| CivicPowerUSA.org | is a democracy weapon/tool for Total Real Change to be carried out by We the People. Deploy and wield to defend/restore/grow/secure the Self-Governance and Five Kinds of Public Good we won and built commencing in 1776, all under assault since 1980 by consolidated American wealth-and-power (the right wing) and their media machine, a modern domestic form of the consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy we 1] indicted in our Declaration of Independence for waging war on self-governance and public good and 2] neutralized during the American Revolution. |
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How to take back America from the homeland enemy
A long-range four-element plan to defeat the enemy within and restore our Constitution's "America" to Americaby Dan Ruuska (v.02.01.05)
CONTENTS How to see the Big Picture Political Labels / Political Myths
How this evolving ebook began Freely circulate and use CreditsThe Homeland Enemy -- the consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power during the past quarter-century into the unbridled right-wing state power that rules our country today -- is more unjust than the Enemy of 1776, violates our Constitution to its core, and hurts America and the world at a faster and faster pace.
To defend and fix America, follow the lead of our human ancestry and nation's founders: wield the genetic and cultural human power of our species and the supreme legal power of citizens. Both forms of civic power are written into our Constitution. Trouble is, the Homeland Enemy and its manipulation machine turned that power off, including our ability to see the enemy and sense the danger. The trick is to switch the power back on and take charge again: Elements 1-4.
Odds of success? The wealth-corporate and Christian-Right factions of the right-wing Homeland Enemy are 0.15% and 10% of the public. Conservative-and-liberal We the People, 90% of the public, are the overwhelming majority.
Think as big -- and as morally -- to defend and fix America as we did to create America.Awaken and unleash the moral and civic power of People.
Mankind's old nemesis -- wealth and power -- took over America and is hurting America.
What can We the People do about it? Plenty.
First, do what communities have done throughout the ages. Use the hard-wired survival mechanisms of our species, genetic heritage dating back millions of years: instinctively respond to unfairness and maltreatment with moral disgust and moral outrage and with cooperation toward justice and well-being. Use mankind's cultural heritage dating back tens of millennia: apply the core skills of community survival -- respect, responsibility, cooperation, critical thinking -- and a vital lesson of community survival -- keep wealth and power in careful check or else the well-being of the community will suffer dearly.
The Framers infused all of this genetic and cultural heritage into our Constitution. Notice how justice and cooperation, primordial urges embedded in our DNA, are the first two goals and responsibilities of our nation -- the first two American values -- listed in the first sentence of our Constitution. Notice how respectful, responsible, cooperative, critical-thinking citizens -- as We the People -- provide to America the several types of long-term well-being listed in the Preamble; citizens do that, not wealth-and-power rulers, certainly not God-and-Country rulers who as history teaches tend to provide death and destruction instead. Notice how separation of powers, separation of church and state, and trial by jury were designed to keep wealth and power in careful check in America.
As you surf this ebook, learn how wealth and power, including today's Homeland Enemy and its media machine, disable genetic moral outrage and urges for cooperation and justice and disable the ancient wisdom and humanity of our species including the public's ability to think clearly and act correctly toward its common well-being. Learn why wealth and power do it (To dominate and exploit the community to boost their wealth and power). Wealth-and-power's inclination and ability to disable genetic morality and cultural wisdom-and-humanity is a key reason why our ancient human forbears, and why the founders of our nation, feared consolidated wealth and power and did their utmost to suppress and control it.
Then, after restarting and firing up our genetic and cultural human power, dust off -- and wield -- our legal power: the wisdom and humanity, supreme law, and supreme citizen power in our Constitution.
To fix America, continuing to play by wealth-and-power's rules -- dwell only on momentary bits and pieces of news and never tie them all together, never attempt to see the big picture, never see our country's root problem or its solution right there in our Constitution; keep the public and our new generations in the dark about what American history, American values, and American democracy really are; divide ourselves into competing interests and divisive factions who won't cooperate toward our own common well-being; focus and work only on single issues, on each issue with a lone and weak civic force that is fought by the entire combined force of the Homeland Enemy and its media machine -- will not work.
Instead, play by the rules of those who created America: see the big picture of the problem and solution and write it up for the public to act on (like the Declaration of Independence), cooperate toward the common good as an organized united power (like the how the Continental Congress organized and directed the united and cooperative citizen effort against the Enemy of 1776), and neutralize the political cancer hurting us (like the American Revolution).
Awaken -- and unleash -- the moral and civic power the Homeland Enemy and its media machine tricked into slumber during the past quarter-century: the power in ordinary People, the power in our Constitution.
The Homeland Enemy -- the consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power into an unbridled right-wing state power, a consolidation of wealth and power the Framers designed our Constitution to prevent -- is rapidly subverting our government of, by, and for We the People into a government of, by, and for Consolidated Wealth and Power that is lawless, inhumane, and harmful to our country and the world.
Today the White House and Congress, and the Judiciary they install, serve their wealth-corporate and Christian-Right clients, not We the People anymore.
The teamed-up members of the Homeland Enemy are taking civic power away from We the People, mining our citizen wealth by transferring it from the poor and middle-class to the rich, removing our justice and general-welfare and liberty, hurting our posterity -- in myriad ways each -- all so very skillfully many Americans don't even notice. In addition, the Islamic proxy military weapon they created in the 1980s and funded with billions of our tax dollars for nearly two decades, and their 'War on Terror,' both threaten our national security (REFERENCE). Thus the Homeland Enemy, and its persuasion machine, act against every goal of America listed in the Preamble of our Constitution. And, as explained in this ebook, they violate much of the rest of our Constitution as well. Worse yet, they are dragging America down -- our citizens and institutions -- down to their lawless, inhumane, and thus immoral low level.
The Homeland Enemy is protected and served by its advertising/PR/media machine. Which generates wholesome images for Homeland-Enemy members, promotes their social/economic/religious/moral political products that give them more wealth and power, hides their wrongdoing and spins it into niceness, blocks vital truth America needs to function as a true democracy, and manipulates citizens to support the Homeland Enemy's illegality and inhumanity.
This ebook explains how We the People can overcome and correct that massive high crime against America. In a nutshell, We the People must switch back on and wield the human power and legal power the Homeland Enemy and its persuasion machine switched off: the genetic and cultural wisdom and humanity of our species, the American values and supreme law in our Constitution.
Odds of success? The enemy's Christian-Right core is only 10% of our population (20-30 million), their wealth-corporate core just 0.15% (under 500,000). We the People, the at least 200 million conservatives and liberals being hurt by the Homeland Enemy, are huge in comparison. And if cooperatively united, vastly stronger.
What patriotic and moral goal should be forefront in the minds of all Americans today? Stop the Homeland Enemy and its advertising/PR/media machine from destroying our democratic processes, subverting our representative government, and violating our Constitution: the entire Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison). Re-establish a government of, by, and for We the People (today we have a government of, by, and for the Homeland Enemy). Rebuild the several types of well-being they stripped away from America: justice, domestic tranquility, national security, the general welfare, and liberty for ourselves our posterity.
In natural response to injustice by the Enemy of 1776, Colonial America revolted: The Boston Tea Party. Today's injustice by the Homeland Enemy and its media machine is far worse. It's time for a rerun of moral outrage, and community cooperation, to restore the America our Flag is supposed to stand for: Genetic roots of American Revolution.
Legal authorization? "We, the People... provide for the common defence" against the Homeland Enemy and its destructive media (Preamble, US Constitution).
Many Americans are not aware of any of this. Because during the past quarter-century the Homeland Enemy removed social-responsibility and truth from our news, ancient survival skills (respect, responsibility, cooperation, critical thinking) and civics education from our upbringing, and our Constitution's wise-and-humane American values and supreme law from American culture and governance.
Since we no longer have representative government, and because our many democratic processes barely work anymore, to pull off this four-element New American Revolution -- a long-overdue, major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy -- We the People may need to create a National Civic-Action Congress that would operate outside of today's illegal and harmful government of, by, and for the Homeland Enemy.
This ebook is an empowering democracy tool for millions of concerned citizens and hundreds of public-interest groups -- conservatives and liberals alike -- who can sense lawfulness, well-being, and wisdom-and-humanity being drained from America. But who cannot see the political cancer doing it: the Homeland Enemy and its mass media.
Millions of Americans have been taught un-American versions of democracy and Christianity, less-wise and less-humane new versions that violate our Constitution and hurt our country, and are kept from knowing it. The Homeland Enemy, and their mass media, skillfully replace and spin and hide other important realities, too, from ancient history to current events. This ebook provides what the enemy and their media-machine erased from our nation: big-picture clarity, and very-basic truth and understanding, that we Americans need to carry out our Constitution.
As an introduction, read America's political cancer and the patriotic cure. "The CANCER," section one, tracks just one fibril of the disease: how the Homeland Enemy created today's terrorism, how they and their media use their War on Terror to exploit and hurt America and the world, how they violate our Constitution in ways far worse than treason. "The CURE," detailed in this ebook, is authorized by the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People... provide for the common defence" against the Homeland Enemy.
The Homeland Enemy is the latest incarnation of mankind's old nemesis: wealth and power flare up, consolidate and take control, then go berserk and exploit and hurt people.
How did communities, from ancient small tribes to modern nations, deal with it? Keep wealth and power in careful check. Or revolt to curb it. Preventing harm from within, by keeping wealth and power in careful check, was the preferred way for at least tens of millennia for the purpose of community well-being and long-term survival (Wisdom and humanity of our ancient forebears).
The Framers intended to prevent wealth and power from consolidating and getting out of control in America, largely by weaving "separation of powers" and "separation of church and state" into our Constitution. And by providing We the People with the supreme power to maintain those two bedrock protections against wealth-and-power political cancer that could flare up and inflict harm.
But the Homeland Enemy found ways to erode around our Constitution's foundation and to neuter the power of We the People. Destroy our ability to know what's going on. Corrode away our wisdom and humanity. Ruin our understanding of American democracy. And they succeeded. They transformed our free press into a biased media that protects and serves consolidated wealth and power (The Persuaders). They morphed our country's traditional wisdom and humanity that enhances well-being, into wealth-corporate and Christian-Right morality and faith that harms well-being. They erased "American" democracy from our public schools and public mind and replaced it with a different type of democracy -- "Amerikan" democracy -- that serves consolidated wealth and power, violates our Constitution, and hurts America and the world. In doing so, the Homeland Enemy and its media machine blinded many Americans to reality and to moral and legal right and wrong.
Thus handicapped by the Homeland Enemy, America cannot see the Homeland Enemy. Or the serious lawbreaking they commit. Or the massive harm they inflict. We cannot know what we cannot know.
For example. Americans are kept from knowing that our country's moral values, our American values, are spelled out in the Preamble of our Constitution -- to assure the common good, to provide several types of well-being for ourselves and our posterity -- which are quite different from corporate values and Christian-Right values that hurt the common good and thus violate our Constitution. We are kept from knowing how the White House's and Congress' wide-range assault on the general welfare violates our Constitution (REFERENCE). Citizens are kept from knowing that when the White House violates an international treaty such as the Geneva Conventions, or when the White House and Congress select a federal judge on the basis of religion, they violate Article 6 of our Constitution and thus commit a high crime against our country. And so on. Due to the Homeland Enemy's successful hiding and warping of history and current events, and due to their clever purging and degrading of ethical and patriotic understanding from our nation, many Americans no longer know "right" from "wrong" civically or morally -- which enables the Homeland Enemy to get away with massive lawbreaking and immoral harming of other. We cannot know what we cannot know.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" (Thomas Jefferson). Eternal vigilance by citizens is also the price of the other benefits of America listed in the Preamble of our Constitution including justice, national security, the general welfare, for ourselves and our posterity. But the Homeland Enemy and its advertising/PR/media allies prevent us from being vigilant. They are rolling back all the benefits of America listed in our Constitution. Immediately after 9/11 and 11/2 they ramped up the pace.
They think nobody can stop them. However they overlooked the innate moral power of human nature, the genetic survival mechanisms of our species that date back millions of years, deep emotion and community survival action that fire up automatically in response to unfairness and maltreatment: Genetic roots of American Revolution. Although today our primordial urges for justice are being tricked into slumber by the Homeland Enemy and its persuasion machine, moral outrage and community cooperation can be awakened and unleashed. Like in 1776.
This ebook paints the big picture including our past, present, and future and explains the whole problem and provides the full solution. Like our Declaration of Independence.
The Framers intended citizens to unite and cooperate to neutralize such a enemy if it ever arose: "We, the People... provide for the common defence." They believed in our supreme power. And in our patriotic and moral will to just do it.
TOP CONTENTS
Outline for a New American Revolution: Elements 1-4.
Think as big -- and as morally -- to fix America as we did to create America. Just follow the lead of our human ancestry and nation's founders: wield the genetic and cultural human power of our species and the supreme legal power of ordinary citizens. Both forms of civic power are embedded in our Constitution. Trouble is, a Homeland Enemy and its media machine turned that power off, including our ability to see the enemy and sense the danger. The trick is to switch the power back on and take charge again: execute Elements 1-4 of a New American Revolution.
To pull off this long-overdue, major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy -- that is, to again have a government of, by, and for We the People, to again receive all the benefits of America listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, to again have citizen governance and myriad forms of well-being the Homeland Enemy and its media machine are fast stripping away -- we may need to create a conservative-and-liberal National Civic-Action Congress to organize and direct this New American Revolution. Which could lead to a new major political party, one that could resoundingly defeat the Republican and Democratic Parties who represent and serve the consolidated wealth and power hurting us.
Element 1. Issue a nationwide Full Red Alert about the Homeland Enemy, a dangerous political cancer that began to flare up a quarter-century ago: the consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power into an unbridled right-wing state power that already subverted our government of, by, and for We the People into a government of, by, and for Consolidated Wealth and Power; today that ENEMY WITHIN exploits and hurts America, and the world, at a faster and faster pace. Explain how the Framers intended "insure domestic Tranquility," "no religious Test[s]," trial by jury, separation of powers, and separation of church and state to prevent wealth and power from ever consolidating into an ENEMY WITHIN. Explain the full extent of their lawlessness: how they violate our Constitution to its core (Constitution violations), including by violating international law (International-law violations). Explain the full extent of how much Essence of America -- citizen governance, citizen well-being -- they strip from America: how we already we lost our representative government and democratic processes; how we are fast losing justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Explain how the Homeland Enemy's advertising/PR and media machines keep the public in the dark about all of this wrongdoing, and how they disable our civic power -- our natural human power and supreme legal power (see Element 2) -- that we need to protect and preserve our nation. Promote the solution: "We, the People ... provide for the common defence" against that ENEMY WITHIN in a mass revolt of good citizenship. Warn and inform your county, such as by circulating a link to CivicPowerUSA.org, as patriotic and moral duty or selfishly for the benefits: hugely reduced taxes and halted fleecing of citizens by corporations -- worth $15k per taxpayer a year on the average (see Element 4) -- as well as greater social and economic well-being, a much safer America, all for yourself and your family and posterity. A nationwide Full Red Alert about the Homeland Enemy, a nationwide call for the Common Defense against the Homeland Enemy (a national-security measure authorized by our Constitution), and formation of a conservative-and-liberal national civic-action congress (similar to the Continental Congress of the American Revolution) to direct this needful and lawful civic revolt would drive the success of Elements 2-4.
Element 2. Restore core wisdom and humanity to public education, including to instill citizen ability and desire to think and act toward the common good. Restore teaching of "American" democracy, including about "American" values and supreme power of citizens, and add dangers of "Amerikan" democracy to Civics 101. During the past quarter-century, the Homeland Enemy and its media machine have been expunging these basics from our public schools, public mind, federal governance, American culture, and today the erasure pace accelerates. They erase core wisdom and humanity to disable the public's genetic and cultural ability to stop domination and exploitation by wealth and power (Why wealth and power erase wisdom-and-humanity from religious and civic life). They erase understanding of Civics 101 to neuter the power of We the People to govern America. Even today's White House, Congress, and Supreme Court are to blame: instead of providing the very finest civic examples for America to follow, they often demonstrate contempt for the natural wisdom-and-humanity of mankind the Framers enshrined into our Constitution, and thus help to destroy the good citizenship and civic power of our population and posterity. Besides asking our public-education system from state legislators and school boards to school administrators and classroom teachers, also ask families and public figures and our mass media to help restore Wisdom-&-Humanity-101 education, and Civics-101 education, to our nation. Future generations of clear-thinking socially-responsible good citizens would strengthen America's ability to carry out Elements 3-4.
Element 3. Arm-twist our White House, Congress, and mass media to switch clients: from serving Wealth and Power back to serving We the People. If this effort fails, proceed to Element 4.
Element 4. Create a new political party, devoted to fulfilling our Constitution and serving We the People, that could resoundingly defeat the two major parties that violate our Constitution and serve Wealth and Power (America's political monopoly).
How could a new political party, say a "USA Party" that represents We the People and not Wealth and Power, quickly grow from scratch and win landslide victories? With just the first four planks of its platform:
Savings. Market the 300-to-1 profitability of public-financed political campaigns that would cost a mere $50 per taxpayer a year: advertise how no more bribery and no more payoffs would save the public $2 trillion a year, an average of $15k per taxpayer a year, in tax and corporate fleecing.
Safety. Expose how the Homeland Enemy recruited, armed, and trained more than 100,000 Islamic fighters for guerilla warfare and terrorism, expended thousands of their lives for Cold-War and free-market aims, discarded the Muslim force when their jihad services were no longer needed, and how that proxy military weapon including bin Laden and al-Qaeda stayed alive, grew and tentacled worldwide, then predictably aimed and fired itself at the heart of its creator on 9/11 (What is the "War on Terror"). Expose how the Homeland Enemy's many other assaults on America -- such as on car safety, environmental safety, cost and availability of healthcare, workplace safety, food safety, drug safety -- causes an annual death toll that's at least twenty-times higher than 9/11's one-time death toll. Promote how that remorseless hurting and killing by the Homeland Enemy would abate with Wealth and Power kept under tight control by a We-the-People government and a vigilant reformed press.
Law and order. Advertise how the Homeland Enemy's high crimes against America and their crimes against the world -- violations of our Constitution and violations of international law -- would stop after their consolidated wealth and power is neutralized and prudently kept on a leash by a "USA Party," by watchful citizens, and by a watchdog media. Play up how America's return to domestic and international lawfulness would generate a bonanza of goodwill and well-being, and make our country and the world better and safer places.
Values. The purpose of America is to provide well-being to people, to care for people, as stated in the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People [not rulers or God] ... establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility [needed for civic unity and cooperation toward the common good], provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Those are America's values, enshrined in the Law of the Land. But the Homeland Enemy and its media machine, as they foster corporate values and religious values that are selfish and inhumane (but are spun to look righteous to fool us), strip away our justice, our civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, our national security, our general welfare frightfully so including by stealthy transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the well-off (trickle-up Reverse Robin Hooding of America), bury our posterity under that social-and-economic carnage topped by heavy federal debt and its finance charges, and thus violate our American values. Besides stripping away our many types of well-being, they are systematically disabling (as summarized in Elements 1 and 2) the ability of citizen governance to carry out the goodness in our Constitution -- an even darker and deeper violation of our American values. They also strip away wealth and well-being from weaker nations who possess financial assets and natural resources they covet, as with Iraq, and demonize and hurt those who object. A "USA Party," backed by We the People and a socially-responsible press, would stop those assaults on America's values, heal the wounds, and morally lead our nation back up to humanity.
