they have already violated it once by unilatrally sending troops into South Ossetia. Further the official US government propaganda mills in the US (the New York Times, Washington Post, George Dubya Bush, Rice, etc.) have made it clear with their continued belligerency that this attack on South Ossetia was only the beginning of the continued US government plan to now constantly attack Russia. They have no desire at all to retreat despite the human suffering their war plans are causing. They want to control the natural resources of Asia for US corporate interests and that is all that counts for them.

It seems clear that this is the new Republican plan to try to advance John McCain’s chances for entering into the White House, too, and since the Democrats share the same foreign policy goals of the Republicans they will not be able to counter the Republican offensive but will instead echo everything the Bush Administration does. The Republican plan is to simply reignite Cold War rhetoric against the nationalist capitalist regime of the country today named Russia, and to attack the Democratic Party for being supposedly weak in this campaign.

Liberal pacifists and academic Left Libertarians in the Peace Movement are also not prepared to do anything against this new neocon propaganda offensive against Russia. They also tag along with the Republicans spewing out constant anti- Chinese and anti- Russia vitriol all on their own. Their mantra has always been merely a call to equally and incessantly blame victims of US aggression alongside the blame they toss out against the US government for causing the chaos and conflict in the world today.

But how can a US Antiwar Movement be built on such a foundation like that? In fact, you hardly see these people active even going through the motions of organizing a US Antiwar Movement. It is all talk and writing for the liberal community that they are engaged in and propagandizing for, and nothing of real organizing an Antiwar Movement. By equalizing responsibility as they do, in fact they expose themselves as being US nationalists themselves despite their criticisms of the US corporate government, simply because who is to blame is not equal at all in the least.

Russia and China are now engaged by the US government in a very real war of worldwide proportions, and yet the public in the US is not even vaguely aware in the least of what their own corporate dictatorship government has planned for us all. Where will the next new fighting be started by the militarists in the White House? How can they be stopped without total disaster occurring? The future indeed does look grim.

One aspect of interest is how the US government used Georgia to muscle out the interests of all the Western European countries besides the United Kingdom This fighting has been a US power government play to mold NATO as it wants it to be molded, the Europeans be damned. See the Wall Street Journal commentary… Splits Emerge Within EU

Russia should not take any US talk of peace seriously, since the US government’s actions since the fall of the exSoviet Union have made it already clear that the US corporations merely want to beat down Russia with a big stick.

Corporate Dictatorship over the US gives Big Business a free ride

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Tony Logan

The US government has released a study done by the government itself, that declares that over 2/3 of both American and foreign corporations pay no taxes here. This is truly a robbing hood society where the working poor are forced to fund the government paid welfare that most corporations in the US feed off, and the corporate dictatorship running America gives its corporate patrons a free ride PLUS with taxes on top of getting its own welfare rip off payments from The State it controls. Most Companies In US Avoid Federal Income Taxes

Of course, you will not hear any complaints about this on the ‘news’ programs and Right Wing blabber mouth programs, as all you will hear is assholes ranting against the poor and racial minorities in poorly disguised manner. Plus, you will hear constant promotion of the incessant government military and Police State apparatuses. More welfare for the rich pigs, all the time, always is the blast of crap that is so constant these days. Just today our local Pig Paper, The Gazette, was complaining once again that so many folk want to fix the mess that is the corporate Health Lack-of-Medical Care Welfare gang the Insurance companies currently run against the American people.

Everywhere one looks, it is the corporations riding rough shod over human rights, democracy, and Social Justice. Everywhere it is the corporations destroying the ecology of Planet Earth. They pay little tax to the Corporate Dictatorship government to carry out their agenda against the American people. Instead they force their own victims to pay for this atrocity.

We need to get it together, People, and stop voting for these con artists that the corporate world gives us to ‘choose’ from. You know who they are… they are the Republican and Democratic Party politicians that foul up our national political life so thoroughly at present. It’s time to finally get fed up with these gangsters and ride them out of power for good!

Bob Bowman Take Back USA Patriot Tour

Posted on August 10, 2008 by NMT

Dr. Bob Bowman, a national security authority and former Director of Star Wars under Presidents Ford & Carter will be speaking on the topics of “The Unseen Realities in Washington D.C.” and the State of Our Nation. If you’re looking for the uncensored, little-known realities of D.C., this event will saturate you with info. Attendees will receive handouts in the form of documentaries, newspapers on topic and assorted literature.

Lotus has managed to book Bob Bowman for an appearance in Colorado Springs. Monday, Aug 11 at 7PM, at the Gay and Lesbian Center. A ten dollar donation is requested.

This from Lotus:

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, he is one of the country’s foremost authorities on national security. Colonel Bowman flew 101 combat missions as a fighter pilot in Vietnam and directed all the DoD “Star Wars” programs under presidents Ford and Carter. He has been an executive in both government and industry, and has chaired 8 major international conferences. Professor Bowman taught at 5 colleges and universities, serving as Department Head and Assistant Dean. He has lectured at the National War College, the United Nations, Congressional Caucuses, the Academies of Science of six nations, and the House of Lords. Dr. Bob Bowman ran for President in the Reform Party in 2000 and was the Democratic candidate for the US Congress from the 15th Congressional District of Florida in 2006.

Dr. Bowman will be speaking about the fact that the USA is in trouble. We’re in danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship where big government and big business combine to rule. We need to take back our country so that there will be no more undeclared wars of aggression, no more NAFTA, no more imperial presidency, no nuclear attack on Iran, no more jailing of dissidents, no more trillions in debt, no more spying on the US citizens, no more exporting of jobs, no more North American Union, no more government lies, false-flag attacks, and cover-up, no more corporate welfare, no more health plans written by insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers, no more energy policies written by Exxon and Enron. He says “Follow the Constitution, Honor the Truth, Serve the People”

Monday, August 11, 7:00 PM, Gill Foundation Building, 315 E. Costilla St, Colorado Springs

Sponsoring Organization: Journeys Through The Matrix

Is Vietnam a communist country still?

Posted on August 8, 2008 by Tony Logan

Since most liberals quite haven’t really caught up with the now ancient news that China is today a capitalist country run by a leftover Stalinist dictatorship, I thought it instructive to point out that Vietnam is not a communist country today either, and for the same reasons. Its Communist Party recently has devolved the previous revolution back into a nationalist run, counterrevolutionary capitalist class economy under Vietnamese Communist Party control and direction.

Last year foreign capitalist investment or FDI hit $20 billion, with Ford, WalMart, and other multinational firms now operating much of the economic activity there. The FDI of Vietnam just 10 years ago was less than $5 billion.

One of the tools to evaluate whether ‘communism’ exists or not is to look at the FDI in a country. Communists are people who try to abolish the capitalist class’s control over the working class, not those who invite foreign capitalists into the country to run the economy. Just because the ruling party might still have ‘communist’ in its name does not automatically mean that they are communist leaders any more.

Counterrevolutions often occur inside previously more radical leadership groupings, like the Vietnamese Communist Party leadership that once fought to kick the Japanese, French, and US out of their country was. Vietnam is not now still a communist country even though it at least still remains independent politically from outsider imperialists. The imperialists do have a way of sneaking back in through their capitalist investment, and for that reason, Leon Trotsky and other revolutionary communist theorists of the past correctly observed that communism could not be permanently build in any one country alone. Capitalism was, and remains so, an international economic system.

ACLU added to the terrorist watch list

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Thomas Mc

ACLU calls for probe of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff (an Israeli citizen) over ‘terrorist’ watch list. Chertoff responds that the ACLU has been added to the terrorist watch list…

Hope for liberty, prepare for theocratic dictatorship?

The filthy-rich are just like us, except they don’t pay taxes.

Radical Islamists denouncing terrorism? This is one you’ll never read about in the American Military Industrial Complex controlled “news” media!

Bush’s “appeasement” of Iran continues…

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 17, thomasmc.com.

Stop the War in Iraq and BTTHN

Posted on June 30, 2008 by NMT

Open National Conference to Stop the War in Iraq and Bring the Troops Home Now
Cleveland, Ohio, June 28-29, 2008

National Assembly Endorser List (Partial Listing)
( * = organization or position for identification only)

1. Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Families for Peace*
2. Howard Zinn, Author, Historian, Social Critic, Political Scientist, Playwright
3. U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)
4. Veterans for Peace
5. Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Utah Chapter
6. National Lawyers Guild
7. North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor (Formerly Cleveland AFL-CIO)
8. Donna Dewitt, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO*
9. Navy Petty Officer Jonathan W. Hutto, Author of “Anti-War Soldier” and Co-Founder of Appeal For Redress*
10. Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, Los Angeles, CA
11. Progressive Democrats of America
12. A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)
13. The Iraq Moratorium
14. United Teachers Los Angeles
15. Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC)
16. Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General
17. Green Party of Ohio
18. Progressive Action, a coalition of the Duluth Central Labor Body, Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, and the Duluth Area Green Party
19. Scott Ritter
20. Anti-War Committee of the Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh, PA
21. Colia Lafayette Clark, Chair, Richard Wright Centennial Committee, Philadelphia, PA
22. Ohio State Council UNITE HERE
23. Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice – the Cleveland Branch of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
24. Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer, Teamsters Local 808*, Long Island, NY
25. Cleveland Peace Action
26. Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto, CA
27. Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition (STWC)
28. John W. Braxton, Co-President, American Federation of Teachers Local 2026*; Faculty and Staff Federation of Community College of Philadelphia*
29. Eduardo Rosario, Executive Board, NY City Chapter – Labor Council for Latin American Advancement*
30. RI Mobilization Committee to Stop War and Occupation
31. Steve Early, Member, National Writers Union/UAW*, Labor Journalist
32. Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace
33. Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee
34. Cynthia McKinney, Former Congresswoman from Georgia
35. Allen Cholger, United Steelworkers Union Staff Representative*, Southfield, MI
36. Malcolm Suber, Reconstruction Activist; 2007 City Council Candidate in New Orleans, LA
37. Greg Coleridge, Coordinator, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition; Economic Justice & Empowerment Program Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee
38. Marilyn Levin, Member, Coordinating Committee, Greater Boston United for Justice with Peace; Founder, Middle East Crisis Coalition
39. Jeff Mackler, Founder, Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, San Francisco, CA
40. Jerry Gordon, former National Co-Coordinator of the Vietnam-era National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC); Member, U.S. Labor Against the War Steering Committee, Cleveland, OH
41. Barbara Lubin, Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance
42. Jamilla El-Shafei, Kennebunkport, Maine, (the Kennebunkport Peace Department)
43. Mumia Abu-Jamal
44. Alan Netland, President of the Duluth Central Labor Body and AFSCME Local 66*
45. Will Rhodes, Chair, Minnesota 8th Congressional District, Green Party; Steering Committee of the Duluth Area Green Party
46. Leonard Weinglass, Attorney for the Cuban Five
47. Gail Schoenfelder, Co-Chair, Clayton-Jackson-McGee Memorial; Board Member of the Duluth League of Women Voters*
48. California Peace and Freedom Party
49. Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network
50. Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice of Northern Utah
51. Alan Benjamin, Member, Executive Board, San Francisco Labor Council; Member, National Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War
52. Rev. Dr. Diana Gibson, Co-Director, Council of Churches of Santa Clara County, San Jose, CA*
53. Sacramento Chapter, Labor Council for Latin American Involvement (LCLAA), AFL-CIO, Sacramento, CA
54. Iranians for Peace and Justice, CT and Texas Chapters
55. Youth Against War & Racism, MN
56. Samina Faheem, Executive Director, American Muslim Voice
57. National Education Association Peace and Justice Caucus
58. Union de Trabajadores Inmigrantes (Union of Immigrant Workers), Madison, WI
59. The L.A. Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee, Los Angeles, CA
60. San Jose Peace and Justice Center
61. Andy Griggs, Board of Directors, United Teachers Los Angeles; Chair, National Education Association Peace and Justice Caucus; Continuations Committee, American Federation of Teachers Peace and Justice Caucus*; Steering Committee Member, U.S. Labor Against the War, Los Angeles, CA
62. Office of the Americas, Los Angeles, CA
63. Fernando Suarez del Solar, Founder and Director, Guerrero Azteca Peace Project Escondido, CA
64. Doug Bullock, 1st Vice President, Albany Federation of Labor and Member of the Albany County Legislature
65. Arlington (MA) United for Justice with Peace
66. Sarah Martin, Member, Women Against Military Madness, MN
67. Paul Krehbiel, Iraq Moratorium, Los Angeles, CA
68. Sharon Smith, Haymarket Books
69. Francesca Rosa, Member SEIU Local 1021, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council*, Member, Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice*
70. National Benedictines for Peace
71. Elizabeth Aaronsohn, Professor of Education and Faculty in the Peace Studies Program*, Central CT State University, New Britain, CT
72. Adirondack Progressives
73. Pam Africa, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Move Organization
74. AfterDowningStreet.org
75. Kali Akuno, Member, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Gulf Coast Reconstruction Movement activist, New Orleans, LA*
76. Richard Brooks Alba, Co-Chair Emeritus, SF Pride at Work (AFL-CIO), Berkeley, CA
77. Mike Alewitz, Labor Art and Mural Project, New Britain, CT
78. All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (G-C), Washington, D.C.
79. Stephen Allen, Steve Allen Painting, Akron, OH
80. Alliance for Global Justice
81. Dr. Sabah Alwan, Associate Professor of Leadership & Organizational Behavior, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, MN
82. American Federation of Musicians Local 1000, NY, NY
83. Andy Anderson, Veterans for Peace, Chapter 80
84. Jeff Anderson, Duluth City Councilor
85. Thomas Atwood, Community Organizer, Peninsula Interfaith Alliance (PICO); Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City, CA*
86. Mark Bailey, member and seminary student, United Church of Christ*, Elyria, OH
87. Jared A. Ball, Producer, Independent/Mixtape Journalism: FreeMix Radio, Words, Beats and
Life Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, Washington, D.C.*
88. Russ Banner, Co-Coordinator, Pax Christi – Manasota Chapter, FL
89. Hans Barbe, Iraq Moratorium, Students for a Democratic Society, Grosse Pointe Park, MI
90. Ana Barber, UTLA Board of Directors, Long Beach, CA
91. Bay Area United Against the War
92. Karen Bernal, International Longshore Workers Union Project Organizer, San Francisco, CA
93. Dennis Bernstein, Producer Flashpoint/KPFA Radio, Berkeley, CA
94. Marcia Bernsten, North Shore Coalition for Peace & Justice, Evanston, IL
95. Prof. Hal Bertilson, Professor of Psychology and UWS Psychology Program; Coordinator; Member, Amnesty International; Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth Peace and Justice Committee
96. Thomas Bias, President, Northwest New Jersey Peace Fellowship
97. Stephen Bingham, Attorney, Political Activist, San Francisco, CA
98. Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, Nashville, IN
99. Roy Blount, President, Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania
100. Iver Bogen, Progressive Action Secretary, Duluth, MN
101. Scott Bol, St. Croix Valley Peacemakers, Stillwater, MN
102. Bolivarian Circle of Los Angeles “Ezequiél Zamora”, Sherman Oaks, CA
103. Blasé Bonpane, Director, Ofice of the Americas, Los Angeles, CA
104. Theresa Bonpane, Executive Director, Office of the Americas, Los Angeles, CA
105. Boston May Day Coalition, http://www.bostonmayday.org
106. Laura Bothwell, Founder of the St. Scholastica College Democrats; Former Director, Programs at the Columbia Univ. Center for the Study of Science and Religion; NY, NY
107. Frank Boyle, Wisconsin State Representative, 73rd Assembly District
108. Patrick Boyle, Progressive Action Steering Committee, Duluth, MN
109. Heather Bradford, Co-Founder, Students Against War, College St. Scholastica
110. Lenni Brenner, Author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
111. Lyn Broach, Steve Allen Painting, Akron, OH
112. Brooklyn Greens, Brooklyn, NY
113. Don Bryant, President, Greater Cleveland Immigrant Support Network
114. Cafe Intifada, Los Angeles, CA
115. California Federation of Teachers
116. Joseph Callahan, member, Coalition to March on the Republican National Convention & Stop the War; Iraq Peace Action Coalition; Twin Cities, MN*
117. Campaign for Labor Rights
118. Campus Antiwar Network
119. Campus Anti-War Network, Fordham University Chapter
120. Michael Carano, Ohio Progressive Democrats of America State Co-Coordinator
121. Patrick Carano, Ohio Progressive Democrats of America State Co-Coordinator
122. Steve Carlson, Peace North, Northern Wisconsin Coordinator for the Iraq Moratorium Project
123. Mary Carmichael, Northwoods People for Peace, Ironwood, MN
124. Tim Carpenter, National Director, Progressive Democrats of America
125. Central CT State University Progressive Students Alliance, New Britain, CT
126. Central CT State University Peace Studies Program, New Britain, CT
127. Central Ohioans for Peace
128. Chapter 39 (Northeast Ohio) Veterans for Peace
129. Chatham Peace Initiative
130. Chelsea Unièndose en Contra de la Guerra, Chelsea, MA
131. Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism, Chicago, IL
132. Chicago Labor Against the War, an affiliate of U.S. Labor Against the War
133. Chicago Socialist Party
134. Chippewa County Anti-War Coalition, Dafter, MI
135. Jim Ciocia, Staff Representative, Ohio Council 8, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)*, Cleveland, OH
136. Citizen Soldier
137. Cleveland Middle East Peace Forum
138. Coalition for World Peace (CFWP) – An affiliate of UFPJ, Los Angeles, CA
139. Code Pink, Pittsburgh Chapter
140. Columbus Campaign for Arms Control/For Mother Earth
141. Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES – Los Angeles, CA)
142. Common Ground Relief/New Orleans – Malik Raheem, Co-Founder
143. Dave Conley, Douglas County Board Supervisor, WI
144. Jan Conley, Founder and President of Environmental Assn. for Great Lakes Education
145. Polly Connelly, International Representative, United Auto Workers (retired), Tucson, AZ
146. Cliff Conner, Author, “A People’s History of Science” New York, NY
147. Victor Crews, Utah Jobs with Justice, Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice, United for Peace and Justice Steering Committee Member
148. Cuba Solidarity, NY, NY
149. Tony Cuneo, Duluth City Council*
150. Denise D’Anne, Senior Action Network, San Francisco, CA*
151. DailyRadical.org, Boston, MA
152. Alan Dale, member, Iraq Peace Action Coalition, MN
153. Warren Davis, Former International Executive Board Member, United Auto Workers, Cleveland, OH
154. De Kalb Interfaith Network for Peace and Justice, De Kalb, IL
155. Declaration of Peace – San Mateo County, San Mateo, CA