For additional insight into Elements 1-4, and for tips on how to accomplish them, go to CivicPowerUSA.org and Summary & Tips.
The tea tax England imposed on Colonial America -- taxation without representation, a tax in essence paid to a corporation which then hurt the citizens who paid the tax -- triggered the Boston Tea Party and ignited our American Revolution (REFERENCE).
Again we have taxation without representation: today our White House and Congress represent Consolidated Wealth and Power, not We the People. Our federal government is now a bribe-and-payoff system (REFERENCE) that the White House and Congress and its Judiciary protect with a nonsensical "free-speech" legal argument (REFERENCE) and an invalid "corporate-personhood" legal concept (REFERENCE), illegalities that We the People can put an end to.
Again we in essence pay taxes directly to corporations, who then harm us in return: today more than $800 billion of our yearly taxes go to corporations (REFERENCE), who in return hurt us financially (REFERENCE) and bodily (REFERENCE).
Conditions are ripe for a New American Revolution.
Our first revolt created America. This revolt would fix America. It would be a long-overdue, major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy.
The Homeland Enemy's core is small. Their Christian-Right core -- that supplies millions of votes during national elections in return for appointment of Christian-Right federal judges, federal laws based on Christian-Right theology, domestic policy and foreign policy and war abroad called for by their religion, federal spending on their religious causes -- is only 10% of our population (20-30 million). Their wealth-corporate core -- that provides campaign contributions in return for tax relief and subsidies totalling over $800 billion a year, tax cheating worth $300 billion a year, relaxed public control and oversight of corporations to enable financial gouging as well as savings by reducing safety, laws that allow corporations to escape financial responsibility after they hurt or kill people, and so on -- is just 0.15% of our population (under 500,000).
We the People, the at least 200 million conservative and liberal citizens being exploited and hurt by the right-wing Homeland Enemy, are huge in comparison. And if cooperatively organized and united, far stronger.
Since we no longer have representative government and because our many democratic processes barely work anymore, we may need to create a 21st-century version of the 18th-century Continental Congress -- a National Civic-Action Congress -- to organize and direct this four-element New American Revolution.
Here are tips on how to begin that conservative and liberal alliance: Unite and cooperate. And here's a useful tool, a source of understanding and inspiration the Homeland Enemy gradually hid and purged from America: How to take back America from the Homeland Enemy. Study it to see through the political wool the Homeland Enemy and its media pull over our eyes, including how "conservatives" and "liberals" have very much in common and if fully informed would join together against the "right wing" enemy hurting their families and futures and our country dearly. Read it to realize how the ENEMY WITHIN and its persuasion machine are going all out to prevent We the People from uniting and cooperating to carry out our Constitution, including by destroying "domestic Tranquility" and fostering "domestic Discord" to divide and conquer us (one of their many violations of our Constitution). And to realize how they cannot ultimately succeed due to the wisdom and humanity and power in the genetic and cultural heritage of our species, and in our Constitution (Awaken and unleash the moral and civic power of People).
TOP CONTENTS
The cancer, the cure.
Most Americans can't see the ENEMY WITHIN and can't sense the danger. But it's not their fault. Around 1980 our mass media began to alter its patriotism and moral values as it switched to a new client: from being more-or-less honest to protect and serve America, to becoming deceptive, biased, and manipulative to protect and serve consolidated wealth and power (The Persuaders).
They even spun the evil out of White-House-approved torture. Like this: Declare war on moral outrage, blame a few bad apples, make the Geneva Conventions look bad.
Today all forms of big media disguise the ENEMY WITHIN into our friend, hide its wrongdoing, spin its misdeeds and bad character into goodness (and vice versa against opponents and dissenters), and do whatever else it takes to shape and slant media content to make its consolidated-wealth-and-power client fat and happy. Today any citizen who heeds the advice, "Read the paper and watch the news to be informed," becomes dangerously misinformed. Under this worsening onslaught of "perception management," the health of our public mind, and the well-being of ourselves and our posterity, don't stand a chance.
Today in America, truth about America is not allowed or tolerated in our press, radio, television, and films. We cannot know what we cannot know.
An example. Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense in January 1776, a strongly worded and wildly popular war-cry of dissent against England's unjust and harmful abuse of power, pushed Colonial America toward the Declaration of Independence and American Revolution and birth of our nation. Today, a modern-day version of Common Sense -- that spells out how the ENEMY WITHIN is worse in moral character and more unjust and harmful than the Enemy of 1776, and how perhaps the only solution is for We the People to rise up and revolt again, this time with legal backing from our Constitution -- would be spun into treason by our media and the author vilified, or warped into paranoid conspiracy theory and the author railed into a fool.
Another. Out of fear of right-wing reprisal that could snuff out their careers and financial security and hurt their families, journalists dare not explain these core basics of history and civics: America is not in any sense founded as a Christian nation (1797 Treaty of Tripoli); "God and Country" is illegal (God and Country); the religion of the Christian Right, born-again Christian Zionism, is a pessimistic and inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged a century after 1776 and was not the religion of our nation's founders (5-part series on Christian Zionism); "We, the People," as earthly human beings with natural capacity to provide all the common good spelled out in the first sentence of our Constitution, are the supreme power in America -- not God or a president who represents Him.
Today's press is a controlled press, not a free press. It makes "American" democracy in accordance with our Constitution impossible. The whole point.
In Colonial America, truth about bad and good rang free in print, especially in the greatest war-cry of dissent ever written: our Declaration of Independence. We could see the enemy and sense danger back then.
The ENEMY WITHIN -- the consolidation of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power during the past quarter-century into the unbridled right-wing state power that rules our country today -- is America's dangerous Homeland Enemy. That is rapidly growing more lawless and harmful.
Peel off its facial mask of patriotism, moral virtue, and piety to reveal the character hidden beneath: the ENEMY WITHIN is more unjust than the enemy of 1776, more lawless than the worst criminals we execute, more deadly to America than terrorism.
Merely by exercising the good citizenship called for in our Constitution, We the People can unite and cooperate to defend America against the ENEMY WITHIN. And to heal the many deep wounds they inflict.
This mass revolt of good citizenship is required and legalized by the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People" as the government of America and supreme power in America "provide for the common defence" of America including against all enemies from within.
On 11/2 America's voter majority, claiming to want homeland/family/moral/Christian values and urged on by Christian-Right clergy, re-elected the President back into office and thus condoned his righteous accomplishments. Such as the killing of 100,000 Iraqi civilians and the wounding and maiming of many thousands more including by indiscriminate cluster-bombing, such as the poisoning of Iraqi towns and cities with radioactive dust from more than 1000 tons of depleted-uranium munitions that will cause radiation sickness and birth deformities, such as the torturing of Iraqis pre-approved by the White House a year before the shock-and-awe invasion, all during the premeditated armed heist of Iraq's natural resources and state assets (SUMMARY). Those violations of the UN Charter, Nuremberg Charter, Geneva Conventions, Preamble and Articles 1 and 6 of our Constitution, and US War Crimes Act (SUMMARY) -- deplored abroad and well documented -- are falsely packaged and sold by our White House and mass media as defending America and bestowing democracy on Iraq. Did everyone in that majority see only the nice packaging and not the lawless-and-inhumane contents? Hardly. Millions in the President's flock really like exploitation and domination and to see people hurt: merely listen to America's hate radio (that our FCC laid the groundwork for in the 1980s). For millions of born-again Christian Zionists, the war on Iraq is a wondrous warm-up act for the Middle-East conflagration that must precede their "end times" (REFERENCE), and they count on the President to fast-track their Apocalypse with our taxes and troops. For a few thousand members of America's wealth-corporate core including some in the White House and Congress, the plundering of Iraq's oil resources and state assets -- and the plundering of US taxpayers to pay for the US destruction, US invasion/occupation, and US rebuilding of Iraq -- is a huge gold mine. That illegality and inhumanity by a small but loud, influential right-wing minority is what the majority unwittingly and deliberately voted for. 11/2 shocked the world.
The religion of the Christian Right is so inhumane it isn't morally Christian: Killing for Christ, Why wealth and power erase wisdom-and-humanity from religious and civic life. Increasingly -- and frightfully -- that inhumane religion shapes our domestic policies, is codified into federal law, is required in federal judges, guides America's foreign policy, and boosts federal spending. The effects, ranging from degraded quality of public education to horrific war that born-again Christian-Zionists pray for, hurt people by the millions both here and abroad. And our posterity, too. That toxic fusion of God and Country violates our Constitution to the core including the American values in the Preamble and separation of church and state.
The fusion of Corporation and Country is equally as inhumane and lawless.
The selfish aims of the White House, Congress, corporations, and Christian Right nicely dovetailed. And along the way hoarded wealth and the mass media joined up with them. Into an ENEMY WITHIN: consolidated executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right power, and mass-media power that all work together as a right-wing state power to gorge themselves on more wealth and power at the expense of others and our posterity. The Framers designed our Constitution to prevent this. Had our White House and Congress lived up to their oaths of office, as they swore on the Bible to do, this dangerous political cancer never would have flared up. The ENEMY WITHIN's rampaging pursuit of self-interest hurts the common good here and abroad, grows more unbridled and unjust, and threatens our national security.
So it is wise to begin this New American Revolution soon. This ebook shows how. It paints the big picture including our past, present, and future and explains the whole problem and provides the full solution. Similar to our Declaration of Independence.
Traditional good citizenship barely works anymore: you watch and read the news to stay informed, news that's designed to be incomplete and biased to protect and serve consolidated wealth and power; you write to your Congressman and Senators, who blow off your concerns and instead heed their corporate-and-wealthy donors and Christian-fundamentalist supporters; you vote in elections, elections that cater to a political monopoly and lock out well-qualified candidates and parties who would live up to our Constitution (Democrat and Republican are two flavors of the same Consolidated Wealth and Power Party).
The usual methods of civic action in the public interest -- such as supporting and working on common-good causes, and engaging in principled dissent -- barely work anymore (MORE). Today's finest independent journalism, under attack by the ENEMY WITHIN, is hardly sufficient: only bits and pieces of what's going on are reported, one at a time, and are never assembled into a clarifying big picture; major federal crimes, such as these high crimes by the ENEMY WITHIN, are not exposed (only less-serious crimes get reported); the complete civic solution called for by our Constitution, which is to restore true American democracy to our nation, is never proposed; the incomplete bits and pieces of information, never connected, leave us empty of understanding, confused, feeling helpless and hopeless, exactly as intended by the ENEMY WITHIN's assault on independent journalism and good journalists; good models for good journalists to emulate are Paine's Common Sense and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, which painted the big picture and explained the whole problem and provided the full solution. Applying a bandage over a political-cancer sore every now and then -- such as to slow the pace of media consolidation or add a campaign-finance rule or pass an ethics law -- does little to halt the vitality and growth of the cancer; to attack the root cause instead of treating the symptoms, millions of weak separate rays of civic energy, from citizens and groups nationwide, must gather into an intense killer beam and focus on the small heart of the cancer and destroy it. The ENEMY WITHIN's formidable divide-and-conquer skills -- such as the way they pit red against blue, the way they splinter us into fractious competing self-interests, the way they removed the concept of "common good" from our awareness and transformed the "public interest" into just another "special interest" like a corporate interest -- keep us polarized and divisive, and prevent us from uniting and cooperating in a common "American" cause against the common enemy that's hurting at least 200 million conservative and liberal Americans; the enemy and its media are replacing the #2 goal of America listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, "insure domestic Tranquility," with "insure domestic Discord" to divide and conquer us (MORE). The ENEMY WITHIN hijacked the concept "national unity," which originally meant unity to foster well-being in accordance with our Constitution, and today misuse it to generate national unity to violate law and harm people.
The ENEMY WITHIN is manipulating Americans to feel patriotic, pious, and tranquil about the White House and Congress and their clients breaking domestic and international law and exploiting and hurting people here and abroad. They are manipulating Americans to direct ridicule, anger, and hurt at citizens and groups who try to stop our country's growing lawlessness and inhumanity.
As individual citizens or single groups working alone, we can't seek help to fix America from the White House and Congress because our country no longer has representative government. Today, the White House and Congress serve their corporate, wealthy, and Christian-Right clients, not We the People anymore.
Therefore to plan and execute a nationwide revolt of good citizenship to fix America, such as to carry out Elements 1-4, we may need to create a National Civic-Action Congress that represents the full range of citizens, including true conservatives and true liberals, who all in common cherish "American" democracy. This citizen congress would organize our population into a united, cooperative, effective political force -- that is, into a real We the People again. The congress would start small and steadily grow in supreme power. It would operate outside of our current illegal government Of, By, and For Consolidated Wealth and Power and would function like our Continental Congress during the American Revolution. This time to restore "America" to our nation. Including to reform our media back into to serving us.
If every diverse public-interest and social-justice organization would contact and communicate with each other about forming a National Civic-Action Congress, and would agree to contribute a small percentage of their money and time on a continuing basis toward establishing such a congress, that would be a beginning. All civic-oriented websites could form an alliance and cooperate, and link up to promote a National Civic-Action Congress and a New American Revolution.
Many types of groups -- public watchdog, political action, education, humanity-oriented religion, science, legal-justice, media reform, corporate reform, environmental, human rights, women's rights, workers rights, veterans, and so on, all working separately toward the common good -- could unite and work together as a powerful, unified political force that could overpower the Homeland Enemy and force the mass media to report it.
A possible spin-off from the congress? A new major political party, say a "USA Party," devoted to carrying out our Constitution and serving We the People. Such a party could resoundingly defeat our current political monopoly: the de facto Republican-Democratic Party that hugely violates our Constitution and serves Consolidated Wealth and Power.
To launch this mass revolt of good citizenship and new hope for America -- where "We, the People... provide for the common defence" against our common worst enemy: the ENEMY WITHIN and its media allies -- we need a modern day Paul-Revere ride of many patriots, conservatives and liberals alike, to warn citizens how the enemy is subverting and hurting America (think of it as a Red Alert about the Homeland Enemy) and to inform citizens how to defend America against this consolidated power that's gone lawlessly and immorally berserk.
An easy way to take part? Email this link -- CivicPowerUSA.org -- to all the civic-minded people and groups you know. After reading "America's political cancer and the patriotic cure," the natural response is moral outrage and the urge to take part in Element 1 of the cure.
During the past quarter-century, the relentless corrosion of our nation's civic-and-moral character by the Homeland Enemy and its mass-media team has damaged our American values and core wisdom and humanity. Including by what they did to public education and by setting bad examples (The right-wing attack on America). Including by the hate broadcasting that arose after their FCC partner, in the 1980s, removed the Fairness Doctrine and other civic-responsibility requirements from America's broadcasting.
If America's humanity is still partially intact after this more-than-generation-long assault on our civic-and-moral abilities, then a Full Red Alert about the Homeland Enemy will ignite nationwide moral outrage and strong cooperation and a long-overdue civic revolt.
Moral outrage and community cooperation, in natural response to unfairness and maltreatment, created America. Just do it again to fix America.
It should be easy. Because liberals and their families, and conservatives and their families, suffer equally under the right-wing ENEMY WITHIN. Because the core of the ENEMY WITHIN is small. Because the 200-million-strong group being hurt by that core is huge.
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson.
Today we pay the price for not being vigilant.
We the People dropped our guard and stopped being vigilant. Mankind's old nemesis, Wealth and Power, spotted that weakness and rapidly took advantage. An ENEMY WITHIN flared up, took control of our media, took control of our public schools, took control of our public mind, damaged our core wisdom and humanity, nearly erased American values and American democracy from our national consciousness, took control of our government, violate our Constitution and international law, exploit and hurt our country and the world, and neutered the ability of many Americans to sense this illegality and danger and harm. Exactly as Thomas Jefferson feared.
Besides causing 9/11, besides mistreating the world including by killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians so far during their premeditated armed heist of Iraq which fuels even more backlash at America, the ENEMY WITHIN directly hurts America. They destroy our democracy, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. They imprison more citizens per capita than any other country in the world; mostly they incarcerate minorities and the poor and the powerless who commit relatively minor offenses, while the well-off and well-connected who commit far more serious crimes get off scot-free. They kill at least 50,000 of us each year, far more than terrorists do. They Reverse Robin Hood America: cleverly and stealthily, they rob the poor and middle class and give it to corporations and the wealthy, including by looting Social-Security and Medicare and Veterans trust funds to pay for those trickle-up subsidies and tax cuts and tax refunds, and through 'legal' tax cheating by the elite that costs the rest of us an extra $300 billion per year in taxes to make up the difference. And so on. What the ENEMY WITHIN is doing to us -- and to other nations such as Iraq -- is vastly more immoral than the mistreatment from Corporate England that inspired our Declaration of Independence and ignited our American Revolution.
They, and their mass-media partners, hide all these misdeeds and spin them into illusions of moral goodness. They cooperate as a team to prevent us from being vigilant. For example, they hide the President's signed approval of torture and his pre-war blueprint for Iraq's plunder. They dupe us so expertly that on 11/2 our electorate majority, citing how they voted for moral values, chose to support the ENEMY WITHIN's deep immorality: massive domestic-and-international lawbreaking, and remorseless hurting of people here and abroad. The vote -- an abnormal ethical response to wrongdoing and harm, a survival-incorrect response to being mistreated -- stunned the world. Such is the power and tragedy of irresponsible modern persuasion.
On November 9, 2004, PBS Frontline's The Persuaders described how America's advertising, PR, and biased journalism are hurting our democracy: The Persuaders, PBS Frontline Nov-9-2004.
Excerpts from an interview with Mark Crispin Miller, media critic and professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University:
"It's tempting to spread the blame for this great civic breakdown and say that we're all at fault; we're all decadent . . . we don't care about the truth, and we don't care about this nation's founding ideals."
"[But the public is] not stupid. [T]he subjects of every tyranny in modern history have known only what those at the top have wanted them to know. They could not know what they could not know, so that when you start to tell somebody . . . 'this happened, this happened' . . . it sounds impossibly radical; it sounds earth-shatteringly bizarre. So you're accused of paranoia or conspiracy theorizing when all you're doing is reporting what the citizens of the world's other countries know just from reading the paper. [P]eople can't be blamed if all they know is [what America's journalism fed them]."
"[O]ver the last three decades . . . a significant sector of American journalism has become totally politicized. The right has been smart enough and rich enough to create what are ostensibly news organs that basically do nothing but deliver Republican Party talking points, right-wing propaganda of various kinds. [T]hese highly biased sources, Fox and so on, are the ones that accuse all other journalists of being biased in the liberal direction. Well, there is no liberal bias. [F]or millions of Americans, their daily intake of news is basically a daily intake of right-wing fantasy. [T]he news is custom-made now to fit a certain ideological point of view . . . Our media is wholly compromised -- I would say corrupt beyond redemption . . . It has absolutely failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation to inform us. That's what the First Amendment is about. The First Amendment has to do with our right to know what's going on. . . . The real purpose of the First Amendment is to allow the press to keep us abreast of what our government is doing. They don't do that at all."