156. Declaration of Peace, Bloomington, IN
157. Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio
158. Jesse Diaz, Jr., University of California, Riverside; Political Action Committee – La Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional, Riverside, CA
159. Ron Dicks, International Vice President, Western Region, International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees (IFPTE), San Francisco*
160. Different Drummer
161. Frank Dorrell, Addicted to War, Los Angeles, CA
162. Doug Dowd – Political economist, author, professor, Bologna, Italy
163. Dubuque Peace & Justice, Dubuque, IA
164. Mark Dudzic, National Organizer, Labor Party*
165. Larry Duncan, Labor Beat Co-Producer, Chicago, IL
166. East Central Ohio Green Party
167. Jebb Ebben, lead vocal of The Dear Astronaut band, Milwaukee, WI
168. Charlie Ehlen, Member, Veterans for Peace, Glenmora, LA
169. El Militante Sin Fronteras
170. Erie Benedictines for Peace, PA
171. Every Church a Church of Peace (Duluth, MN area chapter)
172. Farid Farahmand, Iranians for Peace, New Britain, CT
173. Christian Fernandez, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
174. Bob Fertik, founder of Democrats.com
175. Jeanne Finley, Albany, NY
176. First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, CA
177. Milton Fisk, South Central Indiana Jobs with Justice; Emeritus Prof. of Philosophy, Indiana Univ.- Bloomington
178. Jon Flanders, member and past president IAM Local Lodge 1145; Trustee, Troy Area Labor Council, NY
179. Carlos Flores, Secretary-Treasurer, Graphic Communications Conference-IBT Local 4N*
180. Focus the Nation, Portland, OR
181. Folk the War, Kent, OH
182. Dennis Foster, Westlake, OH
183. Christine Frank, Climate Crisis Coalition of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN
184. FreedomJournal.Tv, Akron, OH
185. Freedom Socialist Party, Seattle, WA, Henry Noble, National Secretary
186. Frente de Mexicanos en el Exterior/FME (Front of Mexicans Aboard), Sacramento, CA
187. Anna Fritz, Retiree, Cleveland Heights, OH
188. Emily Gaarder, Assistant Prof. of Sociology/Anthropology, Univ. of MN-Duluth, MN
189. GABNet, a Philippines women’s organization
190. Dennis Gallie, Member UAW Local 235, St. Louis, MO*
191. Sharla Gardner, Duluth City Councilor and Former Executive Board Member of AFSCME Local 66, Duluth, MN
192. Christine Gauvreau, Organizing Committee, CT United for Peace*
193. Gay Liberation Network, Chicago, IL
194. Paul George, Director, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto, CA
195. Mirène Ghossein, member of Adalah-NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East*, WESPAC (Westchester County Peace and Action Network)*
196. Isaac Alejandro Giron, Chairman of the SLC Autonomous Brown Berets
197. Martin Goff, Minnesota UNITE HERE Organizer*
198. David Goldberg, UTLA Treasurer, Los Angeles, CA
199. Sam Goldberger, We Refuse to Be Enemies, West Hartford, CT*
200. Marty Goodman, Transport Workers Union Local 100*, NY, NY, former Executive Board member
201. Dayne Goodwin, Secretary, Wasatch Coalition for Peace and Justice, Salt Lake City, UT
202. Steve Gordon, Former President of UTU Local 1732 & Lead Vocalist for the bands Workerand Black Market Bombs, Conway, SC
203. Kevin Gosztola, Author for OpEdNews; member, Peace Movement
204. Grandmothers for Peace, Northland Chapter
205. Grandmothers for Peace International, Elk Grove, CA
206. Greater Glastonbury for Peace and Justice, Glastonbury, CT
207. Green Party of Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY
208. Green Party of Rhode Island, Providence, RI
209. Suzanne Griffith, Professor of Counseling, Univ. of Wisconsin-Superior; Member of Women in Black
210. Guerrero Azteca Peace Project, Escondido, CA
211. Cheryl Gustafson, Western University (Salt Lake City) Community Relations*
212. Ioanna Gutas, Middle East Crisis Committee, New Haven, CT*
213. Guyanese American Workers United, New York, NY
214. Jim Hamilton, St. Louis; Member, State Executive Board of American Federation of Teachers, MO*
215. Carol Hannah, Peace North, Hayward, WI
216. Mo Hannah, Ph.D., Chair, Battered Mothers Custody Conference
217. John Harris, Co-Founder, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition, Boston, MA; Co-Founder, Chelsea Uniéndose en Contra de la Guerra, Chelsea, MA; Regional Coordinating Committee member, New England United*
218. Alan Hart, Managing Editor, UE News, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)*
219. Hawaii Solidarity Committee, NY, NY
220. Rose Helin, Former President, Students Against War, Univ. of Wisconsin-Superior
221. Stan Heller, The Struggle Video News Network, West Haven, CT*
222. Melissa Helman, former School of the Americas Protest Prisoner of Conscience, Ashland, WI
223. Inola F Henry, UTLA Board of Directors, Los Angeles, CA
224. Laura Herrera, Co-Coordinator, The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Northern California
225. Fletcher Hinds, Vietnam Veteran, MN Veterans & Military Families for Progress*, Duluth, MN
226. Fred Hirsch, Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 Executive Board; Delegate to the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council, San Jose, CA*
227. Suzanne and William Hodgkins, Niskayuna, NY
228. Marvin Holland, http://www.homestationonline.org, Jersey City, NJ
229. Julie Holzer, Staff Representative, District 12, United Steelworkers Union*
230. Dr. Bill Honigman, Progressive Democrats of America, California State Coordinator, Laguna Hills, CA
231. Kathleen Hopton, Mentor, OH
232. Houston Coalition for Justice Not War, Houston, TX
233. Humanity, Asheville, NC
234. Jeff Humfeld, Board of Directors, KKFI Community Radio, Kansas City, MO*
235. ICUJP-Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, Los Angeles, CA
236. Interfaith Council for Peace in the Middle East, Cleveland, OH
237. International Socialist Organization (ISO)
238. Iraq Peace Action Coalition, Twin Cities. MN
239. Khalil Iskarous, Middle East Crisis Committee, New Haven, CT*
240. lbrahim Jibrell, Trinity College Antiwar Coalition, Hartford, CT*
241. Jeni Johnson, Former News Editor for the Promethean newspaper
242. Laurie Johnson, Former Duluth City Councilor; Business Agent AFSCME Council 5, Duluth, MN
243. Peter Johnson, Progressive Action Steering Committee & Duluth Professional Firefighters Union*, Duluth, MN
244. Todd Jordan, Future of the Union, UAW Local 292*, Kokomo, IN
245. Paul Kangas, Vice President, Veterans for Peace
246. Kansas City Labor Against the War, a U.S. Labor Against the War affiliate
247. Dan Kaplan, Executive Director, AFT Local 1493; San Mateo (CA) Community College Federation of Teachers*
248. David Keil, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition; New England United*
249. Kemetic Inst, Columbus, OH
250. Kent State Anti-War Committee, Kent, OH
251. Sky Keyes, CT United for Peace, Middletown, CT
252. Tim Kettler, Secretary, Green Party of Ohio
253. Joel Kilgour, Truth in Recruiting Committee, Duluth, MN
254. John Kirkland, Stop the War Committee, Carpenters Local 1462*, Bristol, PA
255. Philip Koch, Professor, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD
256. Dr. Gary Kohls, Every Church a Church of Peace
257. Bob Kosuth, Steering Committee of the Northland Anti-War Coalition
258. Gene Kotrba, Northeast Ohio Anti-War Coalition (NOAC), Berea, OH
259. Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Representative, Lakewood, OH
260. Rev. Kurt Kuhwald, Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA*
261. Rick Kurki, Board Member of the Tyomies Society, Highbridge, WI
262. Zev Kvitky, President, SEIU Local 2007, Stanford, CA
263. La Hermandad Transnacional , Los Angeles, CA
264. Ray LaForest, International Haiti Support Network, New York, NY
265. Lake Superior Greens
266. Werner Lange, Professor of Sociology, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania*
267. Ben Larson, Singer for the band Crew Jones
268. Prof. Mark Lause, Department of History, University of Cincinnati
269. Peter LaVenia, Co-Chair, New York Green Party
270. Paul Le Blanc, Prof. of History, LaRoche College; Member, Anti-War Committee, Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh
271. James Marc Leas, National Lawyers Guild
272. Fernando B. Ledezma, UTLA Board of Directors, El Monte, CA
273. Rosemary Lee, Member, CFT Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Committee*, Los Angeles,
CA
274. Pat Levasseur, East Coast Director, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; former political prisoner, Ohio 7
275. Libertarian Party of Northeast Ohio
276. Liberty Street Agitators, Ann Arbor, MI
277. Jack Lieberman, Jewish Arab Dialog Association*, Miami , FL
278. Jerimarie Liesagang, CT Transadvocacy Coalition, Hartford, CT
279. Peter Linebaugh, Author, Magna Carta Manifesto
280. Michael Livingston, Professor of Psychology, St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN
281. Janet Loehr, Middle East Peace Forum, Cleveland, OH
282. Joe Lombardo, Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace and Coordinator, Northeast Peace and Justice Action Coalition
283. Los Altos Voices for Peace, Los Altos, CA
284. Jennifer Lyon, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)*, Las Vegas, NV
285. David Macko, Chairman, Libertarian Party, Northeast Ohio*, Solon, OH
286. Dorotea Manuela, Co-Coordinator, Boston May Day Coalition, Boston, MA
287. Jorge Marin, Circula Bolivarimo – Martin Luther King, Jr.*, Boston MA
288. Jennifer Martin-Romme, Editor, Zenith City Weekly Newspaper
289. Logan Martinez, Green Party West Central Ohio
290. Jamshid Marvesti, M.D., Author of four books, most recently “Psycho-Political Aspects of Suicide Warriors, Terrorism and Martyrdom,” Manchester, CT
291. James Mattingly, Kaukauna, WI
292. Mayday Books, MN
293. Bob McCafferty, Andover, NJ
294. Prof. Bud McClure, Faculty Against War, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth
295. Rick McDowell, Belmont, ME
296. Kay McKenzie, Douglas County Board Supervisor, WI
297. Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, Detroit, MI
298. The Middle East Crisis Committee, CT
299. Mimbrez Publishers, Oklahoma City, OK
300. Judy Miner, Office Coordinator, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice*, Madison, WI
301. Minnesota Labor Against the War
302. Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
303. Suren Moodliar, Mass Global Action*
304. Hal Moore, Progressive Action Treasurer, Duluth, MN
305. More than Warmth, Nashville, TN
306. Tess Moren, Intl. Peace Studies Student Assn., Univ. of Wisconsin-Superior
307. Dorinda Moreno, Co-Moderator, indyiraqaction; Convenor, Fuerza Mundial Collaborative, Santa Maria, CA*
308. Amy Moses, Leader, Young Adult Group, of the 1st Unitarian Universalist Society of SF
309. Denis Mosgofian, Graphic Communications Conference-IBT Local 4N, past president,
current Delegate to San Francisco Labor Council*
310. Peter and Gail Mott, Co-Editors INTERCONNECT: (national newsletter)
311. David Moulton, Loaves & Fishes Catholic Worker Community, Duluth, MN
312. MoveOn/East Bay, Barrington, RI
313. Bill Moyer and The Backbone Campaign
314. Jorge Mujica, March 10 Coalition*
315. MJ Muser, World Can’t Wait-Cleveland
316. Muslim Solidarity Committee
317. Muslim Youth Brotherhood for Political Action (MYB). Chaplin, CT
318. My Homework Channel, Cambridge, MA
319. National Network on Cuba, San Francisco, CA
320. Native Earth Education Project, Shelburne, MA
321. Kamran Nayeri, Political Economist, University of California
322. Near West Citizens for Peace and Justice
323. Neighbors for Peace, IL
324. Nevada Workers Against the War, Las Vegas, NV