From the broadcast's transcript: "Instead of being Americans, we're sliced into 70 demographic groups . . . [and] into hundreds of subcategories under that. And then the worry is that we don't share anything as a people." "The result is [that we're now] living in a society where people, rather than having an idea of the common good, increasingly see their own personal well-being . . . as the essential issue of democracy."
Also on The Persuaders. How America's advertising and PR and journalism, now combined and taught together as "communication" by America's universities, can alter reality into false perceptions opposite of reality -- such as dangerous into safe, misdeeds into acts of goodness, bad character into integrity, and vice versa -- as required by the client. How they reduced citizens into consumers and our democracy into the selling and buying of falsely-advertised political products, which unlike most other products are not regulated by truth-in-advertising law and enforcement.
Around 200 million conservative and liberal citizens are victims. So are millions of other people around the world.
Until We the People unite and act like real Americans again, it will grow worse. Fast.
In April-2002 and August-2004, citizens of Venezuela fought off attacks on their democracy by consolidated wealth and power backed by dishonest media. Those overthrow attempts were assisted by our ENEMY WITHIN, including by our National Endowment for Democracy and Department of Justice, who so far have spent millions of US tax dollars trying to subvert Venezuela's 1999 Constitution and crush its democracy. If the citizens of Venezuela can succeed, so can We the People.
To fight off our ENEMY WITHIN and to bring democracy and well-being to their nation, Iraq in December-2003 created their National Foundation Congress which represents the full range of Iraqi citizens. If Iraq can form a national civic-action that's similar to our American-Revolution Continental Congress, so can We the People.
Odds of winning this revolt? The ENEMY WITHIN's wealth-corporate base -- whose out-of-control wealth and power already destroyed our representative government and democratic processes -- is only 0.15% of our population. Their Christian-Right base -- whose born-again Christian Zionism hurts and costs us dearly (that inhumane brand of Christianity emerged a century after 1776 and thus was not the religion of our nation's founders) -- is just 10% of our population.
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The bad news -- and good news -- in brief.
America's most dangerous threat, a Homeland Enemy foreseen by our nation's founders and so feared they wrote defensive protections into our Constitution to nip-it-in-the-bud (separation of powers, separation of church and state, trial by jury where We the People judge the law itself as a direct citizen check on unjust and dangerous power), began to materialize around 1980: in massive disregard for our Constitution, America's wealth and power -- executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right religious power, mass-media power -- consolidated into an unbridled right-wing power, morphed our government of, by, and for We the People into a government of, by, and for Consolidated Wealth and Power, and went berserk. They break the Law of our Land, and inflict harm here and abroad, with no one to restrain them. Here are just five of myriad deep wounds they inflicted so far: 9/11, Iraq, wealth-corporate tax cheating costing the rest of us $300 billion a year (our poor and middle-class pay an extra 15% more in federal taxes to make up the difference), federal support of Christian Zionism costing US taxpayers $100 billion a year, and unnecessary death of at least 50,000 US citizens a year. That consolidated, unchecked, rampaging, heartless wealth-and-power is the Homeland Enemy the Framers foresaw and feared. That ENEMY WITHIN subverts our Constitution's America into an unprincipled Amerika. Their media machine spins and hides it, their attack machine crushes dissent and true "Americans" who stand in their way. Learn how We the People can defend and win against that illegal anti-American force.
The ENEMY WITHIN runs America now, not We the People anymore. They violate every national goal, national responsibility, and American value listed in the first sentence of our Constitution (Preamble) as well as Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (SUMMARY); their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison. They violate international law: UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Charter. They inflict several types of harm on America and the world. By manipulating the public to support and assist those efforts with United-We-Stand American Pride, they turn citizens into lawbreakers also. Including every American involved with the war on Iraq: premeditation that began in 1992, authorization and planning and command, bombing and invasion, destruction and killing and maiming, depleted-uranium-weapon radioactive poisoning, control and domination, profiteering and plundering (SUMMARY of the lawbreaking). Many in America celebrate those lawbreakers and their horrific misdeeds. The ENEMY WITHIN turned America into lawless and hurtful nation. Although the world out there sees all this, our worst enemy makes sure that Americans can't. Learn how to fix this entire problem.
What is American democracy? Few citizens know anymore. Our schools no longer teach it. Our press, radio, TV, and films never promote it. Our Presidency, Congress, and Supreme Court -- who more and more represent and serve wealth-corporate clients and Christian-Right clients instead of We the People -- demonstrate contempt for American democracy and set un-American examples for adults and our young to follow. The Homeland Enemy took control of our government, media, schools, and erased our special democracy from America. Learn how to use our Constitution, and the supreme power of citizens, to restore it.
America's news media should be sounding alarms. Our journalists should be watchdogs of democracy. Instead, they protect and serve the ENEMY WITHIN. They even help the enemy put on their disguises: Patriots With Wholesome Values; Righteous Guardians Citizens Can Trust; Leaders Who Keep America Safe. Learn how to turn the media back into our voice of freedom.
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Genetic roots of American Revolution.
Moral outrage and community cooperation are embedded in our DNA (REFERENCES). Over millions of years those primal drives evolved, and we still need them today, for our well-being and survival.
Act on those deep natural urges. Like Americans did so well in 1776.
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Just do it.
In natural response to injustice by Corporate England, Colonial America revolted. And created our nation and our Constitution.
18th-century Colonial Americans taxed themselves -- to benefit themselves. One of the injustices that sparked revolution? The tea tax to England that helped subsidize the East India Company, a monopoly owned by the British royalty and wealthy. The East India Company received tax exemptions and tax refunds from England so that it could engage in cutthroat rigged global trade against the Colonies. Which triggered the Boston Tea Party (The Boston Tea Party). Those tea taxes were in essence paid to a corporation which then hurt the Colonial Americans paying the tea tax.
To a large extent the American Revolution was a revolt against that monopolistic, government-subsidized, harmful corporate power.
Today, an illegal consolidation of wealth and power is reverting our federal tax system back toward that pre-Revolution unfairness. More and more we pay federal taxes to fund tax cuts, tax exemptions, tax refunds, and direct subsidies to corporations and the wealthy -- who then hurt us in return.
Today, how much of our tax money do the White House and Congress give out to corporations and the wealthy as tax relief and subsidies? More than $800 billion per year (REFERENCE), an average of $6000 per taxpayer a year. Those particular gifts to the rich, part of the total trickle-up flow of wealth from the poor and middle-class to America's well-off, grow bigger year by year (Reverse Robin Hooding of America).
That fusion of wealth and power -- the consolidation of federal powers, corporate power, the power of wealth, religious power, and media power into a single right-wing state power during the past quarter-century -- took governing power away from "We, the People" and is rapidly rolling back several types of citizen well-being that our nation accomplished since 1776. The ENEMY WITHIN has already pushed America backward to below the levels of citizen mistreatment by Corporate England, to below the levels of injustice and immorality that ignited the American Revolution.
Signs of mistreatment? America has the most unfair taxation of all civilized nations, and plans are afoot to make our taxes even more unfair such as to eliminate taxes on non-wage non-salary income. American citizens are being Reverse Robin Hooded; regressive taxes, laws, and policies transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the well-off who don't need it. The advertised "trickle down" is actually "trickle up." America's higher education, inexpensive forty years ago, is growing so costly it is more and more out of reach of the middle class and poor. America's financial industry, which borrows from the US Treasury at 2% and loans it out as high as 400% for payday loans, is dragging down millions of citizens and families into a quagmire of never-ending high interest payments and debt. America has the most expensive healthcare and prescription drugs in the world, unaffordable to more and more citizens. America has the highest infant-mortality rate, and the highest teenage-pregnancy rate, in the developed world. Americans no longer grow taller from generation to generation and may be slowly losing height, a stark indicator of declining healthcare and nutrition, as Europeans and the British, who are now considerably taller than us, steadily gain height. 1/8 of our population, and 1/4 of all working adults, live in poverty and those numbers are rising. Our concentrated wealth-and-power is influencing America to kill fellow Americans at a far higher rate than Saddam killed Iraqis (SUMMARY). America has the highest incarceration rate, percent of total population in jail and prison, in the entire world; most of our inmates are poor and powerless while the well-off and well-connected, who commit far more serious crimes, get off scot-free (SUMMARY). And so on.
That out-of-control wealth and power treats other nations, and their people, even more abusively. On 9/11 we experienced some backlash.
Our public schools today, controlled by that consolidated wealth and power, are not allowed to teach the above American history. Or the above current events. Or the core principles of United States government either.
Our mass media, controlled by that same concentrated wealth and power, spins and hides all of this.
What happened? A well-disguised Homeland Enemy stealthily overthrew our Constitution's "American" government despite the Framers' best efforts to prevent it, and skillfully replaced it with a government of, by, and for an ENEMY WITHIN that hurts America and the world. Although most Americans can't quite see this overall picture yet, many certainly feel it happening.
The ENEMY WITHIN is worse in character than the enemy of 1776.
Worry not. Moral outrage, which comes naturally and drives citizens to cooperate and restore fairness to government, works wonders: it created America, and it can save America. The New American Revolution proposed herein would be a long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy. The legal authorization for this revolt is found in the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People," as the government of America and supreme power in America, "provide for the common defence" of our country including against dangerous enemies within no matter how prominent or high up they are. The major enemies of America are surprisingly few in number, and they are vulnerable.
This democracy manual resurrects long-forgotten core human history, principles, and wisdom that the founders of our nation wove deeply into our Constitution after they dissented at the Boston Tea Party and then fought and won the American Revolution. As you read this ebook, dream up methods to carry out Elements 1-4 of the long-range plan herein. Spread this plan around to help educate the public. Do everything you can to fire up citizens nationwide, especially the many separate public-interest groups and independent media, to all unite and cooperate to restore our Constitution's "America" to America. If enough citizens and organizations join in, it would pressure the mainstream media to join in also and become our voice of freedom again.
The ENEMY WITHIN, a Homeland Enemy that began to flare up around 1980, violates our Constitution: every US goal and social responsibility listed in the Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (SUMMARY). Their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison. They disregard and break international law as arrogantly and dangerously. The human toll? They hurt and take from America, and they hurt and take from weaker nations, on a mind-boggling scale with no one to restrain them.
The Homeland Enemy, as explained herein, is overturning and destroying what we fought for and won in the American Revolution. Already we lost our representative government and democratic processes including democratic informing of the electorate and democratic elections. We continue to lose our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty for ourselves and our posterity. None of this would be happening if our Constitution was lived up to.
Tragically, most Americans don't know about any of this. Because America's mass media -- print, radio, television, film, both news and entertainment -- today protect and serve their new client, the ENEMY WITHIN, not "American" democracy anymore. Using the same American-invented advertising and public-relations techniques that were employed by Hitler to shape the public mind of Nazi Germany, they control our perceptions and herd our thinking. So that we cannot spot or question their client's lawbreaking and harming and betrayal, and to manipulate our minds to believe that it's wacko and wrong for any citizen to do so.
They also manipulate us to turn from a united and cooperative citizenry, into a polarized and divisive citizenry that competes and fights with itself so much we can't see the patriotic "American" common ground written in our Constitution, in order to divide and conquer us (which violates America's #2 goal listed in the first sentence of our Constitution).
This is why so many Americans today are unaware of what's happening. Why we momentarily fixate on each top story of the hour fed to us, instead of staying focused on the string of serious Constitutional crimes committed by the trusted leaders we elected. Why we're so concerned about the wrongness of lies, rather than about the wrongness of the specific Constitutional crimes committed with those weapons of deception. Why we don't see the patriotism, or the value, of citizen dissent against misdeeds in high places that hurt America and the world. Why we unwittingly support the Homeland Enemy's horrific wrongdoing often with United-We-Stand American Pride. Why we believe that leaders who violate our Constitution and do terrible harm to people have sterling moral character and therefore deserve our allegiance and votes. Why we agree to be ruled by the consolidated wealth-and-power hurting us instead of wanting to wisely-and-humanely govern ourselves like our Constitution tells us to. Why "We, the People" are no longer in charge of our own nation. Why the Homeland Enemy was able to overthrow our government of, by, and for the People without America even knowing it. Why America now has an illegal and unjust government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN.
Perhaps the most frightening mind-bending success of the ENEMY WITHIN is how they cripple and warp citizen humanity. For example they neuter and misdirect moral outrage about maltreatment of people, and they neuter and misdirect cooperation toward the common good, to achieve their un-American purposes: They skillfully neuter those two natural human forces -- primal forces that created and maintain America -- to make us unable to feel moral anger about horrific wrongdoing, unable to unite and cooperate to stop that wrongdoing and administer justice, and therefore unable to undertake the civic action necessary to protect and preserve America. They also skillfully misdirect them -- into weapons against America -- such as by manipulating the masses to direct anger and punishment at dissenters trying to stop the Homeland Enemy's harming of our nation.
Equally scary and dangerous is how the Homeland Enemy doesn't let our schools teach core principles of American government or core American values to our new generations anymore. Which is why so many Americans today don't know the meaning of our Constitution or Flag anymore. The whole point.
The goal? Restore "America" to America like our Constitution directs us to. Like the souls of America's founders, and humankind worldwide, sure hope us to.
Superior candidates -- who live and breathe American values, who exalt "American" democracy, who would foster our public interest and national interest -- are not yet allowed to seek office. Whenever they try, the ENEMY WITHIN's attack machine and mass-media allies gang up and finish them off. Play ball with consolidated wealth and power. Or else.
Likewise, America has no "pro-America" political party yet either. Republicans and Democrats both curry votes from the Christian Right, and money from corporations and the wealthy, and in return lavishly serve those two groups to stay in power (for example: federal spending that furthers the Christian-Zionist agenda of the Christian Right totals at least $2 trillion so far, an unnecessary 30% of our federal debt, and the interest expense on that portion of debt is $100 billion a year; in addition to their generous tax cuts, corporations and the wealthy enjoy tax cheating worth $300 billion a year as the White House and Congress look the other way, forcing the rest of us to pay 15% more in federal taxes every year to make up the difference; annual taxpayer cost of those two gifts, $400 billion a year, is just some of our money that Republicans and Democrats take from us behind our backs to stay in power). How deeply are Republicans and Democrats both in bed with corporations and the wealthy, how totally does our mass media cover it up, and how dangerous is that to our democracy? Read these PBS transcripts: PBS NOW Aug-20-2004, PBS NOW Aug-27-2004, PBS NOW Sep-3-2004, which include a prominent wealthy-and-powerful conservative calling the Republican/Democratic/corporate/wealthy/media-collusion traitorous and treasonous. From 1979 through 1986, Republicans and Democrats both voted to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build up the proxy military weapon that a few years later aimed and fired itself at America on 9/11 (SUMMARY). Republican and Democratic leaders both favor the war on Iraq and the war on Venezuela's democracy, both for the same reason: to plunder their oil wealth. In actual practice today a single Right Wing Party, a Consolidated Wealth and Power Party with two factions, now controls our government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN: the rapacious-and-heartless Republican-Party majority, and the somewhat-more-humane Democratic-Party minority. America's political advertising and biased media coverage create a false illusion of huge differences between the two parties. That single de facto political party, in collaboration with our mass media, maintain and enforce the Homeland Enemy's political monopoly that strangles "American" democracy.
So. All the media-publicized choices for voters today -- political candidates, political parties -- are strongly ENEMY-WITHIN flavored, a sure sign we no longer have a democracy. This is only one of today's many barriers to "American" democracy, all erected by the Homeland Enemy, that "We, the People" must breach and demolish during a New American Revolution.
How? Consult the long-range plan herein, especially the Element 4 that Elements 1-2-3 build up to: create a new political party that would appeal to true conservatives and true liberals alike, a "pro-America" party that could win against the Republican Party and Democratic Party -- overwhelmingly. The necessary moral outrage and community cooperation by a 200-million-strong "We, the People" could be aroused and unleashed like in 1776.
Today's Minutemen, the NRA rank-and-file who like most citizens today are being hurt in several ways by the Homeland Enemy, could be persuaded to enlist.
As a Senator said in a Seattle-Times news article many years ago, "If the American public knew what's really going on, they'd revolt."
The ENEMY WITHIN's religious core -- based on born-again Christian Zionism: a radical, pessimistic, inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged a century after 1776 (and thus was not the religion of America's founders) and today dangerously acts against our Constitution and national security -- has about 20-30 million followers, only 10% of our population.
The ENEMY WITHIN's wealth-corporate core -- whose large campaign contributions purchase the unjust-and-harmful laws, leeway, and largesse they want from the White House and Congress -- has less than half-million individuals, only 0.15% of our population.
"We, the People" are huge in comparison. And can therefore just do it.
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Connect the dots.
Connect the confusion of disheartening dots into the clear and hopeful big picture.
It is easy for true "Americans" -- the millions who have the core "American" values, knowledge, and skills to do it:
True "Americans" espouse the core "American values," the values written into our Constitution: justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good (provided by "domestic Tranquility"), national security, the general welfare, liberty, representative government, democratic processes, separation of powers, separation of church and state, and respect for the innate capacity of "We, the People" to supply all this goodness and well-being to ourselves and our posterity (America's goodness springs from We the People). America's overriding moral value? To willingly and generously cooperate toward the common good, toward common well-being, and to treat people in other nations the very same way; this primordial human value predates Abrahamic monotheism (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). All these values, all in our Constitution, are the true "public interest" -- the true "national interest" -- common to all true "Americans." We -- as conservatives or liberals, as secular or religious groups, as societies or corporations -- live and breathe these "American values" as we conduct domestic policy and foreign policy.
True "Americans" share the bright Buddhist-like view of Human Nature the founders infused into our Constitution: people are naturally good, and innately capable of governing themselves well and treating others well. As our Constitution clearly specifies, "We, the People" -- not elite rulers, not God and the Bible (neither are mentioned in the Constitution) -- establish, provide, insure, promote, secure, and carry out all the above types of human goodness and well-being we Declared Independence and fought the American Revolution for.
True "Americans" understand history's ancient key lesson of community well-being and long-term survival, the vital lesson the Framers wove deeply into our Constitution: always keep wealth and power in careful check, otherwise wealth and power will consolidate and take over and go berserk and then common well-being and community security will suffer.
True "Americans" have the core citizenship skills reasonably expected of citizens by America's founders: respect for others, personal and social responsibility, cooperation toward the common good, ability to think critically. These core wisdom-and-humanity skills -- they are ancient survival skills of our species that pre-date civilization by at least tens of millennia, were common to our nation's founders, and are the roots of adult maturity and good citizenship and good leadership today -- are needed to perceive clearly and reason soundly, to sense far and hidden danger, and to understand and carry out our Constitution.
Therefore true "Americans" can connect the dots into the big picture, can clearly see the wealth-and-power disease infecting America today, and can easily figure out how to fight it and heal our nation.
True "Americans" respond in the normal human way to violations of our Constitution by leaders we elect and trust, and to the consequent mistreatment of citizens they are supposed to respect and serve: with moral outrage, and with cooperative united civic action toward the #1 American goal listed in the first sentence of our Constitution. "Justice."
Or do we or can we anymore.
The big picture, the connected dots, of what went wrong:
At least 200 million Americans -- conservatives and liberals alike -- are victims of an ENEMY WITHIN: a well-disguised Homeland Enemy that funded and grew terrorism, and exploits the mass fear to expand their wealth and power (SUMMARY). Some of the harm they inflicted so far? We lost justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. We lost our supreme power to govern America through representative government, democratic processes, free speech and dissent, and right and duty as members of a jury to judge the law and nullify law that's bad.