325. New England United
326. New York State Greens/Green Party of New York, New York, NY
327. Nicaragua Network
328. Mary Nichols-Rhodes, Ohio Progressive Democrats of America State CD Organizer
329. Victor Nieto, President of Lodge 1043 Transportation and Communications Union*, Bronx, NY
330. North Shore Coalition for Peace and Justice, IL
331. Northland Anti-War Coalition
332. Jim Northrup, Native American Playwright, Poet, Author and Syndicated Columnist of Column “Fond du Lac Follies”
333. NY Metro Raging Grannies, New York, NY
334. Ohio State Labor Party
335. Barb Olsen, President, Progressive Action, Political Commentator for KUMD-FM Radio and Political Columnist for the Reader Weekly Newspaper
336. Bill Onasch, Midwest Chapter Representative, Labor Party Interim National Council*
337. Steve O’Neil, St. Louis County Board Commissioner, Duluth, MN.
338. Organized Workers for Labor Solidarity, Seattle, WA
339. Debbie Ortman, National Field Director of the Organic Consumers Assn.; Former Hermantown, MN City Councilor; President, Duluth League of Women Voters
340. Our Spring Break, Washington D.C.
341. Pan-African Roots, Washington, D.C.
342. Jeff Panetiere, Western Connecticut State Univ. Youth for Justice, Danbury, CT*
343. Parma Democratic Committee, Hilton, NY
344. Pax Christi Northern California, San Jose, CA
345. PDX Peace Coalition, Portland, OR
346. Peace & Social Justice Committee*, La Roche College, Pittsburgh, PA
347. Peace Action of San Mateo County, San Mateo, CA
348. Peace and Freedom Party, Sacramento, CA
349. Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Bangor, ME
350. PeaceMajority Report, Lindenhurst, IL
351. Josh Pechthalt, UTLA/AFT Vice President, Los Angeles, CA
352. Paula J. Pedersen: Assistant Professor of Psychology, Univ. of MN-Duluth
353. Penn Action, Pittsburgh, PA
354. Helen Pent, President, Northland College Student Assn.
355. People of Faith CT, West Hartford, CT
356. Peoples Fightback Center, Cleveland, OH
357. John Peterson, National Secretary, U.S. Hands Off Venezuela
358. Millie Phillips, Editorial Board, The Organizer Newspaper*
359. Physicians for Social Responsibility, Hudson-Mohawk Chapter
360. Jan Pierce, Retired National Vice President – Communications Workers of America District One
361. Angela T. Pineros, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
362. Larry Pinkney, Black Activist Writers Guild & Columnist, Twin Cities, MN*
363. Andy Pollack, Adalah–NY: Coalition for Justice in the Middle East,* Brooklyn, NY
364. Joseph Pollard, Transport Workers Union Local 100*, NY,NY
365. Portage Community Peace Coalition, Brady Lake, OH
366. Michael L. Postell, Transport Workers Union Local 250A, Chairperson, Green Division, San Francisco Municipal Railway*, San Francisco, CA
367. Dolores Perez Priem, Iraq Moratorium and UUs for Peace, San Francisco, CA
368. Progressive Action Steering Committee, Duluth, MN
369. Progressive Democrats of America Los Angeles (PDALA) Los Angeles, CA
370. Progressive Democrats of America – Ohio
371. Progressive Peace Coalition, Columbus, OH
372. Radical Women, San Francisco, CA
373. Radio Free Maine, Augusta, ME
374. Dr. Chengiah Ragaven, Professor of International Relations, Central CT State Univ., New Britain, CT*
375. Rainbow Affinity Tribe/Yippies, Brooklyn, NY
376. Walter Raschik, Host, Walt Dizzo Show on KUWS-FM Radio
377. Jack Rasmus, Co-Chair, Natl. Writers Union, UAW Local 1981, Richmond, CA*
378. Sami Rasouli , Founder & Director, Muslim Peacemaker Teams*, Najaf, Iraq
379. Austin Reams, Oklahoma City, OK
380. Revolutionary Workers Group, San Francisco, CA
381. Rogelio Reyes, California Faculty Association, Calexico, CA *
382. Sergio Reyes, Co-Coordinator, Boston May Day Coalition
383. Marc Rich, Delegate, LA County Federation of Labor
384. Walter Riley, Civil Rights Attorney, Political Activist, San Francisco, CA
385. Adam Ritscher, Douglas County Board Supervisor; Northland Anti-War Coalition
386. Christopher Robinson, Cambridge, MA
387. Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice, Chestnut Ridge, NY
388. Lorena Rodriguez, International Partnership Coordinator of the Student Trade Justice Campaign, Duluth, MN/Montevideo, Uruguay
389. Mike Rogge, Co-Founder, Students Against War, College of St. Scholastica.
390. Al Rojas, Coordinator, FME (Front of Mexicans Abroad), Sacramento, CA
391. Emma Rosenthal, Los Angeles, CA
392. Martin Rosner, NY Social Activist
393. Donald Rucknagel, M.D., Ph.D., Cincinnati, OH
394. Barb Russ, Progressive Action, Duluth, MN
395. Carl Sack, Northland Anti-War Coalition, former Northland College Student Senator
396. Sacramento for Democracy, Sacramento, CA
397. Sundiata Sadiq, Former President, Ossining, NY NAACP
398. San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, San Diego, CA
399. San Mateo County Central Labor Council AFL-CIO, Foster City, CA
400. Ajamu Sankofa, National Conference of Black Lawyers*, Brooklyn, NY
401. Tony Saper, ATU Local 1287 Representative to the Kansas City Regional Transit Alliance, Kansas City, MO
402. Evan Sarmiento, Outreach Coordinator, Greater Boston Stop the Wars Coalition
403. Renee Saucedo, Director, La Raza Centro Legal; Member, SEIU Local 1021, San Francisco*
404. Fred Schnook, former Mayor of Ashland, WI.
405. Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone, Co-producers, Taking Aim-WBAI Radio-NY, Vallejo, CA
406. Paul Schrade, former International Executive Board Member, United Auto Workers, Los Angeles, CA
407. John Schraufnagle, Northland Anti-War Coalition, Superior, WI
408. Michael Schreiber, Editor, Socialist Action, San Francisco, CA
409. Rodger Scott, Delegate and Past President, American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, City College of San Francisco
410. Mary Scully, member, Iraq Peace Action Coalition, Twin Cities
411. Steve Seal, UTLA Board of Directors/Chair, Human Rights Committee*, Los Angeles, CA
412. Vann Seawell, Assistant Director, UNITE HERE, Columbus, OH
413. Leonard Segal, UTLA Board of Directors, Northridge, CA
414. Rob Segovia-Welsh, Agriculture Rural Labor Inspector for the State of North Carolina
415. Dallas Sells, Director, Ohio State Council, UNITE HERE
416. Shaker Heights High School Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Shaker Heights, OH
417. Peter Shell, Anti-War Committee of the Thomas Merton Center, Pittsburgh, PA
418. Adam Shils, Vice-President, Aptakisc Education Association (NEA)*
419. Shura Council, Anaheim, CA
420. Joel Sipress, Duluth Area Green Party, former candidate for MN State Senate, Duluth, MN
421. Debbie Ginsberg Smith, Social Activist, New York
422. Michael Steven Smith, Co-Producer, Law and Disorder, WBAI radio
423. Social Action Committee, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City, CA
424. Social Action Committee, West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, Rocky River, OH
425. Socialist Action
426. Socialist Alternative
427. Socialist Organizer
428. Socialist Party, Boston
429. Socialist Party of CT
430. Socialist Party of Massachusetts
431. Socialist Party USA (National Committee)
432. Socialist Viewpoint
433. Solidarity, Detroit, MI
434. Asiyahola Somburu, Co-Chair of the Emerging Black Leadership Symposium
435. Gary Sorenson, President of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 80
436. South Dakota A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, Brandon, State Council
437. Southeast Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, Rochester, MN
438. Mark Stahl, Event Coordinator, Rhode Island Community Coalition for Peace
439. Lynne Stewart, Lynne Stewart Organization, NY, NY
440. Judith Stoddard, First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco*
441. Students for a Democratic Society, Kirtland, OH
442. Students for Change, Norwich, CT
443. Hal Sutton, Member, UAW Local 1268 Retirees Chapter, Rockton, IL*
444. David Swanson, Washington Director, Democrats.com and of Impeachpac.org; Co-Founder, AfterDowningStreet.org
445. Shakeel Syed, Executive Director, Shura Council, Culver City, CA
446. Teach Peace Foundation
447. Tennessee Code Pink, Summertown, TN
448. Texans for Peace, Austin, TX
449. Linda Thompson, Guilford Peace Alliance, AFSCME Retirees, CT United for Peace
450. Sara Thomsen, singer/songwriter, South Range, WI
451. Gale Courey Toensing, Editor, The Corner Report, NW CT and Member, Middle East Crisis Committee, CT*
452. Troops Out Now Coalition, New York, NY
453. Troy Area Labor Council, Troy, NY
454. Jerry Tucker, former International Executive Board Member, United Auto Workers, St. Louis, MO
455. Twin Cities Peace Campaign-Focus on Iraq
456. Twin Cities Year 5 Committee to End the War Now
457. U.S. Hands Off Venezuela
458. Imam Warith Deen Umar, Chaplain for 25 years in New York state prisons
459. United Educators of San Francisco
460. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City (entire congregation), Redwood City, CA
461. University of Toledo Anti-War, Toledo, OH
462. Upper Hudson Peace Action, Albany, NY
463. Utah Jobs with Justice, Salt Lake City
464. Utah Peace & Freedom Party, Salt Lake City, UT
465. James E. Vann, Architect; Co-Founder, Oakland Tenants Union, Oakland, CA
466. Chuck Vaughn, UTLA Board of Directors, Pico Rivera, CA
467. Venezuela Solidarity Network
468. Veterans for Peace, Chapter 80
469. Veterans for Peace, Chapter 118, Utah
470. Veterans for Peace – Chapter 153, Iraq Moratorium Project, Peace North, Hayward, WI
471. Carlos Villarreal, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild*, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
472. Voters Evolt!, Long Beach, CA
473. Voters for Peace, Baltimore, MD
474. Julie Washington, UTLA Elementary Vice President, Los Angeles, CA
475. Washington Peace Center, Washington D.C.
476. Harvey Wasserman, Founder of Solartopia.org, Bexley, OH
477. WE Project, Los Angeles, CA
478. Carl Webb, Iraq War Veteran; Texas National Guard
479. Tegan Wendland, Douglas County Board Student Representative, WI
480. Coly Wentzlaff, Students for Peace, Univ. of Minnesota-Duluth
481. West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Social Action Committee, Rocky River, OH
482. Don White, Peace and Justice Activist, Los Angeles, CA
483. Craig Wiesner, President, MicahsCall.org, Palo Alto, CA*
484. David Wilson, Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York*, NY,NY
485. Marcy Winograd, President, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles*, Los Angeles, CA
486. Dorothy Wolden, Events Coordinator for the Northland Chapter of Grandmothers for Peace and former Douglas County Board Supervisor, WI
487. Women Against War, Capital District, New York
488. Women for Democracy and Fair Elections, Chicago, IL
489. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peninsula Branch, Palo Alto, CA
490. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Pittsburgh Chapter, Pittsburgh, PA
491. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S. Section; Philadelphia, PA
492. Kent Wong, Founding President of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Los Angeles, CA
493. Worker to Worker Solidarity Committee, Tucson, AZ
494. Workers International League (Socialist Appeal)
495. World Prout Assembly, Highland Heights, KY
496. Mark Wutschke, UTLA Board of Directors, Los Angeles, CA
497. Gustav Wynn, Writer & Contributing Editor, OpEd News, NY,NY
498. Carol F. Yost, Member, ADALAH-NY Coalition for Justice in the Middle East* Steering Committee Member, Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition*
499. Youth for International Socialism
500. Marela Zacarias, Founder of Latinos Against the War, Hartford, CT

The US government’s campaign of atrocities inside Ethiopia

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Tony Logan

The US is the prime backer of the Ethiopian dictatorship and its campaign of terror against native Somali people inside Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch now accuses Ethiopia of war crimes in Ogaden These crimes are Made in the US. Do you care?

You should. The US has now degenerated into the world’s leading source of terrorism. Thank you, Democratic and Republican Parties. Thank you, America. Aren’t you proud, Joe America? Aren’t you proud, Jane America? Aren’t you proud, Church Goers? Ain’t you…proud?

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis demand US get out of their country now!

Posted on June 14, 2008 by Tony Logan

Multiple hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis rallied today demanding the end of US government control over their country. Major speakers called for the execution of US military dictator and puppet, Pervez Musharraf. Mammoth anti-Musharraf rally in Islamabad By what right does the US government have to be calling all the shots in this huge Muslim country?

The people of Pakistan have rejected the US and the military dictatorship that the bipartisan gang of US criminals back. The US should immediately end its military operations in the region and withdraw our ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ back home, where they can be given productive jobs instead of being used as jailers and killers. These troops are bankrupting the US itself, even as they level entire regions of the globe.

We have a duty here in Colorado to protest the Democrats and Republicans who run this international aggression against other peoples around the planet. What are you doing to help? Get the US out of Asia!

Of note, the international imperialist press claimed that only several thousand people only had rallied! (Reuters said 20,000 and the BBC said 15,000) What a bunch of liars and cons they are as they cover up the news instead of reporting it.

Anarchism as applied to washing dishes

Posted on May 29, 2008 by NMT

WASH YOUR OWN DISHES via CrimethInc

CAPITALISM
You wash the dishes, the ones who own them profit.

ANARCHISM
We all share in the dishwashing.

DEMOCRACY
Even as a dishwasher, you deserve a say in which politician is best suited to protect the economy that keeps you in the kitchen.

NATIONALISM
Forget about those dishes for a second — you’re a citizen of the proudest hation on earth!

LIBERTARIANISM
You wash the dishes, the owner profits even more.

FASCISM
The Mexicans who washed the dishes are deported, the Jews who owned the place are imprisoned, and everyone else is conscripted for military service.

UNEMPLOYMENT
The only thing worse than being trapped in a dish room is being trapped outside one.

NEO-LIBERALISM (AKA “Free Trade”)
The dishes are shipped overseas to be washed and you’re free to develop your own combination of Unemployment and Nationalism

REFORM
Smaller stack, warmer water, longer breaks –same dishes!

SOCIALISM
Dishwashers’ wages increase just enough to afford higher takes

COMMUNISM
From each according to his means, to each according to his need –as determined outside the dish room.

MARXISM
Between shifts, the dishwasher studies the intricacies of dialectical materialism. It turns out that thanks to his efforts, the dirty dishes have been accumulating value for his boss to invest in more dishes. The stuff about the dictatorship of the proletariat is more perplexing, but the party theorists reassure him that it makes perfect sense to them. Under their direction, he joins his fellow dishwashers in a risky coup d’etat. Afterwards, he is distraught to find himself still in the kitchen, washing dishes for the party bureaucrats. The bureaucrats reassure him that they will eventually wither away.

SYNDICALISM
The dishwashers join labor syndicates that send representatives to a council, at which it is decided which dishes are to be washed and when.

ANARCHA-FEMINISM
You wash the dishes for the boss — who washes the dishes at home?

ANARCHO-PRIMITIVISM
Down with dishes!

ANARCHO-PUNK
Down with washing!

INSURRECTIONARY ANARCHISM
A quixotic attempt to distill a political theory from the practice of smashing dishes.

-Crimethinc

A vaccine for PTSD.

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Brother Jonah

There is a natural (perhaps “unnatural”) Immunity Factor to counter Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…

It’s called “sociopathy” and its evil twin “narcissism”.

I know, some people will only accept the opinion of Army scientists on what causes or prevents the disease, so I’ll use a paraphrase of their definitions.

It started to be a really really noticeable problem at the time of our Civil War and the Crimean War(s)…

A time when large standing armies of conscripts were suddenly the norm rather than an aberration.

A time of weapons technologies wherein somebody you could not see or hear, somebody perhaps miles away, could kill you, or your comrades, large numbers of you at a time.

But the truly extraordinary stress, wasn’t from the sudden spurts of violence, not directly, at least.

It was the vastly longer times Between barrages, between battles…

The disruption of you natural Circadian rhythms, sleep patterns and waking patterns, the “attack at dawn” because Dawn is the point at which all living creatures, from the lowest proto-bacterium to the Great Apes, and Humans, are at their lowest level of energy.

So you had to be awake, and aware, by dawn. Guards have to be maintained at all hours… thus intermittent episodes of sleep deprivation. And that not on a regular basis.

The randomness of that is also a factor.

Then there’s the acts of pure murder. You can train yourself to ignore your conscience, or be trained en masse to ignore your collective conscience… to supress the certain knowledge that you are doing something totally against your basic humanity…

But the Basic Training itself, aka Indoctrination, aka Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Brainwashing, is designed not to strenghten your resolve, or your ability to think logically… but to break those barriers, those mental and spiritual bits of armor provided by God, that keep most people from committing outrageous crimes.

You can, if your indoctrination is constantly reinforced, maintain that level of denial… but only for as long as your indoctrination is reinforced.

Once you are separated from your army, or from your cult, or whatever group is brainwashing you, the denial becomes harder and harder to maintain.

False “patriotism”, or devotion to whatever OTHER similar lower-case “g” god you’ve been trained to worship, and a simple fear of admitting, mostly to yourself or your comrades, that you have done wrong, is a very powerful reason to keep it sublimated, to bottle it and suppress it.

Alcohol and other drugs are one really commonly used method.

Perhaps it’s the reason members of the military are actually Encouraged to drink. Somebody who’s a total drunkard might be punished or looked down upon, but so are tee-totallers.

People who abstain from social drinking are actually looked upon as having antisocial tendencies, or at least, not being as suggestible, “not a team player”.

So, what would be a good, non-destructive vaccine, a good prevention for PTSD?

not maintaining a Standing Army for one.

It might sound kind of idealistic, like what would then prevent some foreign power from invading and enslaving America…

Well, for one thing, we haven’t been invaded since 1814. And then it was one of the Superpowers of its time, Great Britain. And they couldn’t maintain their other, bigger wars and still attempt to occupy even those small patches of American ground that they DID gain.

Too much drain on their manpower, materiel and other resources, especially money.

Much like our Federal Government spending DEFICIT after 7 years of Bush is now 5 times (approximately) the Government Budget for the entire 4 years of the “tax and spend liberal” Carter Administration. Add in, (or subtract) an equal amount which was the Projected SURPLUS for 2007, made in 2001 when Bush took office.

That might sound like phantom accounting, unless you realize that the “Liberation” was projected to actually make a profit.

Just not for, you know, the average American or the average “Liberated” Iraqi.

And this is from the economy that the Capitalist Masters say is “The Strongest on earth”.

Israel, one of our proxy states, could not maintain an occupation in Lebanon even with massive American money aid. They can’t maintain an occupation of the West Bank, populated with the poorest Arab nation there is, where their most advanced military technology is a reworked Russian rocket-propelled grenade… without massive American financing.

If we had simply left “goddam insane” alone in 1991, the other Arab nations, and the simple economics, would have ended the invasion.

We’re a rich nation, how would the poorest nations maintain it? Historically, they’ve done it the way Hussein maintained his battle with Iran… with massive amounts of money.

Donated money.

So it’s do-able. People who point out that it’s never worked before fail to recall the other side of that equation, it’s never been tried before.