What happened? In a dangerous rerun of history the Framers tried hard to prevent with a wisely-designed Constitution, an ENEMY WITHIN -- a new strain of the ancient wealth-and-power disease -- flared up in the 1980s and took the governing of America away from "We, the People." Stealthily they overthrew our government "of, by, and for the People" and replaced it with government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN. During the entire quarter-century-long process our mass media, instead of warning us, participated in the overthrow and cover it up to this day. They violate the Law of our Land hugely, and hurt our nation deeply, as they take wealth and power and well-being from "We, the People" and also from the weaker nations and weaker people of the world. American citizens, once united and strong, today seem powerless to restrain them.
The takeover and rampage is a classic example of humankind's wealth-and-power disease. It lies dormant, then flares up out of control as soon as citizens forget history's paramount lesson and drop their guard.
How do they do it? The Homeland Enemy keeps us clueless about "American" democracy, so they can subvert our democracy. They remove "domestic Tranquility," the #2 American goal listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, and replace it with "domestic Discord" such as by using right-wing talk radio to incite many types of hate and by using an anti-cooperation media slant to fracture the public into many separate competing selfish special interests -- which makes us polarized, divisive, and unable to cooperate as united "Americans" -- to divide and conquer us (considering how "domestic Tranquility" is second only to "Justice", the #1 American goal, the Framers obviously foresaw and feared this dangerous treat to national unity). Using American-developed propaganda techniques employed and celebrated by Hitler -- such as to fabricate and stoke mass fear to control the masses to their liking -- they manipulate us to support and cheer their lawless misdeeds with "United We Stand" "American Pride." It works so well we even tolerate the many types of harm they inflict on us, inflict on the people of other nations, and inflict on our posterity. By influencing what's taught in our schools and by shaping what appears in all our media, they prevent us from knowing all this is happening.
See how the Homeland Enemy is worse than the enemy of 1776?
If we don't care it's happening then we are no longer "Americans," our country is no longer "America," and our Declaration of Independence and Constitution and Flag are just hollow fake symbols.
The big picture, the easily-connected dots, of how to stop and correct all that wrong:
We need a New American Revolution. Soon.
Where's the legal authorization for "We, the People" to unite, fight, and win this revolt -- a long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our democracy: see the long-range four-element plan herein -- that would neutralize the ENEMY WITHIN and turn the mass media back into our voice of freedom? It's in the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People ... provide for the common defence" against the enemies of America.
Today's most dangerous enemy -- the Homeland Enemy -- violates all the goals of America listed in the Preamble of our Constitution, and they violate Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, and the foundation principles of separation of powers and separation of church and state (SUMMARY). Their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison. They break American law and international law. They steal billions of dollars daily from the people of America and other nations. From Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia onward their military ventures to gain wealth and power needlessly slaughtered millions of civilians worldwide, and they never offered human-like compensation or apologies. On a daily basis in America they kill more citizens per annum than the high rate Saddam killed Iraqi citizens: more then ten-times the number of 9/11 victims year-after-year. Since World War 2 they clandestinely aided or directed the overthrow of many of the world's democracies including in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, and lately Haiti. Ever since Venezuela approved their new American-like Constitution in 1999 which provides social and economic well-being to common citizens, the Homeland Enemy behind our backs and with our tax dollars works to destroy that democracy also. This is a glimpse into what they hide with spin and lies.
Also according to the Law of our Land, "We, the People" have supreme power. So why not just wield it.
Our "We, the People" justice, like during criminal cases of violent armed robbery or high treason, would go much farther than merely exposing and listing the many lies used to commit the crimes. Our treatment to heal our democracy's terrible deep wounds would be far more aggressive and complete than just applying Flag-illustrated band-aids over them. A patriotic and fair initial step would be to tell the whole public about the Republican Party's, Democratic Party's, and mass media's deceptive and traitorous support of the ENEMY WITHIN.
Our Constitution authorizes this New American Revolution, and provides "We, the People" with the supreme power to execute it. How's that for citizen hope and empowerment!
The founders of our nation, including those represented forever by the red in our Flag, expected the future "We, the People" to carry out this true "American" civic duty. Will we just do it? Or shall we betray them and ourselves and our posterity?
TOP CONTENTS
It's a matter of national defense. Against the Homeland Enemy.
Invisible to our national-defense radar, an ENEMY WITHIN -- the recent fusion, beginning around 1980, of executive/legislative/judicial federal powers, corporate power, the power of wealth, Christian-Right religious power, and mass-media power into a concentrated and unchecked right-wing state power -- took governing power away from "We, the People" and subverted "America" into an un-American "Amerika." The members of the ENEMY WITHIN violate our Constitution to its core (SUMMARY). We no longer have representative government or democratic processes including democratic informing of the electorate and democratic elections. We are fast losing our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. They exploit and hurt America, and the world, on a mind-boggling scale. They hide it all, and turn it into illusions of patriotic goodness, with dishonest "spin" blanketed nationwide by our press and radio and television who are supposed to be watchdogs of "American" democracy but who now work for the ENEMY WITHIN instead. That relentless deception, together with their constant suppression of "pro-America" free speech and dissent, helped neuter our original government "of, by, and for the People" into today's government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN. They overthrew our "American" government so stealthily, and messed up our minds so skillfully and completely, only a few in our country seem to notice or understand or care. This is exactly what America's founders foresaw and feared and tried to prevent with our Constitution's foundation of "separation of powers" and "separation of church and state," and also with "trial by jury" where "We, the People" judge the law itself as a direct citizen check on unjust and dangerous power.
To pull off their overthrow of "American" government, the ENEMY WITHIN keeps us ignorant of "American" government. As a small example of how they keep us clueless, they prevent our schools from teaching, and our mass media from revealing, these important truths. TRUTH: Today's system of corporate law, that gives harmful power to corporations, is rooted in a 1886 US Supreme Court decision that supposedly granted "personhood" and resulting massive power to corporations, a strange un-American legal concept that clashes head-on with the anti-corporate-oppression spirit of the American Revolution. But the granting of corporate personhood by the Supreme Court never really happened, and could never legally happen. Thus our system of unjust and harmful corporate law is a legal house-of-cards that "We, the People" could blow down. TRUTH: America was not in any sense founded as a Christian nation. Today's Christian-Right religion wrongfully insists that America is based on God and the Bible, preaches that "We, the People" are humans born into the world naturally bad (but as embryos and fetuses we are pure and good) and are not capable of governing and carrying out the goodness in our Constitution without divine guidance or control (God must govern and carry out good, not "We, the People"), strives to combine church with state, encourages the White House and Congress to violate the "no religious Test" provision of Article 6 of our Constitution, and has persuaded them to implant Christian-Right theology into federal law (rights and protection for the pre-born) and to spend vast amounts of taxpayer money on Christian-Right religious causes (about $2 trillion so far, 30% of our national debt). That radical, pessimistic, inhumane brand of Christianity surfaced a century after 1776, was not the religion of our nation's founders, and today acts illegally and dangerously against our Constitution and "American" democracy. TRUTH: Our US Constitution grants supreme governing power not to corporations, not to the wealthy, not to religion or God, not to the President, not to Congress, not to the Supreme Court, but to "We, the People."
What exactly can "We, the People" do about the illegal overthrow of our government? Plenty. First, tell the whole public about the ENEMY WITHIN -- our well-disguised Homeland Enemy -- and how they violate our Constitution and hurt America and the world, and about how "We, the People" can take back America. Be aware, of course, that our mass media will do their utmost to kill this message and hurt the messengers, so use alternative spread-the-word methods including the family-and-friend grapevine. See the need for pirate broadcasting, a network of low-wattage radio-and-TV "freedom channels" informing the public over the airwaves that "We, the People" own? Second, slowly and surely in the background, repair our nation's worst national-security weaknesses. Fundamental wisdom and humanity that mankind needs for survival and which US citizens need to be able to understand and carry out our Constitution -- the bare-bones survival skills that wove their way from the dawn of our species through ancient human history, through our early American history, through our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and almost through our 20th-century until the current illegal flare-up of wealth-and-power, the ENEMY WITHIN, pretty much wiped them out -- need to be resurrected and instilled and applied today. So does the teaching and practice of real "American" democracy, which the ENEMY WITHIN also substantially purged from our schools and minds and governance. Those Elements 1 and 2, of the suggested plan herein, lay the foundation of a New American Revolution. Third and fourth? In Elements 3 and 4 of the long-range plan, "We, the People" undertake the revolt and restore government "of, by, and for the People" to America.
This Civics-101 democracy manual outlines education and political strategies, and a long range four-element plan, to restore "We, the People" to power and "America" to America. Odds of success? "We, the People" are a thousand-fold larger than the Homeland Enemy's wealth-and-power core of less than a half-million individuals. The truth is on our side; they have to constantly lie to stay in power. The Constitution is on our side; they oppose it -- as shown by their contempt for "separation of powers," contempt for "separation of church and state," contempt for the supreme power and well-being of "We, the People," and by how they hugely violate our Constitution. Most Americans have no idea how hugely. One of the many benefits of winning? We could cut federal spending -- and our taxes -- by at least $500 billion a year, including the average $1500-a-year "de facto Christian-Right religious tax" every IRS customer is currently forced to pay. The ENEMY WITHIN -- the Homeland Enemy -- is an un-American, anti-American political cancer that grows more dangerous every day. Electing a safer President this November is a small but imperative step toward the full cure.
To wield our supreme power again, we must unite and cooperate as "We, the People" of "America" as in 1776. Conservatives and liberals must join in and work together as a team against a common enemy -- the ENEMY WITHIN that's sympathetic with, and worse than, the enemy of 1776 -- a well-disguised enemy that's hurting conservatives and liberals alike in several and major ways. We must wake up, rise up, and "provide for the common defence" against the common enemy like our Constitution tells us to.
TOP CONTENTS
America's political cancer. The patriotic cure. Or is it too late.
America's political cancer: the right-wing ENEMY WITHIN.
The ENEMY WITHIN is the consolidation of the federal executive branch including the White House, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice, the federal legislative branch including Congress, the federal judicial branch including the Supreme Court, Corporate America, the wealthy, Christian Right, and mass media into a concentrated right-wing superpower the Framers of our Constitution foresaw and feared and hoped to nip-in-the-bud with "separation of powers," "separation of church and state," and "trial by jury" where We the People judge the law itself as a direct citizen check on unjust and dangerous power. Around 1980, all those separate powers began to combine and grow dangerous to America and the world.
Exactly as unbridled wealth-and-power flared up and misbehaved off and on for millennia, exactly as history warns, exactly what the founders of our nation wanted to prevent with "separation of powers" and "separation of church and state" (America's two foundation protections), the ENEMY WITHIN arose and went berserk.
They are now on a classic rampage of domestic-and-international plunder and harm. Which isn't all that obvious to most Americans because though the press/radio/television/film corporate mass media they control they skillfully make sure that the public, including the rising number of millions of victims, perceive the lawbreaking and harm as patriotism and as security-and-goodness for our country.
They subverted our government "of, by, and for the People" into a government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN. Instead of "We, the People" being the government of America, the ENEMY WITHIN is now the government of America. We no longer have representative government or democratic processes including democratic informing of the electorate and democratic elections -- although we are misled to think we have both -- and we are fast losing our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty for ourselves and our posterity. We no longer have principled "American" democracy; it has been replaced with illegal "Amerikan" democracy. Skillfully and stealthily, with help from our news and entertainment media, the ENEMY WITHIN overthrew our government.
They violate our Constitution to its core. Their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions compared to their violations of the Preamble, Articles, and foundation principles.
They exploit and hurt America, and the world, on a mind-boggling scale. Perhaps the three most-horrific of their many major offenses? 1) They systematically Reverse Robin Hood America -- transfer wealth from poor and middle-class to rich -- such as through increasingly regressive taxation (low- and middle-income citizens now pay a higher percentage of their income on taxes than corporations and the wealthy do, a reversal from a half-century ago, and the trickle-up grows more unjust; they plan to exempt all non-wage and non-salary income from taxation, create a flat tax on income [that would tax only a tiny portion of the income of the wealthy], boost excise/use taxes, create a federal sales tax, all of which would rob the poor and middle-class even more), financial-industry deregulation that buries needy citizens in high-interest debt (some fee-and-interest rates are as high as 400%APR, such as on payday loans, 400% earned from money they borrow at 2% from our federal treasury [that corporations and the wealthy contribute to less and less but poorer Americans more and more]), and policies and laws that force wages and salaries low and costs of energy, healthcare, and education high. 2) They systematically drain wealth from weaker nations, and wealth from America, through deregulation and rigged privatization and rigged globalization some victims call "savage capitalism" (it's not at all the nice "free market" capitalism they constantly advertise it to be). 3) From 1979 for seventeen years using our tax money they bred and funded Islamic terrorism into their proxy military weapon abroad, lost control of it, and now capitalize on the 9/11 horror and fear to further their exploitation here and abroad (they successfully cloak that reality with "Remember 9/11" and "War on Terror" logos and banners).
They corrupted "America" into a lawless and dangerous rogue "Amerika."
Rule by the right-wing ENEMY WITHIN is similar to rule by the right-wing enemy we declared independence from in 1776: 18th-century Corporate England's rule by the power of wealth and privilege, rule by divine and corporate power, enforced by police-state power in the homeland and by military power abroad.
True "conservatism" and true "liberalism" are rooted in the spirit of 1776 and in our Constitution. And are thus "American."
The ENEMY WITHIN is a "right-wing" force sympathetic with the exploitation, oppression, and inequality our forebears suffered under the enemy of 1776. The ENEMY WITHIN is dangerously "un-American."
So how does the ENEMY WITHIN get away with being so unlawful, so unjust, so unpatriotic, so un-American? They hide it, and turn it into illusions of goodness, with skillful mass-media spin. That deception, that spin, is willfully served up by a corporate news-and-entertainment industry that became a partner -- and the voice and protector -- of the ENEMY WITHIN.
The patriotic cure. This core-basic democracy manual outlines education and political strategies, and a long range four-element plan, to restore "We, the People" to power. And to restore representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty to America.
Electing a safer President this November is a small but imperative step toward the full cure.
To pull off the full cure, we need to rekindle core patriotism the ENEMY WITHIN purged from our schools and public mind. The spirit of the American Revolution: in 1776, we revolted against the unjust right-wing power of Corporate England; today, we need a bloodless revolt against the right-wing power of the ENEMY WITHIN that's now oppressing America much like Corporate England did in 1776. The spirit of "American" democracy: citizens provide governance and common well-being, not rulers or religion, and always vigilant we never let wealth-and-power or religion gain influence or control because we know about the awful badness that happens if they do.
We should also reintroduce the concept of good citizenship. Since "We, the People" are supposed to "provide for the common defence" -- including against dangers from within -- and since our duty is also to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," why not just unite and cooperate to STOP the right wing's overthrow of our government and RESTORE "America" to America! Of course we can do it. It's in our blood: remember 1776? Taking back America from the ENEMY WITHIN is absolutely REQUIRED by our Constitution. So why not do what's natural for real "Americans: be patriotic by uniting and cooperating against the common enemy just like in 1776.
Consider the favorable odds. The ENEMY WITHIN is tiny. "We, the People" are a thousand-fold larger than the ENEMY WITHIN's donor class: the wealth-corporate core the White House and Congress solicit big contributions from, and enact special laws for and violate laws for, all at the expense of the general welfare of most citizens.
If "We, the People" become the government of America again, we would enjoy immense financial savings. By forcing our White House, Congress, and press to represent and serve "We, the People" instead of the ENEMY WITHIN -- the way our nation is supposed to operate -- we could reduce federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually including no more legislated gifts from our US Treasury to corporations and the wealthy. We could substantially cut taxes on middle-income and poor citizens, including by eliminating the "de facto Christian-Right religious tax" that today costs the average IRS customer about $1500 a year. Those potential spending cuts, and tax cuts, are about the size of our current defense budget.
The major task facing us? We must achieve what they fear and work hard to prevent: "We, the People" must unite and cooperate as "Americans" to fight the ENEMY WITHIN and restore our Constitution's "America" to America, just like we fought the common enemy of 1776 to create "America" in the first place. Groups and individuals, journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest organizations, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, ordinary citizens -- conservatives and liberals alike -- must unite and cooperate in this common cause. Conservatives and liberals -- including NRA members and Greens -- and their families are all being hurt by the ENEMY WITHIN. And therefore have just cause to just do what their Constitution requires of them.
Or is it too late. Did the ancient wealth-and-power disease the Framers feared -- flaring up today as the ENEMY WITHIN -- already corrode and corrupt America into an un-American nation ignorant and disdainful of true "American democracy" (which is very different from generic democracy), and politically cripple us (see paragraph below), so dangerously we're no longer able to carry out our Constitution to care for ourselves?
America's news-and-entertainment industry skillfully hid the ENEMY WITHIN's lawbreaking and wrongdoing and spun it into illusions of patriotic-and-religious goodness -- plus the pervasive influence of the ENEMY WITHIN pretty much erased core wisdom-and-humanity skills, core human history, core American history, and core understanding of "American" democracy from public education and American culture -- which shaped our minds into being supportive of the ENEMY WITHIN and clueless about the massive subversion and too politically weak-and-helpless to do anything about it. That is, they politically crippled "We, the People" into being unable to govern ourselves, unable to govern America. Will that major triumph permanently seal the success of their overthrow?
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PROLOG: "We, the People" must cooperate to fix America.
Or accept the frightful consequences (EPILOG).
"American" democracy is very different from the generic "majority-is-right" democracy promoted by our mass media and practiced by modern political science.
In "majority-is-right" democracy, political opponents manipulate the public mind -- often very dishonestly -- during competition to win the biggest polling or electorate slice. Sometimes the majority is wrong. Such as on November 2, 2004: when the majority was dishonestly manipulated to condone breaking domestic law and inflicting harm on itself and on other citizens, and to condone breaking international law and inflicting harm on other nations which then backlashes to hurt the majority and the minority (REFERENCE). "Majority-is-right" democracy is a competitive form of democracy without good sense or moral principle.
"American" democracy is a special form of democracy. It is cooperative democracy -- as hinted at by the word "United" in our nation's name -- in accordance with the wise-and-humane goals, American values, personal and social responsibilities, and legal principles and rules in our Constitution.
("American" democracy is totally different from the illegal and dangerous "Amerikan" democracy the ENEMY WITHIN has already subverted our nation into: CLICK HERE.)
("American" values are totally different from the moral values advertised during the 2004 presidential campaign. Most of those values, inhumane Christian-Right values, conflict dangerously with our Constitution: CLICK HERE.)
Citizens who live and breathe our special form of democracy are "true Americans" with "American values."
THIS is the real "American" democracy in our Constitution:
"We, the People" are the government of America.
We "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" for "ourselves and our Posterity" (Preamble, US Constitution). We control America, we operate America, we provide several types of goodness and well-being to America, we protect and preserve America, as we govern America.
America's goodness springs from within "We, the People:" CLICK HERE.
We citizens do all this. Not presidential, congressional, judicial, corporate, wealthy, or religious rulers.
"We, the People" rule. Wealth-and-power doesn't. We Declared Independence, fought and won the American Revolution, and wrote and ratified our Constitution so that citizens can rule. We did it to get out from under Corporate England's wealth-and-power. And to curb wealth-and-power in the future.
That's why "We, the People" act to prevent wealth and power from consolidating and inflicting harm on our country and citizens. We understand why the Framers wove two foundation principles into our Constitution: separation of powers, separation of church and state. We understand the need to keep corporate power and the power of wealth in careful check. We understand the need to prevent "God" and "Country" from ever combining into "God and Country."
An important part of our citizen rule is to regulate corporations when necessary. So that corporations always serve us, and never exploit us or hurt us.
18th-century Colonial Americans taxed themselves to benefit themselves. No way did they want to pay taxes to ruling wealth-and-power, that would give the tax money to corporations, that would harm the citizenry paying the taxes. One of the injustices that sparked Colonial America to revolt? The tea tax to England that helped to subsidize the East India Company, a monopoly owned by the British royalty and wealthy. The East India Company received that tea-tax money in form of tax exemptions and tax refunds from England, and then the Company engaged in cutthroat rigged global trade against the Colonies. Which triggered the Boston Tea Party. The tea tax -- taxation without representation, a tax in essence paid to a corporation which then hurt the citizenry who paid the tax -- ignited our American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party.
(Note. Again we have taxation without representation: today our White House and Congress represent Consolidated Wealth and Power; our government is now a bribe-and-payoff system (REFERENCE) they protect with a nonsensical "free-speech" legal argument (REFERENCE) and an invalid "corporate-personhood" legal concept (REFERENCE). Again we in essence pay taxes directly to corporations who then harm us: today more than $800 billion of our yearly taxes go to corporations (REFERENCE) who in return hurt us financially (REFERENCE) and bodily (REFERENCE). Conditions are ripe for a New American Revolution.)
When Americans claim, "I hate government" or "I hate taxes," they actually claim, "I hate We the People, the government of America. I hate our American values -- that we establish justice, insure civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. I hate that we tax ourselves (like Colonial Americans paid taxes to themselves before the American Revolution) to provide all those benefits to ourselves." They probably don't mean that.
If all Americans had been correctly taught this basic essence of "American" government by our schools and leaders and media, nobody would be saying "I hate government" or "I hate taxes."
When Americans belittle and blame "the government" and "taxes" they actually belittle and blame themselves for their lack of good citizenship.
"We, the People" are the supreme power in America. The President, Congress, and Supreme Court are not. They are the help we hire.
A Christian God, or a President who represents God, is not the supreme power either. "We, the People" are. "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," as documented in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli (Little-Known US Document Signed by President Adams Proclaims America's Government Is Secular). During the treaty's multi-review process by the White House and Congress, its wording about religion never raised concern. When the treaty was made public in the press, there was no public complaint. This was clear admission by the United States -- by the White House, by Congress, by the public -- that America's government is not founded on Christianity. The treaty's assertion of America's secularism, ten years after our Constitution was written, clearly represented the feelings of our nation's founders. Including about the need to enforce "no religious Test[s]" and separation of church and state, and to prevent "God" and "Country" from ever combining into "God and Country" (God and Country).
"We, the People" also have supreme say in America -- including about harmful corporate behavior and unjust laws passed by Congress -- especially through our right of representation (our elected representatives are supposed to actually represent us), our right to dissent such as to demand that our Constitution actually be followed, and our right and duty as members of a jury to judge the law itself and to invalidate law that's bad: Forbidden truths about "American" democracy.
We millions of ordinary citizens have supreme power -- and supreme say -- because our government is of, by, and for "We, the People," not of, by, and for the White House, Congress, Judiciary, or their current major clients: Corporate America, the wealthy, and Christian Right.
Good citizenship and good leadership -- as taught by our schools, pillars of the community, and mass media not so long ago -- means to cooperate as United Citizens of America to carry out "America," the wisdom and humanity and well-being called for by our Constitution: representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty, for ourselves and our posterity.
As true Americans "We, the People" foster American values, the public interest, the national interest, the bright view of human nature infused into our Constitution, history's key lesson of community well-being and long-term survival that's woven into our Constitution, and the core citizenship skills reasonably expected of citizens by America's founders. We also teach our young how to quickly spot danger to America from within, and how respond to harmful leadership irresponsibility in the normal human way. ALL LIKE THIS.
As intended by our nation's founders, American citizens -- together with the representatives we select and hire to do our bidding -- participate in "American" democracy: in partnership with an honest mass media that serves as our voice of freedom, we all work together to produce and maintain a special form of democracy in accordance with the goals, principles, and rules in our Constitution. "American" democracy, which is guided by wise and humane principles, is very different from generic majority-is-right democracy which can lead to the majority acting against domestic and world well-being. "We, the People," including our elected and appointed representatives and mass media, carry out our foremost civic duty and common-ground responsibilities -- and through vigilance and dissent we protect and preserve our nation's two foundation principles to assure our long term well-being and national survival -- all for the common good of ourselves and our posterity.
If we don't, we lose "America." We lose what we fought for and won with our Declaration of Independence and American Revolution. We lose what our Flag stands for. We lose the wisdom and humanity and well-being spelled out in our Constitution. We lose our representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. We lose it for ourselves and our posterity. We violate our Constitution and international law, and harm ourselves and the world in the process. America turns "un-American:" into a lawless and hurtful rogue nation. America turns into "Amerika."
As you can tell from the news, we are beginning to lose "America."
Not reported is the full extent of our loss. Or the reason why: increasingly, "We, the People" are being prevented from governing America by an ENEMY WITHIN that is protected and served by our news-and-entertainment mass media.
If our mass media served our country instead of their ENEMY-WITHIN clients, these top stories -- a small sampling of truth being withheld from the public -- would be headlined nationwide:
From 1979 for seventeen years, with strong backing from the Christian Right, the executive and legislative branches of our federal government funded and grew Islamic terrorism into a proxy US-military weapon in Central Asia and the Balkans. (References)
In the 1980s the 2001-2004 Vice-President (Dick Cheney), National Security Advisor (Condoleezza Rice), Secretary of State (Colin Powell), and Deputy Secretary of State (Richard Armitage) ran the biggest clandestine operation ever: they recruited from throughout the Muslim world, armed, and trained Islamic fighters into a lethal proxy weapon against the Soviets that America lured into Afghanistan. They taught Islamic fighters how to carry out guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks. They even supplied militant-Islam textbooks, made in the USA with taxpayer money, to Afghani schoolchildren. When veterans returned home, their guerrilla-warfare and terrorism skills and jihad fervor flowed into the worldwide Islamic community. Those White House figures, and many other prominent Americans, helped to create al-Qaeda and spread Islamic terrorism around the world. (References)
Some of the camps used by al-Qaeda may have been originally built by the Reagan administration. (References)
From 1986 to 1992 during Operation Cyclone, in Pakistan the CIA trained 100,000 Islamic fighters in guerrilla warfare and terrorism including future al-Qaeda and Taliban; they trained leaders at Camp Perry in Virginia USA. The training was paid for by US taxpayers. After 1992, the CIA's camps in Pakistan in essence migrated and became al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. (References)
Washington lost control of Islamic-terrorism weapon that US taxpayers unwittingly began purchasing 22 years earlier: on 9/11, America's lethal proxy weapon aimed and fired itself at America. (References)
9/11 was "Blowback." (References)
The "War on Terror" -- the response to 9/11 -- is in essence a war on the military weapon that the White House and Congress urged on by the Christian Right, and Saudi Arabia's royalty and Wahabiism (Wahabiism is Saudi Arabia's Islamic equivalent of America's Christian Right), jointly developed a quarter-century ago, operated for one-and-a-half decades, and funded with billions of US tax dollars and with billions of Saudi petro-dollars that Americans gave at the gas pump. (Reference)
Al-Qaeda, created in the 1980s by US/Saudi wealth-and-power and fundamentalist-religion, is winning the "War on Terror." (Reference: Why al-Qaeda is winning)
The President, National Security, State Department, Pentagon, CIA, and FBI all knew the danger of al-Qaeda and that a terrorist strike was likely, including from hijacked-airliner weapons: in the two years before 9/11, NORAD conducted air-defense drills including to protect the World Trade Center; ten months before 9/11, the Pentagon simulated a terrorist attack, a passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon. (References: 9/11 Disaster Could Have Been Prevented by Advance Responses, NORAD had drills of jets as weapons, Pentagon Simulated a Scenario of an actual Terrorist Attack 10 months before 9/11)
9/11 commission hid vast amounts of 9/11 truth. Such as how many in the Bush administration, and in the Christian Right, helped to breed Islamic terrorism. All the many Americans who helped to cause 9/11, and to let it happen, escape responsibility and accountability and justice (References: PBS NOW Jul-23-2004, Whitewash as Public Service: How The 9/11 Commission Report Defrauds the Nation)
Blowback tragedy exploited: our elected leaders, and our news and entertainment, steadily implant "Remember-9/11" "War-on-Terror" fears to achieve wealth-corporate goals and Christian-Right goals -- special-interest goals that subvert US-Constitution goals.
The war on Afghanistan was decided and planned before 9/11. In July 2001, the Bush administration planned to strike the Taliban before October 2001 because the Taliban didn't accept their pipeline terms. 9/11 provided the perfect excuse for an even larger assault. The pipeline project, that the Bush administration wanted, is underway. (References)
Danger of terrorism is way overblown: Our switch from cars-and-minivans to SUVs-and-pickups kills more than 3,000 Americans every year -- more than terrorists did on 9/11. 43 million Americans can't afford to buy health insurance, because its price is being driven up like the price of higher education, causing about 18,000 deaths per year -- six-times more than 9/11. White House's failure to enforce the 1977 Clean Air Act kills 30,000 Americans every year -- ten-times more than 9/11. And so on. Today's America kills fellow Americans at a far higher average rate, more than 50,000 citizens per year, than Saddam killed Iraqis. (References)
Homeland Security and our mass media routinely go soft on homegrown far-right terrorism. No high-profile alerts about White-Christian-American terrorists who threaten our nation, no high-profile news about the known base of 700 White-Christian-American hate groups and 250,000 sympathizers in our homeland and heartland. Only Arabs and Muslims are targeted and persecuted. (Reference)
Iraq mainly about oil since 1972 -- when Iraq kicked out US and UK oil companies for not playing fair, but allowed oil companies from other nations to stay. (References)
A top priority of the Bush administration from the very start was to roll out plans for Iraq's "privatization:" schemes to transfer Iraq's wealth to outside corporations. (References)
During the first meeting of Bush's national-security team, one day after the President took his oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised. (References)
CBS News 60 Minutes revealed a smoking gun: in the center of millions of TV screens nationwide, a document drafted in the early weeks of the Bush administration showed plans for the post-invasion dispersal of Iraq's oil assets to US and other foreign oil companies. (References)
In January-2002, more than a year before the war on Iraq, the Department of Justice legal-weaseled around the Geneva Conventions to enable secret detention and harsh interrogation of prisoners abroad. In February-2002, President Bush wrote: "I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the department of justice that I have the authority to suspend Geneva [conventions] as between the US and Afghanistan." "I reserve the right to exercise this authority in this or future conflicts." Subsequent hardball interrogation including homosexual rape and torture resulting in death inflicted by US troops and US-paid contractors -- which are violations of the Geneva Conventions and Article 6 of our Constitution and the War Crimes Act by the commander-in-chief on down -- have become standard practice throughout the US global gulag. (References: Bush memos show stance on torture, PBS NOW May-21-2004, Jan-2002 Department of Justice memos, This is the New Gulag, Abuse, Torture, and Rape Reported at Unlisted US-run Prisons in Iraq, Torturing Children, Secret Film Shows Iraq Prisoners Sodomized, This is the New Gulag: Bush has Created a Global Network of Extra-legal and Secret US Prisons with Thousands of Inmates, Global Terror by Secret US Death Squads , Uncle Sam has his own gulag: Behaving like the Soviet Secret Police won't make America safer, Afghan gulag, MORE. Note: The above memo showing intent to commit torture, and subsequent commission of torture, show how the President violated Article 6 and the War Crimes Act. White House's "Perception Management" of torture.)
A month before the war on Iraq the White House issued plans, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth," for the mass privatization of Iraq including to: sell off its oil fields, pipelines, and oil infrastructure to foreign corporations; privatize about 200 state-owned enterprises into foreign ownership, everything from water services, electric utilities, schools, hospitals, television and newspapers, factories, farms, telecommunications, publishing, transportation systems, to prisons; take over the banking sector; turn what's left of Iraq into a rigged free-market asset-looting and profit-looting paradise for foreign corporations. The long-planned financial/economic conquest of Iraq is similar to how the World Bank, IMF, multinational corporations, and major powers sacked and harmed the Federation of Yugoslavia, Argentina, and many other countries since World War 2; citizens in Senegal, a victim nation, call it "savage capitalism." (References: Adventure Capitalism, The Great Iraq Heist: The Iraqis are paying for the war waged against them, Ambitions of Empire: The Bush Administration Economic Plan for Iraq (and Beyond), Other references)
The war on Iraq is a premeditated armed heist. The planning began in 1992. (References: Summary of Iraq war)
Collateral damage during the armed heist? 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed including women and children mostly from air strikes and artillery including cluster-bombing. Many thousands more wounded and maimed. Future radiation sickness and birth deformities caused by the toxic radioactive dust spewed from more than 1000 tons of our depleted-uranium weapons. (References)
American citizens are mentally herded by the ENEMY WITHIN to approve and applaud that massive wrongdoing -- like convincing bystanders to cheer on a brutal bank robbery instead of calling the police -- or risk being branded anti-American or pro-terrorism.
"We shot a man with his hands up," said a US Marine. "We even shot women and children." Firing on civilians and securing oil fields was not the duty he signed up for, he also said. (Reference: Soldiers tell stories about Iraq)
US troops shot at an Iraqi mother running with two children as she carried her youngest child. Bullets fractured the mother's legs, knocking her to the ground, and our troops kept firing and wounded her again, in her arm. They killed two of her children, decapitating one. When kicked by a US soldier, the wounded mother played dead and thus lived to tell her story to foreign media. (Reference: 'US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one')
Secret American theft of Iraqi oil is well underway. Watchdog agency: faults lack of Iraqi oil metering, cites paucity of Coalition Provisional Authority data on production, outflow, prices, sales. Iraqi citizens complain: US has imposed secrecy on oil deals, exportation, and use of revenues; Iraq denied access to oil revenues; US systematically milking Iraq of its oil in "daylight robbery." Saudi ambassador to UK/Ireland: "there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America." (References)
Long after Iraq is declared "sovereign" and "democratic" on June 30, Iraq's interim constitution -- written by US government, approved by US-picked Iraqi Governing Council -- allows US to retain military/economic control of Iraq, and allows US and other foreign corporations to continue to plunder Iraq's wealth. (References)
Fourteen permanent US military bases are under construction on Iraq's soil. (References)
UN Resolution 1546 signed June-8-2004 -- which welcomes "end of occupation" on June-30-2004, and promises "full sovereignty" -- is a sham. The new interim government was appointed by the US and is not representative of Iraq. Iraqis: "The Americans are transferring power, but only to their own agents." Although the resolution provides for a review of the US military presence after a year and permits the new interim government to ask for US troops to leave, it is not likely to do so: all of the new ministers are supporters of the US invasion of Iraq and were carefully vetted by Washington, they are disliked by the majority of Iraqis, and they are completely dependent on the US military for their safety and survival. The interim government has no veto over US military operations; US forces will retain full powers to roam throughout Iraq searching homes and detaining prisoners at will. The real center of political power in Iraq is to be the US embassy, the largest in the world. Which will rely on the bureaucratic apparatus established by a small army of US advisers since the invasion and supervised by a series of US-appointed monitoring bodies. Overall Iraq-government finances, including all oil revenues, will continue to be vetted by a US-appointed committee including US, World Bank, and IMF representatives. The interim government will have to honor all contracts signed by the US-led occupation authority. Thus US officials, backed by US-led troops, will continue to dominate every aspect of Iraqi life -- and from US-embassy headquarters the heist will continue: corporate clients will continue to plunder the assets of Iraq as well as America's treasury for occupation/security expenses and destroy-and-rebuild expenses -- after "full sovereignty" and "end of occupation" are declared. (References)
America's economic colonization of Iraq is illegal under international law. (References)
US "handover of power to Iraq," "sovereignty for Iraq," and "democracy in Iraq" are media fictions designed to make America feel good about itself, to believe all is well in Iraq, to divert public attention away from Iraq, as America's consolidated wealth-and-power continues to dominate and plunder Iraq under a Disney-like veil of deception. (References)
Iraqi-citizen "rebels" and "insurgents" -- the same words used by Corporate England to describe the guerrilla freedom fighters their Redcoats encountered during the American Revolution -- more and more are successfully uniting and cooperating to stave off US looting plans, and to kill off the armed robbers: our troops, Pentagon-hired mercenaries, and the US proxy army. American citizens on American soil -- especially the millions of members of the NRA who have perhaps vastly more small-bore firepower than the entire US military -- would do exactly the same to a destroying, killing and maiming, plundering foreign power invading our land. And to the traitors helping the invaders. (References)
October 2004: The Bush administration is scrambling to build an Iraqi paramilitary force -- a proxy army in Iraq like past US-proxy armies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan -- to serve under a US-puppet Iraq government. (References: Iraq: Quicksand & Blood, Crimes in Freedom's Name: Dick Cheney's El Salvador)
Similarly, the US is creating proxy armies in South America. Covertly. Again. (Reference: US Militarizing Latin America)
September 2004: Quietly behind the scenes in Iraq, the National Foundation Congress plans the democratic future of Iraq. A secretariat of 25 representing all factions -- including Baathists, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians -- meets twice a week. They operate outside of the Allawi-led US-puppet government they don't trust and consider harmful to Iraq. The National Foundation Congress is the Iraqi equivalent of America's Continental Congress during the American Revolution. (References: The Iraqi leader seeking a peaceful path to liberation, Iraq's National Foundation Congress formed in Dec-2003, Nov-2004 statement by the Iraqi National Foundation Congress)
US policy toward Iraq, and US media portrayal of Iraqis, is arrogantly racist. Although Iraq was a cradle of civilization, although during Europe's dark ages Iraq flourished with an art/science/civic renaissance whose spirit still lives, the US government and US media continuously mislead Americans to believe that Arab-Muslim Iraqis are inferior to White-Christian Americans, are unworthy of humanity, are not capable of properly governing themselves, and do not deserve to keep their economic assets and natural resources. (Reference: This War and Racism -- Media Denial in Overdrive)
A just exit strategy, that would give complete sovereignty and allow Iraq to democratically govern itself totally, is not likely. Although we left Vietnam, we cannot leave Iraq because we're there for its assets and oil. (References: An Exit Strategy Based on Iraqi Nationalism, Getting Out: Give Iraqis Complete Sovereignty, History is not on your side, Mr. Kerry)
War on Iraq is not a war on terror. It is a premeditated aggressive war of theft and control -- with little concern for collateral harm and destruction other than for corporate clients of the White House, Pentagon, and Congress to handsomely profit from the harm and destruction. (Reference 1, Reference 2, Reference 3, Reference 4, Reference 5, Reference 6, Reference 7, Reference 8, Reference 9)
Feedback from the Arab and Muslim world: "All Arab and Muslim peoples are convinced that Bush is persecuting Muslims and Arabs and is targeting only the Arab world." "The whole Arab world hates America and the Bush administration." "Bush's main priority . . . was to invade Iraq, whether or not it possessed weapons of mass destruction." "Americans do not have any regret for what they did to the Iraqi people." (Reference: US Report on Iraqi Weapons Deepens Arab Hostility Towards America)
October 2004: In response to the US war on Iraq that is backed by Israel, in response to Israel's war on Palestinians that is backed by the US, in response to threats of war by the US and Israel on other Islamic nations -- violent and deadly Middle East conflict that America's Christian Right yearns for (references, read the several scary sections) -- an international Islamic high command may be forming to organize retaliation against the US, Israel, and their allies. (References: Shiite-Sunni Islamist 'high command' may be forming, The eyes that cannot see beyond Jabaliya and Samarra)
September 2004: Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale. "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency." "We have a growing, maturing insurgency group . . . We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view." "If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation . . . Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." "I see no exit . . . We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier." "This is far graver than Vietnam." (Reference: Far graver than Vietnam)
September 2003: President Bush stated, "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." June 2004: 9/11 commission stated, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'ida co-operated on attacks against the United States." October 2004: CIA review finds no evidence that Saddam had ties to Islamic terrorists. All this was known long before the March 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. (References: Bush Disavows Hussein-Sept. 11 Link, Official Verdict: White House Misled World Over Saddam, CIA Review Finds No Evidence Saddam Had Ties to Islamic Terrorists, CIA review finds no evidence Saddam had ties to Islamic terrorists )
Despite opposite conclusions reached beforehand by the 9/11 Commission, CIA, and consensus of independent strategic analysts, on 9/10/2004 the US House of Representatives -- by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 406-16 -- passed a resolution linking the Iraq government and Saddam Hussein to the al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (Reference: Both US parties link Iraq to 9-11)
September 2004: Iraq had no WMDs, according to Iraq Survey Group's final report. This was known long before the March 2003 shock-and-awe onslaught. (Reference: Iraq had no WMD: the final verdict)
Three classes of excuses for bombing, invading, and occupying Iraq -- to help Iraq, to defend America, to make the world a better and safer place -- are all bogus. Retired Air Force Colonel identified 50 fake stories manufactured by White House to promote war on Iraq. (Reference)
White House, Congress, and media cooperate as a team to hide major legal truth: war on Iraq violates UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Charter, Articles 1 and 6 of US Constitution, and US War Crimes Act. They deceive our troops into violating their oath, into becoming war criminals in eyes of caring world. (Reference 1, Reference 2)
On September 15, 2004, the UN Secretary General declared that the Iraq war is illegal and violates the UN charter. (References: Iraq war was illegal and breached UN charter, says Annan, The war was illegal)
The US military is becoming a lawless global oil-conquest service and oil-protection service for US petroleum companies. Our commander-in-chief, Pentagon, and troops now serve as corporate mercenaries courtesy of US taxpayers. This escalating new form of corporate welfare costs hundreds of billions of tax dollars a year, and the international backlash harms our national security. (References: "Support Our Troops" as they kill local civilians by the thousands when serving Texas oil companies in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oil Wars: Transforming the American Military into a Global Oil-Protection Service)
American citizens are skillfully duped, by our leaders and media, to condone massive lawbreaking and to celebrate America's rogue lawlessness as acts of patriotism.