The same people who say we need to pour (literally) countless trillions of dollars into occupying the Arabian Peninsula for the rest of our national existence, were the same ones who cut the funding for every actual Peace initiative whenever a snag was hit in the progress thereof.

That’s the REAL “surrender mentality”.

The notion that peace would be very difficult to achieve, therefore we shouldn’t even try, and just surrender to Endless War and the Dictatorship necessary to maintain it.

And the economic degradation. And the inescapable fact that our children or grandchildren or hell, maybe even our very own generation, would be occupied by a foreign power when the Empire falls.

And then there’s the medical costs, not least the cost of PTSD.

Even if somebody doesn’t have full-blown psychoses as a result of PTSD, it degrades the physical health, medical problems like Diabetes, Heart, lung, kidney diseases, even arthritis, become more common. The human immune system is suppressed by PTSD.

That’s the most common symptom of it, actually, according to the Army. The most expensive.

We have one candidate for president, has said that he WILL cut “social spending”, like public health, VETERANS health care, etc etc etc.. to fund his Masters (Satans) Endless War.

We need to innocculate the entire American public against PTSD, with the knowledge that war is NOT a “necessary evil”. With the knowledge of WHY it can be ended and HOW it can be ended.

It beats living Hell out of the alternative ~~possibilities~~ probabilities.

Mugabe and the British move to regain control over Zimbabwe

Posted on April 3, 2008 by Tony Logan

The world corporate press has been going non stop against 2 African governments the last couple of years. The targets have been the governments of Sudan and Zimbabwe. Why such attention given to these 2 African governments out of a continent full entirely of unsavory governments and dictators? Is it that the US and Western European elites have suddenly become a group of benevolent saints, only concerned with the welfare of the poor Black populations of their ‘Dark Continent’? One can’t really think so.

So let us take a brief historical look at Zimbabwe now, and see why the corporate press is so hot for regime change? One does not have to be in love with the 82 year old Mugabe, current head of the Zimbabwe state, to question why our attention is focused by others in his direction. Has this attention about ‘human rights’ been consistent, coming from the European and US governments and their servile press? Yeah, right…

Let us ask several questions, then… Has the corporate press informed the world public about the economic warfare being waged by the colonialists against their former colony, Zimbabwe? Well, why not? Zimbabwe is an economic basket case today, but the US and Europeans have made it so, as well as Mugabe himself, but that’s not what the corporate press wants the public to know. They are campaigning for regime change and not the welfare of Zimbabweans. The governments and their press want to gain back direct control over Zimbabwe, not save the people living there. Look for the likes of O’Reily and the other media whores at the Fox ‘News’ stable to be shedding crocodile tears on behalf of that population though, as the Murdoch press in England routinely does, too.

Another question, too? A lot of press has been given to the dangers of an anthrax terrorist attack on the US. Has any of the pro-military/ police state press ever informed the public that the largest case of anthrax terrorism directed against people happened in Rhodesia (the white racist Apartheid state ruling over Zimbabwe) just a while back? That’s right, the Whites of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe that were intimately connected with Great Britain, used anthrax against the Blacks of that country. It was the largest such biological warfare use of anthrax in world military history.

As somebody around back then, I don’t really remember the press ever giving much a shit about the affairs of Zimbabwe back then. Now, they can’t do anything else other than blab on and on about Zimbabwe, same as they do about the Darfur in Sudan. The British, French and US governments want control back over these 2 regions of Africa. And they want the general public to think that they are being good people if they help cheer lead for that effort. Go figure? I blame our pathetic educational system here for people being so naive and gullible. How ’bout you?

Click here to read more about the anthrax biological warfare of European colonialists against their Black neighbors in Africa. This info actually was writtten by a White Rhidesian racist, too.

Fed makes emergency donation…

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Brother Jonah

In terms of a rate slash, on a Sunday evening. Because it’s Monday in the asian markets and now the London and Zurich and Paris and Berlin markets…

In six hours the markets on Wall Street are going to open, just from what’s already happened in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, HongKong, and Shanghai, and is rolling across the continents like a huge tsunami of Economic Doom, and early trades here, the Market is going to take a 200 point hit at opening bell.

In a sick ironic twist, the Bear Market is actually as of today a reaction to the Fed bailing out the Americans, the rate slash made it possible for J.P.Morgan/Chase to buy up … Bear …

The markets are now skittish across the world because “the Housing Bubble” the “we overbuilt for a decade and now the market is adjusting mr Bush was babbling about on Tuesday, is only the tip of a very large pimple.

So they cheated, lied, swindled and outright stole, and then got several Tax breaks on top of that… selling the debt on the Predatory Lending to finance other scams… and still other scams….

Did I mention the Chase group in that? why yes I did… they’re the ones who appointed Wolfowitz to be head of the World Bank just last year.

Now, I’m reasonably certain that Mr Bush had plans for what to do when the airborne fecal mass contacts the rotary atmospheric circulation device…

Plans that no doubt involved a quick resignation and being whisked off on the first available flight out of the country, with suitcases full of cash,…

…then spending the rest of his unnatural life in some Mediterranean villa, sitting around the pool drinking martinis with other exiled dictators…

Hey, there’s a Job Opening for him in Afghanistan, and he’s already expressed interest in filling the position!

Meanwhile the victims of this massive ripoff won’t get reimbursed anything.

The thieves who created the problem will have taken too much of the money for any to be left over, to distribute to their victims…

If all this sounds cynical and bitter, that’s only because I’ve calmed down a bit.

I was enraged, vengeful and hate-filled before.

And they wonder why people throw airplanes at their buildings.

Betrayus redux

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Brother Jonah

So, now, the one general Bush could find willing to be his bag-man and “take one for the Team” is apparently not happy taking one for the Team, and taking another one for the Team, and then taking another one…

Apparently, the Surge is not working as splendiferously as Mr Bush lies to us. It’s gotten so bad the trained liars are circumventing the story by screaming about shit that means absolutely nothing, but does keep our minds off the fact that the situation in Iraq sucks much dog. And now even Petraeus is saying it.

The latest “scandal! Outrage! there must be Blood shed!” is about a presidential candidates preacher saying that (gasp!) there’s RACISM IN AMERICA!

Hard to follow an act like that. WC Fields or Foy or one of those Last of the Vaudevilleans, great actors, said you should never try to follow an act involving animals or children. I guess the Chimp and his ministry of Lies kinda qualify as both.

But the slaughter goes on… sure, you can keep the boot heel firmly on the necks of the conquered, provided you’re willing to spend the economy of your entire nation to do it.

Then one day, you have to let up, you can’t keep the boot heel on the neck forever. Physical and logistical impossibility.

But it’s not really as sad and pathetic as it seems…

actually, it’s much much worse…

Maybe that’s part of the reason Bush is willing to put the already overstretched military, most of the combat-ready brigades are already in the line of fire, in the line of Further and More intense Fire with his really stupid idea to jump a nation with 5 times the population of the nation they can’t govern effectively.

Some of the Military in town here have called this “sedition” to say things like that.

The actual charge of sedition is to teach the violent overthrow of the government and laws of the united states.

George Bush has not only TAUGHT this doctrine, he and his Gang of Thugs have accomplished it. And put in place a system wherein they might be able to make their Terroristic Dictatorship permanent.

Soldiers and Airmen read this, I know because when I first looked for the blog (not knowing the name) I googled “camp casey colorado springs” and got a discussion forum for soldiers, who were saying that we are seditious.

Fellas, your Commander in Thief is the one committing sedition. You guys swore the same oath I did, and incidentally, the one Bush swore once when he joined the National Guard and twice as POTUS, to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign AND Domestic. That would be the same Constitution he and his group of thugs Openly Declared they would eliminate, by whatever means they considered necessary. The one Bush called “just a piece of goddamned paper” in one of his Imperial Hissie Fits when he was informed that the actions he was proposing were unconstitutional.

He wants to use you as instruments of his Imperial Will, and is willing to make a burnt offering of YOUR blood in the sands of Arabia, but, if you notice, not HIS blood.

To deny this, or denounce this, you first have to read it. Some of your officers will want to suppress this idea by mocking it into disappearing. Or use your muscle to Threaten it into disappearing.

The Romans tried that with Judaism and Christianity.

How’d that work out for y’all?

And I say that because you are the heirs to that empire. Have fun trying to destroy an idea.

You’ll drive yourselves mad trying.

Ask your General with the name of a Roman Legionnaire.

Ask your president whose foreign policy is an exact copy of that offered by Emperor Caligula “Let them hate, so long as they Fear”.

The falsity of Stalinist “Socialism”

Posted on January 28, 2008 by JB

Socialism does not equal tyranny, unlike the claims and demagoguery of the capitalists. A true democratic Socialism and fair market system is a natural course for human society. It is free of predatory and parasitic capitalist schemes to dominate and exploit everyone and everything. It is decentralization of power distributed to citizens, as opposed to the fascist model that benefits from centralization and concentration of power. It can disperse wealth and enrich citizens if they can be de-programmed of their false worship and idolization of wealth as success and exploitation as the norm.

And it doesn’t have to be an exact model of Marx or Engels or Trotsky or Lenin. But it should include the takeover of production from the fascists with community worker councils in control. And the shift away from enslavement of the worlds workers by the bankers and through globalisation. And control of currency back to the citizens. The capitalists are middlemen who get in our way of a just fair society that we have the ability to create. It is they who have created all of the false propaganda about Socialism. They who choke by way of embargoes, sanctions, and political disruption, any countries attempt toward a just socialist society. Their domination as a minority over the majority cannot and should not stand any longer.

Here’s a good read. Dated but still valid. Enjoy. Also enjoy the many thorough and insightful articles on www.wsws.org

Socialism and Democracy
James P. Cannon gave the following talk to a meeting at the Socialist Workers Party’s West Coast Vacation School, September 1, 1957. It was first published in the Fall 1957 International Socialist Review.

Comrades, I am glad to be here with you today, and to accept your invitation to speak on socialism and democracy. Before we can make real headway in the discussion of other important parts of the program, we have to find agreement on what we mean by socialism and what we mean by democracy, and how they are related to each other, and what we are going to say to the American workers about them.