Our deluded troops are paid next to nothing. Those who return home wounded or disabled, as well as military families, when in desperate need of financial help are handed off by the Pentagon to charities. (Reference: The Way Our Country Treats Returning Soldiers is a National Shame )
Privatized soldiers in Iraq, thousands of mercenaries hired by war-support corporations under contract with the Pentagon, are paid up to $1500 a day -- 30-times more than our troops. Our taxes pay those high wages plus the exorbitant markup. We also pay heavily for a variety of other war services furnished by corporations under high-profit contracts, and for costly high-tech weapons and ordnance. "Bomb it, then rebuild it" war is good business: US corporations manufacture the missiles and bombs that destroy Iraq, then rebuild the destruction their products cause. The longer and nastier the conflict and the worse the destruction, the greater the profits. America's growing corporate military -- inflated-price pre-war, war, post-war materiel and services purchased from a tight group of corporate friends of the White House, Pentagon, and Congress -- is a massive federal-government overhead expense paid for by US taxpayers. For Corporate America, the "War on Terror" and "Perpetual War" are gold mines. (Reference 1, Reference 2, Reference 3)
Our new and growing multi-billion-dollar-a-year homeland-security industry, like our defense industry, is government overhead that burdens US taxpayers. Our nation's rigged international trade practices, exploitive World Bank and IMF practices, oppressive and extortive foreign policies, and belligerent overseas military actions provoke revengeful hatred against America -- so effectively it's as if all those practices are designed to produce blowback -- which generates demand for "War-on-Terror" homeland-security products and services. Demand is also created by the manufacture of citizen consent to lose rights and freedoms, and by the manufacture of citizen fear. For Corporate America, the "Patriot Act" and "Homeland Security" are gold mines.
Fear of Islamic terrorism is being bred and spread in a massive collaborative propaganda effort by our federal government and mass media: to falsely justify war on Iraq and perhaps on other countries soon; to better obscure the ENEMY WITHIN's unjust trade, economic, and social practices inflicted on other nations; to deceptively mask and intensify the ENEMY WITHIN's War-on-America that's robbing wealth and well-being from citizens.
US occupation of Iraq boosts Islamic-terrorist recruitment worldwide. Escalating opium production and drug sales in Afghanistan, where America "looks the other way" on its War on Drugs, provide huge amounts of funding for terrorists (References). All in all, a huge winner for the ENEMY WITHIN: The rise in fear alone is good for our defense and homeland-security industries, especially how more fear will release more funding for our missile-defense and space-weapon and domestic-spying networks. The rise in drug use is good for our prison industry, and good for our banking industry (Reference: Size and Scope of Money Laundering by US Banks). It inspires the Christian Right to crusade against Muslims more strongly, boosting Islamic-terrorist recruitment even higher, and to yearn and act for "end-times," and its apocalyptic pain and suffering for non-Christians worldwide, with more fervor (References: America's de facto Christian-Right state religion).
To extract wealth and power from "We, the People" through fear, the War on Terror proves far more successful than the War on Communism.
America's government, elections, and media have become heavily rigged to favor ½ million wealthy-and-powerful campaign donors and the 25-million-strong Christian Right.
½ million well-off individuals in the "donor class" supply the bulk of all campaign contributions. The White House and Congress lavishly repay the favor including by: relaxing environmental, workplace, and food and drug safety (which kills tens of thousands of citizens a year); deregulating the investment and energy industries (which cheats citizens out of billions of dollars every year, trillions so far); legalizing tax cheating worth $300 billion a year for corporations and the wealthy (which forces our middle class and poor to pay 15% more to the IRS every year). Average return on campaign-contribution investment is at least 300-to-1. (Reference)
The religion of the Christian Right -- born-again Christian Zionism -- is an inhumane and pessimistic brand of Christianity that emerged in the late 1800s, a century after 1776, which believes God does not help people in need (only those with the right kind of faith), values the pre-born over the born, discriminates against classes of people and against other religions, corrupts Good-Samaritan giving to and helping into trading favors, and yearns for the Apocalypse so strongly it pressured our White House and Congress to drain at least $2 trillion so far from our US Treasury to help ignite the Apocalypse by oppressing Palestinians and by nurturing al-Qaeda in the 1980s and by waging war on Afghanistan and Iraq. Today's religion of the Christian Right was not the religion of America's founders. (References, several chilling paragraphs with many links to sources)
(Note. The born-again Christian Zionism of the Christian Right is radically different from mainstream evangelical Christianity. Members of the Christian Right lack so much humanity they aren't really "Christian," and mainstream theologians are alarmed by that inhumanity. So is the author of this ebook, who was an evangelical-Christian alter boy when young.)
"Some evangelical Christians in the US follow the doctrine of dispensationalism, which, among other things, stipulates that the creation of Israel in Palestine in 1948 was a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and presages the second coming of Jesus Christ." "Some evangelist leaders have supported Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians, such as the 1982 Sabra and Shatila refugee camp slaughter as well as the Jenin refugee camp massacre in 2002 on the grounds that such events ushered in the second coming of Jesus." "There are also evangelical doctrines teaching that a universal apocalyptic war between good and evil, called Armageddon, will take place in Palestine in which most Jews will be annihilated except some 40,000 who would accept Jesus and become Christians." (Reference: Evangelist warns Bush over Jerusalem -- support ridding Israel of Palestinians, or lose Christian-Right votes in November 2004)
The Christian Right is seriously at odds with US Constitution which states in first sentence, "We, the People . . . promote the general Welfare . . . to ourselves and our Posterity." To fulfill the most-fervent Christian-Zionist hope -- triggering Armageddon and "end times" -- would terminate our general welfare along with ourselves and our posterity. (References)
Born-again Christian Zionists see gruesome human tragedies in the Middle East -- in Israel, in Iraq which they believe is the New Babylon -- as "necessary according to prophecy." (References)
The latest Christian-Right "Left Behind" novel -- "Glorious Appearing" -- depicts Jesus returning to Earth to slaughter everyone on our planet who is not a born-again Christian and celebrates that bloody ethnic cleansing as the height of piety. (Reference)
Christian fundamentalists are driving US Middle East policy. (Reference: Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power)
Christian Zionists, who control America's foreign policy in the Middle East, today push for fireworks that will dwarf 9/11 and Iraq -- including Israel-Iran military conflict -- as part of a general "World War IV." (References)
Christian Right supplies 25% of all votes (only 100 million US citizens bother to vote). To repay the favor, the White House and Congress spend at least $200 billion a year on Christian-Right religious causes, they codify Christian-Right theology into federal law and perhaps soon into Constitutional Amendments, and they appoint Christian-Right federal judges to uphold those laws. (Reference 1, Reference 2)
Religious beliefs of the Christian Right -- "God doesn't help people except for the born-again faithful, so why should government" "End times are coming soon, so why bother to care about our posterity" -- resonate well with the "donor class" that also dislikes social spending, and also lacks concern for the well-being of present and future common citizens. To repay those clients for the millions of votes and billions of campaigning dollars they supply, the White House and Congress incorporate their clients' inhumanity into War-on-America domestic policy that subverts our Constitution. (Reference)
The ENEMY WITHIN is forcing a Christian-Right state religion on America. Every taxpayer, on the average, already pays a de facto $1500 religious tax every year. (Reference 1, Reference 2)
Every time the President or Congress use religious consideration to qualify a judge or dispense funds or justify war or write law, they violate a vital separation-of-church-and-state provision in Article 6 of our Constitution. The Christian-Right judges they appoint, and our mass media, ignore those subversions of our Constitution and spin those high crimes into righteousness.
Washington, corporations and wealthy, Christian-Right, and media team-up to Reverse Robin Hood America and steal from our future generations. (Reference)
The ENEMY WITHIN's War-on-America is stunting the average body-height of our population. Due to poor nutrition and unavailability of health care, especially for millions being driven into poverty by our nation's accelerating domestic inhumanity, Americans no longer grow taller from generation to generation and may be slowly losing height as Europeans and the British, who are now considerably taller than us, steadily gain height. (Reference)
Other War-on-America casualties: USA has the highest infant-mortality rate in the developed world, the highest teenage-pregnancy rate in the industrialized world that's worse than in many third-world countries including Rwanda, and the highest incarceration rate -- percentage of total population in jail and prison -- in the entire world. (References: The Myth of American Health Care: The Lies that Are Killing Us, Joy of sex education, US prison boom creates an Orwellian world)
Incarceration of racial/ethnic minorities and the poor for committing minor offenses -- as white-and-rich offenders get off scot-free even though they steal far more money and hurt-and-kill more people -- fuels a burgeoning prison-industrial-complex that enriches Corporate America. From the taxes that US citizens pay out to fund this burgeoning government overhead. 1 out of every 75 American men, and 1 out of every 140 US residents, are behind bars. 6.9 million Americans -- 3.2% of the US adult population, the highest percentage of any country in the world -- are in prison or on probation or parole. On a per capita basis the USA imprisons more of its people than Russia, three times more than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania, and seven times more than Germany and China. If Texas were a country, it would top the list. (References: Report: 1 out of every 75 American men are in prison, US criminal numbers hit new high, Texas leads US in incarceration growth, US: record numbers in prison and on parole, US prison/jail population, The Encyclopedia of White Collar and Corporate Crime)
White House, Congress, and Supreme Court are demolishing the "Foundation of America" -- separation of powers, separation of church and state -- that the Framers wove into our Constitution to prevent the ancient wealth-and-power disease from ever flaring up and hurting our nation. That crime is vastly more dangerous to America than treason or terrorism.
America's schools are no longer allowed to teach the "Foundation of America." Or the other core fundamentals of "American" democracy either, including how the human spirit embodied in our Constitution is far more Buddhist than Christian. (References: Foundation of America, "American" democracy, Human spirit)
The ENEMY WITHIN is waging war on "American" democracy -- converting it into "Amerikan" democracy that broadly and deeply violates our Constitution -- starting by wounding public education so badly that our schools and society can no longer provide the core "American" knowledge or core human skills needed by all citizens to govern our country well. (References: "American" democracy, "Amerikan" democracy, The right-wing attack on public education)
The ENEMY WITHIN's stepped-up erasure of core human skills is causing nationwide arrested development: stunted and deformed wisdom-and-humanity that handicaps the ability of American citizens to fathom our Constitution and carry out "America." (References: Core human skills, Arrested development, "America")
America's rapid loss of mankind's ancient core survival skills -- the bare-basic adulthood skills: ability to act with respect, responsibility, cooperation, and straight thinking -- to a large extent is caused 1) by the FCC, Hollywood, federal education policies, 2) by dangerous and harmful examples of "un-American" behavior being set by a corrupt White House, corrupt Congress, corrupt Supreme Court, corrupt corporations and wealthy, corrupt Christian Right, and 3) by a corrupt mass media that promotes those unwise-and-inhumane policies and behaviors into becoming popular, which degrades the character of American citizens and American culture and endangers the survival of our nation. (References: FCC's assault on democracy, Hollywood's attack on wisdom-and-humanity and good citizenship, Destructive right-wing federal education policies)
Using news and entertainment as a steady intravenous drip, the ENEMY WITHIN's massive immaturity trickles down deep into the American population and directly into our children: our new generations. (Reference: The right wing's massive trickle-down immaturity)
America's leaders and media increasingly teach a warped and deviant sense of right-and-wrong: It's alright for America to rob and hurt other countries with rigged economic and trade weapons and with belligerent diplomatic and military force, but it's wrong for other nations to do the same to America. It's alright for US troops to storm a peaceful community meeting in Iraq and assassinate community leaders with point-blank shots to the head, but it's wrong for foreign soldiers to do that in America. It's alright for wealth-and-power to steal billions of dollars from citizens -- such as the caper California's new governor and his clients are pulling off -- but it's wrong for the poor to cheat a little on their taxes. And so on. (References: Pure deviance: It's OK for America to rob and hurt other countries, Muqtada's Shi'ites pay with their lives, The right wing's massive trickle-down immaturity, Arnold's quiet looting of California)
Our enlisted and privatized military tortured and sexually molested and killed civilian and military prisoners including women and adolescents -- up to 90 percent of imprisoned Iraqis were innocent civilians -- all under February-2002 sanction from President Bush and in secret under an American-propaganda veil of helping Iraq, which is normalcy in the US global gulag including in the Afghanistan gulag. This terrible harm, inflicted with stealth or under guise of doing good, is a perfect metaphor of how the America of today mistreats the world and its own people and posterity. (References: Abuse, Torture, and Rape Reported at Unlisted US-run Prisons in Iraq, Torturing Children, Secret Film Shows Iraq Prisoners Sodomized, Red Cross: Iraqi Abuse Widespread, Routine, This is the New Gulag: Bush has Created a Global Network of Extra-legal and Secret US Prisons with Thousands of Inmates, Afghan gulag)
In response to the torture scandals, the ENEMY WITHIN came up with new damage-control spin. A war on moral outrage. As well as a three-element public-relations script to play over and over again: 1) focus on the lurid photos and horrid abuse to draw attention away from the President's February-2002 written intent to violate the Geneva Conventions, 2) blame it all on a few bad apples who shamed America and must be punished, 3) portray the Geneva Conventions as a web of hopelessly complicated legal technicalities that no one can be expected to understand or fully agree with, and is obsolete and needs to be brought up to date. (References: President's February-2002 written intent to violate Geneva Conventions, The Coming Backlash Against Outrage, PBS NOW May-21-2004)
Radioactive debris spewed from thousands of tons of our depleted-uranium weapons since 1990 -- uranium in our bullets and shells, bombs and missiles -- will poison Yugoslavians, Afghanis, Iraqis, and US troops and their families for decades. They will suffer from lingering radiation illnesses and premature death. The victimized populations will suffer birth deformities for generations. Depleted uranium, a component of toxic nuclear waste, besides radioactive uranium contains radioactive plutonium and americium. Advantages of such weapons? In addition to the superior destructive power -- uranium is 67% heavier than lead and therefore packs 67% more wallop -- it's a profitable way to dispose of nuclear waste. (References: Yugoslavia, Iraq I, Afghanistan, Iraq II)
Trickle-down inhumanity from the ENEMY WITHIN at the top turned US soldiers into sadistic torturers of male and female Iraqi civilians including adolescents. US troops -- humanity-lobotomized by US popular culture and US military training -- also were taught to have no moral qualms about cluster-bombing Iraqi civilians including children, or about sniper-shooting Iraqi women and children and elderly, or about killing 100,000 Iraqi civilians so far and wounding and maiming perhaps four-times more, or about preventing wounded Iraqi citizens from reaching their hospitals, or about shooting Iraqi ambulances transporting wounded civilians, or about stealing from and beating and raping and killing Iraqi civilians in their homes, or about bulldozing down Iraqi homes and their fruit-tree groves, or during the 1990-1991 Iraq war about incendiary-bombing and burning fields of Iraqi crops. (References: American Atrocity)
The wealth-and-power disease uses deception as a weapon against their enemies and victims, including against We the People of America and We the People of the world.
"Spin" -- and other skills of deception that inflict harm -- are taught by our universities in advertising/marketing, public relations, political science, and journalism/communication programs.
In early 1980s, a PBS public-education documentary concluded: "Unless we teach wisdom and humanity, we are doomed."
In 2004, insightful British author of "Empire of the Sun" observes America's growing immaturity and the harmful effects: "As the nation infantilises itself, the point is finally reached where the abandoned infant has nothing to do except break up its cot." Such as to trash its "American" democracy, part of the doom America's educators warned about decades earlier. (Reference: In modern America, no nightmare is forbidden)
Reading is a democratic activity. Theocracies discourage it. Khomeini's Iran and the Soviet Union had similarly degraded views of literature. Bush's America is heading the same way, into a war on reading and on its human gift of deep understanding. (Reference: The war on words)
To morph our government of, by, and for We the People into a government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN -- so stealthily We the People are not even aware of it -- our leaders employ the same Madison-Avenue advertising and public-relations techniques that the Nazis admired and utilized to shape the public mind of the Third Reich. Also like Nazi Germany, our mass media became a key part of the state propaganda machine.