Strange as it may seem, an agreement on these two simple, elementary points, as experience has already demonstrated, will not be arrived at easily. The confusion and demoralization created by Stalinism, and the successful exploitation of this confusion by the ruling capitalists of this country and all their agents and apologists, still hang heavily over all sections of the workers’ movement.

Shakespeare’s Mark Antony reminded us that evil quite often outlives its authors. That is true in the present case also. Stalin is dead; but the crippling influence of Stalinism on the minds of a whole generation of people who considered themselves socialists or communists lives after Stalin.

Now, of course, the Stalinists and their apologists have not created all the confusion in this country about the meaning of socialism, at least not directly. At every step the Stalinist work of befuddlement and demoralization, of debasing words into their opposite meanings, has been supported by reciprocal action of the same kind by the ruling capitalists and their apologists. They have never failed to take the Stalinists at their word, and to point to the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union, with all of its horrors, and to say: “That is socialism. The American way of life is better.”

They have cynically accepted the Stalinist definition and have obligingly advertised the Soviet Union, with its grinding poverty and glaring inequality, with its ubiquitous police terror, frame-ups, mass murders and slave-labour camps, as a “socialist” order of society. They have utilized the crimes of Stalinism to prejudice the American workers against the very name of socialism. And worst of all, comrades, we have to recognise that this campaign has been widely successful, and that we have to pay for it. We cannot build a strong socialist movement in this country until we overcome this confusion in the minds of the American workers about the real meaning of socialism.

After all that has happened in the past quarter of a century, the American workers have become more acutely sensitive than ever before to the value and importance of democratic rights. That, in my opinion, is the progressive side of their reaction, which we should fully share. The horrors of fascism, as they were revealed in the ’30s, and which were never dreamed of by the socialists in the old days, and the no less monstrous crimes of Stalinism, which became public knowledge later—all this has inspired a fear and hatred of any kind of dictatorship in the minds of the American working class. And to the extent that the Stalinist dictatorship in Russia has been identified with the name of socialism, and that this identification has been taken as a matter of course, the American workers have been prejudiced against socialism. That’s the bitter truth, and it must be looked straight in the face.

The socialist movement in America will not advance again significantly until it regains the initiative and takes the offensive against capitalism and all its agents in the labour movement precisely on the issue of democracy.

The authentic socialist movement, as it was conceived by its founders and as it has developed over the past century, has been the most democratic movement in all history. No formulation of this question can improve on the classic statement of the Communist Manifesto, with which modern scientific socialism was proclaimed to the world in 1848. The Communist Manifesto said:

““All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”

The authors of the Communist Manifesto linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but democratic, if we understand by “democracy” the rule of the people, the majority. The Stalinist claim—that the task of reconstructing society on a socialist basis can be farmed out to a privileged and uncontrolled bureaucracy, while the workers remain without voice or vote in the process—is just as foreign to the thoughts of Marx and Engels, and of all their true disciples, as the reformist idea that socialism can be handed down to the workers by degrees by the capitalists who exploit them.

All such fantastic conceptions were answered in advance by the reiterated statement of Marx and Engels that “the emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves.” That is the language of Marx and Engels—“the task of the workers themselves”. That was just another way of saying—as they said explicitly many times—that the socialist reorganization of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that.

Moreover, the great teachers did not limit the democratic action of the working class to the overthrow of bourgeois supremacy. They defined democracy as the form of governmental rule in the transition period between capitalism and socialism. It is explicitly stated in the Communist Manifesto—and I wonder how many people have forgotten this in recent years—“The first step”, said the Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”

That is the way Marx and Engels formulated the first aim of the revolution—to make the workers the ruling class, to establish democracy, which, in their view, is the same thing. From this precise formulation it is clear that Marx and Engels did not consider the limited, formal democracy under capitalism, which screens the exploitation and the rule of the great majority by the few, as real democracy.

They never taught that the simple nationalization of the forces of production signified the establishment of socialism. That’s not stated by Marx and Engels anywhere. Nationalization only lays the economic foundations for the transition to socialism. Still less could they have sanctioned, even if they had been able to imagine, the monstrous idea that socialism could be realized without freedom and without equality; that nationalized production and planned economy, controlled by a ruthless police dictatorship, complete with prisons, torture chambers and forced-labour camps, could be designated as a “socialist” society. That unspeakable perversion and contradiction of terms belongs to the Stalinists and their apologists.

All the great Marxists defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a democratic workers’ state, to say nothing of a state in the monstrous form of a bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority.

The Soviet Union today is a transitional order of society, in which the bureaucratic dictatorship of a privileged minority, far from serving as the agency to bridge the transition to socialism, stands as an obstacle to harmonious development in that direction. In the view of Marx and Engels, and of Lenin and Trotsky who came after them, the transition from capitalism to the classless society of socialism could only be carried out by an ever-expanding democracy, involving the masses of the workers more and more in all phases of social life, by direct participation and control.

Forecasting the socialist future, the Communist Manifesto said: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association.” Mark that: “an association”, not a state—“an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.

I say we will not put the socialist movement of this country on the right track and restore its rightful appeal to the best sentiments of the working class of this country and above all to the young, until we begin to call socialism by its right name as the great teachers did. Until we make it clear that we stand for an ever-expanding workers’ democracy as the only road to socialism. Until we root out every vestige of Stalinist perversion and corruption of the meaning of socialism and democracy, and restate the thoughts and formulations of the authentic Marxist teachers.

But the Stalinist definitions of socialism and democracy are not the only perversions that have to be rejected before we can find a sound basis for the regroupment of socialist forces in the United States. The definitions of the social democrats of all hues and gradations are just as false. And in this country they are a still more formidable obstacle because they have deeper roots, and they are nourished by the ruling class itself.

The liberals, the social democrats and the bureaucratic bosses of the American trade unions are red-hot supporters of “democracy”. At least, that is what they say. And they strive to herd the workers into the imperialist war camp under the general slogan of “democracy versus dictatorship”. They speak of democracy as something that stands by itself above the classes and the class struggle, and not as the form of rule of one class over another.

Capitalism, under any kind of government—whether bourgeois democracy or fascism or a military police state—is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists; scarcely less so than the slaveowners of ancient times were the actual rulers and the real beneficiaries of the Athenian democracy.

To be sure, the workers in the United States have a right to vote periodically for one of two sets of candidates selected for them by the two capitalist parties. And if they can dodge the witch-hunters, they can exercise the right of free speech and free press. But this formal right of free speech and free press is outweighed rather heavily by the inconvenient circumstance that the small capitalist minority happens to enjoy a complete monopoly of ownership and control of all the big presses, and of television and radio, and of all other means of communication and information.

But even so, with all that, a little democracy is better than none. We socialists have never denied that. And after the experiences of fascism and McCarthyism, and of military and police dictatorships in many parts of the world, and of the horrors of Stalinism, we have all the more reason to value every democratic provision for the protection of human rights and human dignity; to fight for more democracy, not less.

Socialists should not argue with the American worker when he says he wants democracy and doesn’t want to be ruled by a dictatorship. Rather, we should recognise that his demand for human rights and democratic guarantees, now and in the future, is in itself progressive. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. The Marxists, throughout the century-long history of our movement, have always valued and defended bourgeois democratic rights, restricted as they were; and have utilized them for the education and organization of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether.

The right of union organization is a precious right, a democratic right, but it was not “given” to the workers in the United States. It took the mighty and irresistible labour upheaval of the ’30s, culminating in the great sit-down strikes—a semi-revolution of the American workers—to establish in reality the right of union organization in mass-production industry.

When it comes to the administration of workers’ organizations under their control, the social democrats and the reformist labour leaders pay very little respect to their own professed democratic principles. The trade unions in the United States today, as you all know, are administered and controlled by little cliques of richly privileged bureaucrats, who use the union machinery, and the union funds, and a private army of goon squads, and—whenever necessary—the help of the employers and the government, to keep their own “party” in control of the unions, and to suppress and beat down any attempt of the rank and file to form an opposition “party” to put up an opposition slate.

In practice, the American labour bureaucrats, who piously demand democracy in the one-party totalitarian domain of Stalinism, come as close as they can to maintaining a total one-party rule in their own domain. The Stalinist bureaucrats in Russia and the trade-union bureaucrats in the United States are not sisters, but they are much more alike than different. They are essentially of the same breed, a privileged caste dominated above all by motives of self-benefit and self-preservation at the expense of the workers and against the workers.

The privileged bureaucratic caste everywhere is the most formidable obstacle to democracy and socialism. The struggle of the working class in both sections of the now divided world has become, in the most profound meaning of the term, a struggle against the usurping privileged bureaucracy.

In the Soviet Union, it is a struggle to restore the genuine workers’ democracy established by the revolution of 1917. Workers’ democracy has become a burning necessity to assure the harmonious transition to socialism. That is the meaning of the political revolution against the bureaucracy now developing throughout the whole Soviet sphere, which every socialist worthy of the name unreservedly supports.

In the United States, the struggle for workers’ democracy is preeminently a struggle of the rank and file to gain democratic control of their own organizations That is the necessary condition to prepare the final struggle to abolish capitalism and establish democracy in the country as a whole. No party in this country has a right to call itself socialist unless it stands foursquare for the rank-and-file workers of the United States against the bureaucrats.

Capitalism does not survive as a social system by its own strength, but by its influence within the workers’ movement, reflected and expressed by the labour aristocracy and the bureaucracy. So the fight for workers’ democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, and is the condition for its victory. Workers’ democracy is the only road to socialism, here in the United States and everywhere else, all the way from Moscow to Los Angeles, and from here to Budapest.

Libertad! Mexico wants freedom from US paid asesinos

Posted on January 23, 2008 by Tony Logan

Imagine if today the federal government had taken over the Colorado Springs Police Department, the Denver PD, and the Boulder PD? Imagine if that followed the federal government having taken over even more and bigger US cities’ PDs?

The US Drug War’s spillover into Mexico is just like that and yesterday the Mexican federal government took over the narco infiltrated police forces in Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, and Reynosa. Just before, it was in Tijuana and some neighboring cities south of California that the police HQs got taken over by the army.

That does not mean that the Mexican military are the good guys Down South. They most certainly are not. They are the American government’s puppet henchmen directed by America’s puppet Mexican dictatorship. In all, they are a bunch of asesinos (assassins) and tortureros (torturers). The government there has a lot in common with Dick and Dubya’s.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca is where resistance to the US puppets remains strongest at this time despite last year’s repression. You can watch an 8 minute film of one of the latest marches for freedom there.
Youth March for the Liberation Of Political Prisoners

And how nice to see young people that are not passive and demobilized.
Libertad! Libertad!

US government covers for Pakistan’s dictator

Posted on January 19, 2008 by Tony Logan

The murder of Benazir Bhutto has all the markings of being an assassination by the US backed Musharraf regime, which is an immensely unpopular dictatorship in the view of most Pakistanis.

Because of his unpopularity, the US wanted to possibly slide Benazir Bhutto back into power. But now that she has been murdered, most probably by the dictatorship itself, the US government is playing alongside with Musharraf’s version of events and has now officially endorsed the script that al-Qaeda murdered Bhutto. CIA boss names Bhutto ‘killers’

The world is not stupid and can see the blatant and open support the US government gives to Muslim country dictatorships. Gone is the US big lie that its foreign policy has the objective of bringing democracy anywhere to anybody. US government use of the Ethiopian dictator in his wars against the Somali people is another case of being naked in public. Today, the US government has about zero credibility in the eyes of most people around the planet. The US has no supposed moral high ground to stand on anymore.

Barack Obama is just more of the same bad US foreign policy

Posted on January 9, 2008 by Tony Logan

Barack Obama’s dad was from Kenya and was a Luo, which is one of many tribes in Kenya. Last year, Barack Obama visited his family’s ancestral home in Kenya but what has come of it?

Kenya has now fallen into a state of civil war because the US supports the dictator ruling there, Mwai Kibaki, who is from another ethnic tribe, the Kikuyu. He, along with the dictator, Meleze, that rules over Ethiopia are the 2 key US government allies that have brought terror and chaos to Somalia during the last year, all under Pentagon direction.

So just what does Obama have to say about the US policy of continuing to support the Kenyan dictator who just stole the recent presidential election from Raila Odinga, a member of the same family tribe Obama’s family is part of? Does Obama criticize the US foreign policy of Bush which advocates pretending that the election was not stolen? Does he call for the US to stop supporting dictators in the region? The answer is NO that he doesn’t, on all accounts.

Barack Obama has pretended to be for something vaguely called CHANGE, but he is not for that at all, and the following BBC commentary Could US elect a Luo before Kenya? illustrates quite well what we can expect form Obama if he were elected to craft American foreign policy. We could expect just more of the same bad US foreign policy that has been in evidence for decades, and not just during the Bush years.

Obama is not for change it seems. He is a total fraud, and the way he has responded to the recent events in Kenya illustrates once again just how much so that is the case.

Russia’s Crony Capitalism vs ours

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Tony Logan

Do you feel any safer? I mean now that godless communism was beat back in Russia?
Now all those nukes are in the hands of the crony capitalist elites of that country. Feel any safer?

Our own crony capitalists spent trillions of dollars of our national wealth to win that ‘Cold War’ against the Ruskies. Look what we got!

What we got, is a group of thugs in power in Moscow that look everyday more and more like the Mexican PRI dictatorship we had ruling Mexico south of us for over 1/2 a century. It was the longest running one-party dictatorship in the world before it ceded partial control of its co-thinkers, the Mexican PAN now in office. The calling card of this PRI group of gangsters was the ‘Dedazo’ every 6 years at ‘election’ time, or finger picking of the crony to continue control over all federal power. That’s the system that Russia now has moved to.

Don’t worry… They’re just nukes this Russian PRI has to use on us in any out-of-control, control of the world disputes our own group of nutty gangsters in control might provoke. It would be kinda of like getting caught up in some gang lord shootout, but just with much bigger weapons.

Now, don’t you feel better that those crazy communists no longer run things in Russia? We got it ALL with a bargain price which was a couple of trillion dollars spent, PLUS the penny ante creation of an Fundamentalist Islamic Movement in Afghanistan by our beloved Pentagon.

Merry Christmas, CIA.

The end of America here come the thugs

Posted on December 2, 2007 by Eric Verlo

Naomi Wolf is touring the country to promote her bestselling horror book THE END OF AMERICA. In it she directs our attention to ten steps which have foreshadowed every open society’s descent to totalitarian rule. Rather than signs of nascent machinations, these form more of an inviolate blueprint. Recognize ALL of them?
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Now we can see the checklist, applied by such would-be dictators like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, etc. Every last one being implemented, under development, or next up in the USA.

I would always have had a hard time imagining Brownshirts in America, because I imagined the thug class to be made of thugs. Imagine however the American incarnation, an under-educated, highly-patriotic, methodological enforcer of the law, except imagine the law as perverted, inconsistent, irrational, counter intuitive to what citizens expect to be their protections. Not so bright agents of arbitrary rules. It’s all there, and we’re already seeing the signs, police killing subjects with non-leathal weapons, using excessive force, enforcing laws that are contradictions of contradictions of constitutional protections. That’s thuggery. That’s terror.

US government establishes outright military dictatorship in Pakistan

Posted on November 4, 2007 by Tony Logan

All this prattle coming from the White House and its allies in the Democratic-Republican Party about DEMOCRACY, but that’s not what Bush has arranged for the world’s largest Muslim country, Pakistan.

Pakistanis get military dictatorship and make no mistake about that since the coup is absolutely DC approved, despite the unconvincing words from Condi Rice about being ‘disappointed’ with this latest development right as Musharraf declares martial law.

The US has given $10 billion dollars to Musharraf in the last 6 years to carry out US foreign policy in the region, and this thug is thoroughly paid for by the US taxpayers. That’s what the entire world sees even if Americans continue to play deaf, dumb, and blind to what’s going on in their name.

Sure the US government would have preferred, like before when occupying Iraq, that its policy for Pakistan would be greeted with flowers and praise. That not being the case, though, the US still is absolutely going to push on with its destructive foreign policy objectives, no matter what the consequences are to people in other countries. War criminals really don’t care about that. They just want to get their own unilateral way and will kill and pillage to do so.

For an interesting comment by the commondreams artist in residence, Natasha Mayers, see ‘Thank You, Pakistani Lawyers, For Showing Us How’

Oil and Oppression

Posted on November 2, 2007 by Tony Logan

To those that don’t read the abominable local paper, The Gazette, ‘Oil and Oppression’ was the title of their lead editorial opinion today so that’s what this commentary is responding to.

But don’t think that The Gazette was writing about Iraq under this heading, since they were writing about Hugo Chavez instead. They say Chavez is a ‘dictator in the making’! Not to worry about Dubya though, I guess?

Think God that we don’t have to worry about dictators in the making here in the USA, right? Our political system is run by a two headed dog instead, so just what are the concerns of Colorado’s finest, as they write from the editorial offices of our favorite local comic book? Well, The Gazette is concerned that Venezuelan democracy is being crushed because the US government is being prohibited from channeling money into Venezuelan politics! How dare this dictator Chavez stop these funds!?

It’s bad news, but our brilliant theoreticians at The Gazette tell us Colorado residents to not be too concerned about ‘his childish fulminations’. That’s a big word there, Guys. A ‘fulmination’ can’t hurt us, but sticks and stones can. So how does The Gazette plan to ward off sticks and stones from The Evil Dictator, Hugo Chavez? The Evil One has oil, you see?

Reading from their Ayn Rand liberry, they say that the correct manner of warding off evil is just to let The System do its work. Translated, that means that we should just let the CIA work to a more successful coup attempt than the one they attempted in the recent past. Meanwhile, at the editorial offices of The Gazette, Atlas Shrugs, basking in the knowledge that ‘liberty’ will prevail. Oil be damned. For more info about the threat from The Evil One, see Mark Weisbrot’s A Bank of Their Own: Latin America Casting off Washington’s Shackles

US helicopter gunships threaten Pakistan mosque in siege

Posted on July 5, 2007 by Tony Logan

The embattled US military puppet regime of Musharraf is using US made helicopter gunships to threaten continued attack on an Islamabad mosque where young students are holed up inside. What an image for the entire Muslim world to see.

This dictator Musharraf is setting himself for an exit in the same style as the Shah of Iran. This US backed attack on this major Pakistani mosque comes along with the mass US murders of Afghanistan civilians, the Pentagon’s use of collective punishment across Iraq, attacks on Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the pardoning of the criminal, Scooter Libby, and in the days to come, the crumbling of Pakistan’s dictatorship. What next for the Bush Administration? Probably a joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran in the days ahead.

And which countries are truly into Jihad? It appears that it is the Christian and Jewish ones. Payback for the Iranian hostage crisis, too, and for Iran’s government having successfully defended their country against the US backed Saddam Hussein. This is an unholy alliance that wants to run the affairs of the entire Muslim world, and most especially that portion of it stretching from Iraq to Iran to Pakistan.

And what was the supposed main crime of this mosque not reported in the AFP article? It was leading a campaign against the abuse and torture of Musharraf’s political prisoners. It was for their campaign against Musharraf’s prostitution of Pakistan to the Bush Administration. For that, the mosque had to be taken out. But the net result, is that the US and its puppet are destabilizing the entire country of Pakistan, and YES, the entire region, too. The Muslim countries will eventually unite against the Bush led thugs when pushed too far. They don’t like US government terrorism. And neither should the American population.

	LL on Owl City writes lyrics most fo…
	lizzie on The ‘success maker…
	gary cummings on Common Dreams? Or is it censor…
	kennetha on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Cristian on Shlomo Sand and shattering a n…
	Vic Currier on Why should you attend the Denv…
	Vic Currier on Sovereign constitutional oath…
	Robyn KenyaStar Prui… on White Native Americans
	Debra Gill on The Stiles Unit of Beaumont
	Xaldyn on The ‘success maker…

Not My Tribe

The Myth of Middle Ground

Tag Archives: Dictators