The ENEMY WITHIN is removing representative government and democratic processes -- including democratic elections -- from America. (Reference 1, Reference 2)
Justice For All is in peril, too: White House and Congress are packing our federal-court system with judges who have contempt for separation of powers, and contempt for separation of church and state.
The pre-born are gaining rights. The born are losing rights: representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty.
America's steadily worsening wealth-and-power disease, centered in Washington DC, has deposed 20 democracies worldwide since World War 2 -- including in Iran, Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Haiti -- and today attacks authentic democracy in Venezuela, Bolivia, and America.
America's mass media has steadily covered up computer-voting fraud since 1970. (References)
Our free press suppresses pro-America pro-democracy free speech that reveals truth and calls for solutions, such as from war veteran Dr. Robert Bowman, USAF Ret and investigative journalist Greg Palast.
America's news coverage is a skewed and selective play-by-play of the here-and-now that's carefully engineered to favor wealth-and-power, with not even a hint of big-picture connection with the past or future or elsewhere -- or with our Constitution either. From that terribly dishonest information source, gaining understanding of what's really happening simply isn't possible. The whole point.
America's news-media corporations are willful partners in massive international and domestic larceny. As they keep us fixated on their top story of the day, they never mention the steady major plundering behind the scenes and behind our backs: the ENEMY WITHIN's theft of assets and resources from Iraq and from many other countries, and their systematic Reverse-Robin-Hood looting of America. For each of their many ongoing heists, think of our press as the lookout and getaway car.
If you want truth about America, you have to read and watch foreign news as well as investigative journalism that is banned from America's media. (Reference: Muzzling Michael, Muzzling Me, Palast DVD Bush Family Fortunes)
The wealth-and-power disease is like cancer: unless treated, the ENEMY WITHIN will suck wealth and power out of American citizens until our country dies.
America's war on the world -- and America's war on itself -- are exactly what the Framers tried to prevent with separation of powers and separation of church and state. But the White House, Congress, Judiciary, Corporate America, the wealthy, Christian Right, and mass media joined forces -- to form the ENEMY WITHIN -- and steam-rollered right over those two vital principles that protect and preserve "America."
The members of the ENEMY WITHIN -- who around 1980 began to assemble into an unchecked concentrated power forbidden by our Constitution -- today as a cohesive team freely overthrow our government and slide America into fascism. The ENEMY WITHIN now controls America, not We the People anymore. Their illegal subversion of our Constitution is far more dangerous and harmful to our nation and citizens -- and to the world -- than terrorism. Their news and entertainment industries spin our minds into being supportive and clueless. (Reference: America's unmistakable mindless slide into fascism)
In our press, and over our public-owned broadcasting airwaves that are supposed to foster the well-being of our nation, the ENEMY WITHIN keeps We the People politically weak and helpless by neutering our will and ability to govern America. They make us unable to believe that We the People are capable of governing America and are supposed to govern America; they make us believe that God made America and governs America through Christian leaders, and to believe that a protective shepherd must rule because a flock of citizen sheep cannot. They nurture an American culture that makes us competitive and combative against each other and fractious and divisive, splintered apart and fragmented into narrow and selfish interests, unable to believe that "conservatives" and "liberals" can politically work together as a team, unable to unite and cooperate to defend our nation against the internal wealth-and-power threat the Framers foresaw and feared. See why it's become so laughably easy for the ENEMY WITHIN to divide and conquer us?
Instead of fostering true patriotic spirit, the White House, Congress, Judiciary, Corporate America, the wealthy, Christian Right, and mass media destroyed it. From our schools and public mind they purged the spirit of the American Revolution, the spirit of "American" democracy, the spirit of foremost citizen duty, the spirit of common-ground responsibility, the spirit of our nation's two fundamental protections, the spirit of dissent.
The ENEMY WITHIN violates our Constitution to its core, causing direct harm to America as well as indirect harm in the form of retaliatory blowback from the world they hurt:
Preamble. They prevent We the People from governing America and from exercising our supreme power. They remove our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. They hurt our posterity, such as with massive deficit spending that puts America deeper and deeper into federal debt; our future generations will have to pay it off including the steep interest payments.
Articles 1 and 2. They prevent representative government. They prevent democratic processes such as by preventing the publishing and broadcasting of information our democracy needs, by deceiving and manipulating the electorate, by preventing public discourse of critical democratic issues, by preventing "pro-America" political parties from forming, by blocking "pro-America" candidates from reaching voters, by preventing dissent, by preventing democratic elections. They wage war without Congress declaring war.
Article 6. They violate international treaties including the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and Nuremberg Charter; treaties are supreme Law of the Land, so when they violate a treaty they violate our Constitution. They use forbidden "religious Test[s]" when appointing judges.
Separation of powers, separation of church and state. In several ways they violate these two foundation principles of our Constitution. Which if followed would protect and preserve our nation as the Framers intended, and would have prevented the ENEMY WITHIN from ever arising, gaining power, and stealthily overthrowing our "American" government and thus transforming it into our current illegal government of, by, and for the ENEMY WITHIN.
In regard to their "War on Terror" which includes their war on Iraq, here is how they violate the Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, and separation of church and state: CLICK HERE. These are very serious high crimes against America.
Their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison.
Kept secret from America -- but well-known to the world -- beginning around 1980 the ENEMY WITHIN overthrew of our government and corrupted "America" into a lawless rogue "Amerika" that exploits and hurts people by the millions here and abroad.
All those acts by the ENEMY WITHIN -- kept well-hidden or spun into illusions of patriotism and goodness by our mass media -- are unfair, dangerous, and harmful.
Among humans -- and even among the chimpanzees we evolved from -- the natural reaction to unfairness, danger, and harm is to cooperate to bring about justice and common well-being.
We must act upon our natural instincts to fight and neutralize the ENEMY WITHIN that is hurting America. So that "We, the People" can govern our nation again, and restore our Constitution's "America" to America.
Our thirst for fairness and justice and well-being, and our reservoir of cooperation, lie deep inside "We, the People." In our genes. In our history. In our Constitution.
On March-20-2003 one of our two daughters asked, "Dad, why are we bombing Iraq?" She couldn't tell from the news and neither could we. So we ferreted out hidden truth from the present and lost truth from the past. We discovered how our 'primitive' forebears knew the answer tens of thousands of years before civilizations began, how that natural wisdom-and-humanity trickled-down through the ages, how the Framers wrote much of it into our liberal Constitution including how to protect and preserve America forever. Our quest for the full answer to our daughter's question -- and for a way to prevent such war and wrongdoing in the future -- grew into this Civics-101 democracy manual, an ebook in progress.
To see the big picture, use this mental process: Gather four ingredients: 1) Reports from independent journalists who serve the public interest by revealing truth about lawbreaking and wrongdoing, news that reaches very few in the public. 2) News from our mass media that serve wealth-corporate and Christian-Right interests, news that spins and hides truth about lawbreaking and wrongdoing, the news that reaches nearly everyone in the public. 3) Understanding of our ancient human past, including about the innate wisdom-and-humanity of our species and about the critical need to keep wealth-and-power in careful check otherwise community well-being and perhaps survival will suffer. 4) Understanding of America's early past, including how in 1776 we revolted against mistreatment by wealth-and-power and how we vowed to keep the power of corporations in careful check and how our Constitution is based on fundamental wisdom-and-humanity that dates back at least tens of millennia. Then ponder it all at once. All the bits and pieces naturally merge into a clarifying synthesis. The big picture you gradually see -- of the problem, of the solution -- simply draws itself. Any citizen equipped with the core wisdom-and-humanity skills of our species, and with basic understanding of human history and American history, can do it. Because the mental process that draws the moral lines of the picture seems to be genetic.
The big picture of the problem: We forgot key lessons of history, we stopped heeding our Constitution, we lost our vigilance and dropped our guard. Which created a window of opportunity for mankind's old nemesis -- the wealth-and-power disease -- to flare up and go berserk. That political sickness then decimated our wisdom-and-humanity, our American values, and our understanding and practice of American democracy -- as evidenced by today's severe erosion of morality and good citizenship from the top on down.
The big picture of the solution: Resurrect the core wisdom-and-humanity of our species, resurrect the American values and American democracy in our Constitution, by teaching them in our public schools and by arm-twisting our mass media to promote and popularize them. Then wield that wisdom-and-humanity, and that good citizenship, to beat down and hold down wealth-and-power like our Constitution tells us to -- to fix America just like we created America.
The war on Iraq turns out to be just one symptom of the political cancer deeply hurting us today. Another symptom? The belief that "majority-is-right" democracy is real "American" democracy (a belief that clashes directly with the first sentence of our Constitution). Two other symptoms? The belief that humans are by nature bad and need divine guidance to be good, the belief that government and citizens are separate and adversarial (beliefs that collide head-on with the essence of our Constitution).
As you read this ebook you will:
Learn how an ENEMY WITHIN has violated our Constitution -- Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison) -- and is warping our government Of, By, and For the People into a government Of, By, and For the ENEMY WITHIN that is fast taking away our representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty.
Learn how We the People could nullify the Patriot Act. Learn how we could reverse the escalating Reverse Robin Hooding of America. Learn how we could replace the legalized bribery of the White House and Congress with public-financed political campaigns at a cost of $50 per taxpayer a year which could save the public $2 trillion a year in tax and corporate fleecing, an average savings of $15,000 per taxpayer a year. Learn how diverse groups -- from Greens to the NRA, non-believers and devout, gay to straight, left to right -- would all share the same deep motivation to stop the unjustness: wanting to be treated fairly, wanting justice, and cooperating to carry it out are all imbedded in our genes, history, and Constitution.
Learn how We the People could rid America of our present illegal and dangerous form of government that violates our Constitution in many huge ways and hurts people by the millions here and abroad -- "Amerikan" democracy: a blend of market-based "Madison-Avenue" democracy (where you toss legal principles, moral principles, and good sense out the window and adulate high poll numbers instead; where lawbreaking and wrongdoing, including endangering and harming yourself and others, are "right" and "good" if manipulative advertising and PR make those misdeeds and survival-incorrect behaviors acceptable and popular), "right-wing" democracy (that strips away separation of powers, separation of church and state, and slides our nation into fascism with a scary Christian-Right state religion), and "kakistocratic plutocracy" (government of, by, and for the least-principled few who hold the bulk of wealth and power) -- and return to genuine "American" democracy.
Learn how the ENEMY WITHIN is tiny and vulnerable (their wealth-corporate core is a mere 0.15% of our population), and if our country wakes up and rises up how an "American" force to fight it could grow to be 200-million-strong. Learn how we could have a government Of, By, and For the People again by getting important news and honest news out to the public (including by broadcasting what our Constitution is really all about!), by healing the ENEMY WITHIN's deep wounds to public education, and by forming a new major political party with such mass appeal it would heavily draw votes away from Democrats and Republicans in equal huge numbers. Learn how our Constitution embodies vital wisdom and humanity from the dawn of our species and from our non-human primate ancestors millions of years earlier, and how it directs We the People to defend America against the ENEMY WITHIN the Framers foresaw and feared.
Journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other concerned groups and citizens -- conservatives and liberals alike -- have important parts to play.
True conservatives -- and true liberals -- stand on the same "American" common ground and can work together.
As you read this evolving work-in-progress that we didn't want to write but had to write, seek answers to this question and share them with America: How can We the People organize and cooperate to fight and neutralize the ENEMY WITHIN hurting America, so that We the People can govern our nation again and restore our Constitution's "America" to America, as effectively as Americans could have done so in 1776?
Why do we ask? The ENEMY WITHIN breeds hyper-competitiveness, combativeness, and selfishness into our culture. Those social and emotional forces interfere with, and weaken, our natural ability to be good to ourselves by cooperating as a united team toward America's well-being.
What kind of goodness, what kind of cooperation, does our Constitution call for? "We, the People . . . establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . ."
To restore fairness and justice to America, "We, the People" must tap into what makes us human:
We must act with maturity -- wisely and humanely -- for our Constitution as conservative-and-liberal true "Americans" do.
Not with immaturity -- unwisely and inhumanely -- against our Constitution as the "right wing" and ENEMY WITHIN do.
We must unleash the power of the ordinary human mind. To see the wonder of our Constitution. To see through the usual "Political Labels & Myths." To see through the many other blindfolds the ENEMY WITHIN pulls over our eyes.
Then, "We, the People" merely have to yield to our deep genetic yearning for fairness and justice. The same yearning evident in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Could this be the real reason why people take to the streets and revolt?
Years ago, deep in a Seattle Times article about the gross unfairness of the federal tax system, a Senator said, "If the American public knew what's really going on, they'd revolt."
We must tap into what makes us uniquely "American:"
We must carry out the legal directive in our Constitution: "We, the People . . . provide for the common defence" against the ENEMY WITHIN.
We must heed the wise-and-humane legal guidance in the supreme Law of the Land: Our nation's two fundamental protections. Our conservative-and-liberal common-ground responsibilities as true "Americans."
Our tools of democracy -- socially-responsible journalism, socially-responsible mass media, civic education, civic activism, good citizenship -- are being neutralized by an ENEMY WITHIN with such guile and stealth few Americans are aware:
Our nation's journalism reports only a few mild symptoms and often inaccurately, never the worst symptoms, and never the big picture or patriotic solution: the ancient political disease that began to flare up a quarter-century ago (the ENEMY WITHIN now hurting America badly) and how and why our Constitution urges We the People to rise up and unite and cure it.
Aided by our Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and by Presidents and Congresses and federal judges who removed the Fairness Doctrine and public-service requirements from broadcasting and who gave the legal green light to hate radio and to biased information monopolies and to corporate use of public airwaves to hurt America and citizens, aided by giant news-and-entertainment conglomerates that select-and-cloak and color-and-twist current events and history to serve consolidated wealth and power instead of the public interest, aided by universities that teach manipulation and deception skills for marketing and communication, aided by press and radio and television that assure we stay clueless about major international and US laws our leaders and military break (such as the UN Charter, Nuremberg Charter, and US Constitution), aided by routine news blackouts of alarming threats to our well-being and democracy, aided by an information machine that parrots and spreads the stories and spin issued by consolidated wealth and power while it hides and distorts vital news our nation needs to know about, aided by a mass-media machine that functions as an attack machine especially in subliminal ways against the essence of "America" and against good citizenship and against personalities and groups and issues that promote the goals of our Constitution, the ENEMY WITHIN molds and controls our public mind to their liking.
They force our K-12 schools to teach watered-down and skewed versions of the civic knowledge and civic action required by our Constitution, they force our schools to cut back the teaching of core wisdom-and-humanity and core history that people need to be able to understand and care about our Constitution and to be responsible good citizens, and the news and entertainment media they own and control inflict the same dangerous handicaps on the rest of our society. Thus our citizenry is losing understanding of "American" democracy as well as the mental ability and desire to carry it out (EXAMPLES). The ENEMY WITHIN breeds this national-security weakness, and exploits it. Already in our schools and society they are stealthily replacing our "American" democracy with a dangerous illegal form of government: "Amerikan" democracy. Already they have victimized millions of our citizens to mistakenly perceive violations and violators of our Constitution as righteous and patriotic, and to unwittingly wave-the-Flag for law-breaking and law-breakers and their hurting of people. Already they have victimized millions of citizens to believe that it's wrong to warn the public about a President, Attorney General, Senators, Congressmen, and federal judges all the way up to the Supreme Court who serve God in a gruesome, expensive, illegal way like this: A peek into the soul of the Christian Right [read four paragraphs], $100 billion a year (25% of defense spending), $2 trillion so far (30% of our national debt), all to hurry up the Book-of-Revelation Apocalypse [read two paragraphs]. (If you flare up in response to this paragraph, or have difficulty understanding its moral concepts, that's a sign you're a victim of the ENEMY WITHIN's deep wounds to public education and the public mind. Don't let that tragic harm be inflicted on the minds and hearts of your posterity. As our Constitution authorizes and empowers you, be a true patriot and defend America against the Homeland Enemy doing it.)
They have begun to use police-state force to violently crush civic activism (EXAMPLE). They keep Americans unaware of the wondrous true meaning of "America" that would inflame the passion and power of civic activism. In classic divide-and-conquer fashion (picture Roman generals on a hill observing the battle on the plain below), they sit back and chuckle as the destructive cultural/social forces they cultivated keep civic activism splintered into weak and often fractious separate groups -- such as by keeping conservatives and liberals, who could work together, at each other's throats -- each group working alone on vital issues opposed by the same media-protected bloc of wealth-and-power that fights every public-interest issue. (To combat this, the trick is to wise up and organize and cooperate. All public-interest and civic-action groups, conservative and liberal, could unite into a giant "American" force against that tiny "un-American" bloc of wealth-and-power. Picture 200 million concerned citizens also waking up, rising up, and joining in.)
They made an end-run around good citizenship and scored a touchdown: reading and watching the news to keep informed, writing our Senators and Congressman, and voting during elections barely work anymore. Because America's news doesn't sufficiently inform and often misinforms. Because America's Of the People representatives represent big donors and not voters. Because America's elections are no longer democratic in several dangerous ways.
The ENEMY WITHIN is rapidly altering our "American" democracy into an illegal and dangerous form of government: "Amerikan" democracy -- a blend of market-based "Madison-Avenue" democracy (where you toss legal principles, moral principles, and good sense out the window and adulate high poll numbers instead; where lawbreaking and wrongdoing, including endangering and harming yourself and others, are "right" and "good" if manipulative advertising and PR make those misdeeds and survival-incorrect behaviors acceptable and popular), "right-wing" democracy (that strips away separation of powers, separation of church and state, and slides our nation into fascism with a scary Christian-Right state religion), and "kakistocratic plutocracy" (government of, by, and for the least-principled few who hold the bulk of wealth and power).
The American public is caught and swept along in this dangerous flow.
The distress and pain many citizens are beginning to see and feel? The political disease the Framers feared is now rapidly transforming our government Of, By, and For the People into a government Of, By, and For the ENEMY WITHIN that is illegal under our Constitution and is fast taking away our representative government (SUMMARY), democratic processes (SUMMARY), justice (EXAMPLES), civic unity and cooperation toward the common good (SUMMARY), national security (EXAMPLE), the general welfare (EXAMPLES), and liberty (EXAMPLE).
What can We the People do about it? The empowering secrets lie in our genetic past, in the history of our species, in the early history of our nation, and in our Constitution.
One of those ancient secrets? Use common sense. Clarify the core problem to the public, promote the united solution to the public, then rally the public to carry it out somewhat like in 1776.
Another? Cooperate. Cooperation toward the common good is a major survival skill of humankind. Cooperation is imbedded in our genes, history, and Constitution.
The complete solution (see the four-element plan herein) would take some time. Journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other concerned groups and citizens would have to organize and cooperate as a united team to fix and heal America -- as effectively as the ENEMY WITHIN organizes and cooperates to extract wealth and well-being from America.
A superb initial move is to elect a better President this November. Hopefully a genuine "education president" who would promote the core basics of "America" -- our nation's two fundamental protections and our common-ground responsibilities -- that millions and millions of citizens need to learn about first before they can cooperate to restore "America" to America.
Just think of how much more effective citizens would be if they understood the empowerment of true "American" democracy!
Or is it too late. Did the ENEMY WITHIN already turn America into an "un-American" nation, into a worsening "Amerika" that is now beyond the point-of-no-return back to our Constitution? Are we no longer able to cooperate to assure our rights, freedoms, and well-being?
Table of Contents
"#" means "a highlight."
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00 Title and header 1a Awaken and unleash the moral and civic power of People. 1b Outline for a New American Revolution: Elements 1-4. # What is the "War on Terror." 1c The cancer, the cure. # Why wealth and power erase wisdom-and-humanity from religious and civic life. 1d "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson. Today we pay the price for not being vigilant. 1e The bad news -- and good news -- in brief. 02 Genetic roots of American Revolution. 03 Just do it. # America's political monopoly: the Consolidated Wealth and Power Party. 04 Connect the dots. # What are "American values." Erased from our country by consolidated wealth and power, we can restore them. 05 It's a matter of national defense. Against the Homeland Enemy. 06 America's political cancer. The patriotic cure. Or is it too late. |
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| 07 PROLOG: "We, the People" must cooperate to fix America. Or accept the frightful consequences (EPILOG). # What is "American democracy." Erased from America by the ENEMY WITHIN, we can restore it. # Serious wrongdoing -- and Red Alerts -- that America's news will not print or broadcast. |
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08 A wake-up call, a dawn of hope. # The "ENEMY WITHIN" in brief. # The Reverse Robin Hooding of America. # The FCC's assault on democracy. 09 Summary: the problem and solution. # A long range four-element civic action plan. # The slam-dunk odds of victory! # How to fix our worst national-security weakness. 10 The new Enemy of 1776 and their Redcoats. # $1500 annual tax to support Christian-Right religion. 11 Is it too late? 12 When wisdom sleeps, a beast awakes. 13 Already purged: our foremost civic duty. # America's deadly WMD against itself. 14 Many symptoms, one problem, one solution. # The right-wing assault on the general welfare. # The right-wing assault on public education. # Our emerging Christian-Right state religion. # The usual activism barely works anymore. # Tips for journalists and activists. # "We, the People" must unite like the ENEMY does. 15 More dangerous than Communists within. # 9/11: how America shot itself in the foot. 16 Our course: from "America" to "Amerika?" # We spend $100 billion a year on Christian Zionism. # The right-wing assault on human goodness. # National-debt interest: 20% of federal revenue. # "War-on-Terror" logo hides America's terrorism. 17 No longer taught: how to be a true "American." # America's two fundamental protections. # The common ground of all true "Americans." # A primer on vigilance. # God and Country: illegal when combined. # War-on-Iraq summary. Should we wave the Flag? # The right-wing assault on public safety. 18 Our choice: accept the disease or go for the cure. 19 "American" democracy: roots, uprooted, regrowth? # Perils of "Madison-Avenue" democracy. # Dangers of "right-wing" democracy. |
# America's descent into fascism. # The new illegal and dangerous "Amerikan" democracy. # Real "American" democracy. # The strong case for resurrecting core adulthood skills. # Hollywood's assault on humanity and good citizenship. # Genetic roots of human morality. # "Free-market" pillaging: "Privatization" and "globalization." # The right-wing assault on representative government. # The right-wing assault on democratic processes. # Campaign contributions: ultra-dangerous 'free speech.' # How to end the legalized bribery of our elected leaders. # A fair way to instantly pay off our national debt. # How to fire up the NRA for Minutemen duty -- today. # Weep for Laos. 20 Our block-the-truth, spin-the-truth mass media. 21 Venezuela un-spun. # Haiti un-spun. 22 The right-wing assault on the "Foundation of America." 23 America's weapon of deception against "America." 24 Wolves we don't see. The falls ahead we don't hear. # The rain of events pooled into a flow. 25 How we turned immoral and lawless, even to ourselves. 26 The hijacking. 27 007's Spectre grows real, right under our noses. 28 Today's patriotism: dangerously "un-American." # Why we fought in 1776: to curb power of corporations. # Corporate personhood: a huge legal-system lie. # A patriotic duty of a jury: to judge the law itself. 29 Our media and FCC: in bed with the right wing. 30 Iraq war: 1992 inception, plans for plunder, deep deceit. # USA's premeditated heist of a sovereign nation's assets. # Collateral damage: 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. # Iraqi citizens are fighting off the enemy. 31 Our kakistocratic plutocracy. # Computer-voting fraud: covered up since 1970. 32 Conclusion: How to have a true "America" again. # Wisdom from a Senator. # NATO's looting of Yugoslavia. # The ancient origin of our Constitution. |
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| 33 EPILOG: Have "We, the People" lost our natural ability to cooperate toward common well-being? | ||
TOP CONTENTS
A wake-up call, a dawn of hope.
Our nation's core problem? The essence of "America" -- representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, liberty -- is under assault by an ENEMY WITHIN aided and protected by the news-and-entertainment media they own and control.
One of the many symptoms? The fundamental understanding of our Constitution that we need to function as government Of the People, By the People, For the People has been substantially purged from our schools and American culture. So have the basic mind-and-heart skills that we need to understand and care about our Constitution. The ENEMY WITHIN has thus created a national-security weakness that hurts America.
How come we don't know all this? Including how the ENEMY WITHIN sowed the seeds of 9/11 two decades ago, conceived the Iraq war a decade ago, spends $100 billion a year to help fulfill a radical and scary Christian-Zionist biblical prophecy, ramped up their Reverse Robin Hooding of America right after 9/11, and breaks international law and US law in major ways? Because the ENEMY WITHIN, and its news-and-entertainment media, constantly manipulate and deceive us. It works like this. The mind-bending skills are taught by our universities in marketing and communication programs. Graduates employed by the ENEMY WITHIN then use those manipulation-and-deception skills as weapons against our country. Like this: The Lie Factory. Which doesn't pose a moral dilemma because they, like so many citizens today, more and more are victimized and handicapped by the ENEMY WITHIN to lack social responsibility and obligation to "America".
What can We the People do about it? This ebook explains. Journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other concerned groups and citizens have vital parts to play.
"We, the People" need to fight off the wealth-and-power disease again. Like we did in 1776.
The Framers understood and feared this ancient disease. So they wrote two core safeguards into our Constitution to prevent it: separation of powers, separation of church and state. And trial by jury where We the People judge the law itself as a direct citizen check on unjust and dangerous power. And a directive for We the People to defend America against this recurring political disease.
A virulent new strain, the ENEMY WITHIN, is far more dangerous. From 1979 to 1996, with billions of our tax dollars and with backing from the Christian Right, they bred Islamic terrorism -- al-Qaeda and Taliban -- into their proxy military weapon in Central Asia and the Balkans. Which accidentally went out of control and aimed and fired itself at America.
Today they deliberately aim that weapon at America -- psychologically by filling our public mind with fear of terrorism -- to obscure, and to manipulate us to accept, their escalating War-on-America that robs our money, well-being, justice, and liberty.
Another symptom of the wealth-and-power disease? Our schools are not allowed to teach, and our news won't report, any of this. Not even about the liberating and empowering Civics-101 truths in our history and Constitution.
See why we have to rise up again?
The three branches of our federal government -- executive, legislative, judicial -- are combining into a single federal-government power that serves wealth-corporate and Christian-Right interests.
That combined federal-government power is fusing with wealth-corporate, Christian-Right, and mass-media power into a single united power that is taking over America.
That fusion of power -- into a single right-wing state power based in Washington DC -- is the ENEMY WITHIN.
ENEMY WITHIN is a flare-up of the ancient wealth-and-power disease that dates back tens of millennia, a flare-up that began around 1980, a flare-up the Framers of our Constitution tried to prevent in 1787.
Size of the ENEMY WITHIN? How does it function? The cost and harm?
The ½ million citizens in the wealth-corporate core supply the bulk of all campaign contributions (PBS NOW Feb-22-2002) in return for tax cuts, tax cheating worth $300 billion a year (PBS NOW Feb-13-2004, PBS Frontline Feb-19-2004), relaxed ethics and environmental and health-and-safety laws, liability immunities, subsidies and high-profit contracts, and special laws that allow them to gouge the public in regard to health care and prescription drugs, consumer credit, financial investments, pension rights, and energy trading. Today's federal spending on wealth-corporate benefits totals hundreds of billions of dollars per year and is rising fast. Return on campaign-contribution investment averages well over 300-to-1 and often exceeds 1000-to-1 (SUMMARY). Made legal by laws and regulations purchased with campaign contributions, the wealth-corporate core Reverse Robin Hoods America (SUMMARY).
The 20-30 million citizens in the Christian-Right core supply a huge bloc of votes during elections in return for similar benefits (Christian-Right voters make up about one-half of President Bush's political base: PBS NOW Feb-20-2004). Today's federal spending on Christian-Right causes totals about $200 billion per year (SUMMARY). Also, federal judges are being appointed and federal funds are being disbursed on the basis of Christian-Right religious tests, and Christian-Right theology in regard embryos and fetuses, homosexuality, and marriage are being codified into federal law (SUMMARY). Already, America has a de facto Christian-Right state religion, complete with a $1500 per year de facto religious tax on every taxpayer (SUMMARY).
Instead of protecting and serving "We, the People" and "America" as our Constitution obligates them to do, our corporate mass media -- news and entertainment, press and radio and television -- protect and serve the wealth-corporate and Christian-Right core groups of the ENEMY WITHIN.
Other cost and harm? Loss of representative government (SUMMARY). Loss of democratic processes (SUMMARY). Loss of justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty, for ourselves and our posterity.
In short, the ENEMY WITHIN is in the process of removing "We, the People" from power. They are transforming our government Of, By, and For the People into a government Of, By, and For the ENEMY WITHIN.
That fusion of separate powers, that fusion of church and state -- and the consequent harm to America and our posterity -- all violate our Constitution.
After absorbing the Civics-101 lessons in this ebook, any citizen will have the ability stand before the President and Senate and Congress and Supreme Court, and in plain language clearly explain to them how they violated our Constitution: Preamble, Articles 1 and 2 (especially how they destroyed representative government and prevent democratic processes), Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison).
If our free press and public airwaves actually served "We, the People" -- and if our schools were allowed to teach full-strength Civics 101 -- then we would all know about the ancient wealth-and-power disease. We would all know about "America" including how our founders wrote vital protections into our Constitution to prevent the wealth-and-power disease from ever infecting our nation.
If our media and schools were able to fulfill their civic duty, then everything 'controversial' in this ebook would be ordinary common knowledge, and we citizens would have been able to prevent the ENEMY WITHIN from ever forming.
However with stealth and guile, the ENEMY WITHIN took control of our mass media and public schools. Such is the dangerous nature of the wealth-and-power disease.
A partial listing of the ENEMY WITHIN's wrongdoing and harm:
If our Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen were truly "American," the ENEMY WITHIN would not be Reverse Robin Hooding America -- stealthily robbing the poor and middle class and giving it to corporations and the wealthy:
Around 1980 they began to deregulate Corporate America. Besides making laws that strip away public safety (food safety, drug safety, environmental safety, workplace safety, motor-vehicle safety, etc.), they made laws that allow massive defrauding, gouging, and fleecing of the public by corporations. Such as laws that permitted the Savings & Loan scandal in the 1980s, when one-half trillion dollars of citizens' money quietly slipped into wealth-corporate pockets. Laws that permitted the defrauding of one-and-half-trillions by the investment industry (which paid a fine of 0.1¢ on the dollar and no jail time, SUMMARY). Laws that permit massive fraud by the insurance industry (PBS NOW Dec-3-2004). Laws that currently permit the gouging of almost $100 billion a year by the consumer-credit industry that borrows from our federal treasury at 2% or less and lends it back to us at credit-card rates sometimes higher than 30% APR and at "money-store" payday-loan rates as high as 400% APR plus socks credit-card holders with higher-and-higher fees and rates (PBS NOW Feb-6-2004, Secret History of the Credit Card, PBS Frontline Nov-23-2004; read how the feds, to protect the credit-card industry, are removing the ability of state governments to provide consumer-protection for victims of the credit-card industry, The Great Credit Card Scam). Laws that permit the banking industry to fleece the public (Sharks In The Water: How America Is Being Eaten Alive by the Commercial Banking Industry, Part I, Part II). Laws that allow energy traders to rig high electricity and natural-gas rates (Californians are getting royally screwed by their new Enron-friendly governor). Laws that allow unchecked consolidation-and-monopoly force in the oil and gas industry, which drives up profits and prices (Consumers Socked by Over $500 Billion Increase In Household Energy Bills During Last Four Years). And so on. In these unjust ways, money flows from the less-well-off to the well-off at the rate of hundreds of billions a year.
Instead of promoting the general welfare, they promote the elite welfare: the welfare of corporations and the wealthy (Corporate Welfare as we Know It: No End in Sight). They give corporations and the wealthy in excess of $815 billion a year in tax relief and subsidies; this amount, if instead applied to the national debt every year for eight years, would erase it (see below): Welfare for the Rich, Take the Rich Off Welfare.
To finance tax cuts that mainly benefit the well-off, and to finance rising federal spending that's mainly for government overhead paid to corporations and not for investment in infrastructure or in the social/economic well-being of citizens, they borrow money and grow our national debt to higher and higher astronomic levels. Taxpayers are forced to pay the $300-billion-a-year-and rising national-debt interest payments, a growing federal-government overhead expense that will soon exceed our defense spending (national-debt interest is now 20% of total federal revenue; imagine spending 20% of your gross income to pay off credit-card interest year after year). The costs of today's spending are pushed into future years, and due to the rising unfairness of our tax system, the poor and middle class will pay a higher and higher share of that debt-interest expense, and the well-off less and less their fair share. During the next several years, today's tax cuts and deficit spending will transfer more than $100 billion in wealth from the bottom 80% of US households to the top 20%, with the lowest 20% of earners hit the hardest: White House's taxing dilemma: sweeping tax cuts are coming back to haunt it - and the poorest families in the US.
They drained trillions of dollars from our Social Security and Medicare and Veterans federal trust funds, and spent it on gifts to corporations and the wealthy. From January 2001 to October 2004, the White House and Congress "emptied the Social Security trust fund by $507 billion to help offset fiscal irresponsibility and at the same time slash Social Security benefits" (Crawford TX Newspaper Endorses John Kerry, President Declares "Ownership Society;" Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund). "Since 1983, Americans have paid $1.8 trillion more in Social Security taxes than have been paid out in benefits, money that is used to finance tax cuts for the super rich" (IRS has Become a Subsidy System for Super-Wealthy Americans, Greenspan warns cuts to Social Security may be "abrupt and painful"). Future privatization of Social Security will transfer more citizen wealth to the well-off: Wall St. drooling over Social Security privatization, How privatizing Social Security is a losing proposition. However, Social Security is not in crisis: Social Security Is Not In Crisis, Basic Facts on Social Security and Proposed Benefit Cuts/Privatization, GOP Prepares to Sink Teeth into Social Security. The White House, Congress, and media team up to bend our minds to make us think it's in crisis: to manufacture consent for them to 'save' it through destructive privatization that enriches their Wall Street clients.
They cause the price of healthcare to skyrocket, depriving and hurting less-fortunate citizens the most. Medicare reform -- a corrupt political deal made by Congress late at night, so corrupt it bans our federal government from buying drugs in volume to get the best price for Medicare/Medicaid recipients -- is a huge long-term gift from taxpayers to the pharmaceutical industry (PBS NOW Apr-30-2004, Paying the Price of For-Profit Medicare).
They cause the price of education to skyrocket, and they cut federal funding to lower/middle-class colleges and boosted it for upper-class colleges, which deprives less-fortunate students of educational and economic opportunities (The right-wing assault on public education).
They created the most unfair and regressive and corrupt tax system in the industrialized world, and are shifting the tax burden more and more heavily onto lower-income citizens. The Social-Security/Medicare system taxes only low-to-middle income and not high income. They have proposed laws to exempt investment income from being taxed, such as interest and capital-gains income; if the rich and powerful get their way then only wage and salary income will be taxed, and all other types of income will not be taxed. "[T]he super rich control what the IRS knows about their incomes . . . are rarely audited anymore. . . . the real incomes of the super rich are much larger than the IRS data show and their tax burden is even lighter . . . IRS data, adjusted for inflation, show that the poor are really getting poorer and the super rich are getting fabulously richer, a trend enhanced by their falling tax burden. . . . All of this is having a devastating impact on America, which the preamble to our Constitution says was created to 'promote the general welfare.' Until Americans decide to take back their democracy and become actively engaged in politics, the super rich will continue to rig the tax system for their benefit only:" IRS has Become a Subsidy System for Super-Wealthy Americans. Bill Moyers explains the $137 billion October 2004 tax cuts for corporations: A Little Patriotic Sacrifice. Many corporations pay no taxes at all; some corporations receive millions in tax-credit payments as gifts from US taxpayers. Today in America, lower-income and middle-income citizens pay a higher percentage of their income on federal/state/local taxes than do the rich, and that unfairness grows worse.
They made laws to permit tax cheating by corporations and the wealthy, laws that prevent the IRS from auditing high-income people, laws worth $300 billion a year for the well-off; those laws force middle and lower income families to pay 15% more in taxes yearly to make up the difference (PBS NOW Feb-13-2004, PBS Frontline Feb-19-2004).
They transfer wealth upward through privatization and deregulation. Privatization typically costs the public more, not less: Free-market pillaging: Privatization, The Public Cost of Privatization. So does deregulation. Historically, "whenever deregulation has been introduced, wholesale electricity prices have spiked at hundreds of times the cost of production:" Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity. Our increasingly privatized military is costing the public more, and so will privatized Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. All those extra costs bled off from citizens flow up to well-off high-profit corporations who more and more own and run our power utilities, our military, our social services.
They work as a team to drive income up for the well-off, and to drive wages and salaries down (Chairman of US Federal Reserve assures Congress wages will be kept low). They eliminated the right to overtime pay (A Media Blackout: Media Miss Story of Biggest Pay Cut in US History, The Bush Administration's Attack on Workers and the Eight Hour Day). Their tax cuts hurt the poor (Working poor suffer under Bush tax cuts).
Instead of improving the general welfare, they reduce it. The widening inequality gap, the gap between rich and poor, is the widest since 1929 (A Question of Fairness: Winners and Losers / Rewriting the Rules / Tax Justice -- PBS NOW Nov-21-2003). They create economic policies and laws that drive corporate profits upward and citizen employment downward; from the beginning of 2001 to the end of 2004, America shed more than 800,000 jobs and thus George W. Bush is the first US president since Herbert Hoover in the Depression to preside over a loss of jobs (Job loss figures deliver a blow to Bush).
And so on. In these several ways our Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- systematically mine the wealth of our citizens, including by generating inequality of education and economic opportunity, in order to satisfy the needs of a small number of rich and powerful: their emotional need to hoard wealth, their emotional need to dominate and hurt others. Some of the results: Nearly 36 Million Americans, 1/8 of Population, Living in Poverty, One-Quarter of Working Americans Live in Poverty. All these un-American acts of inhumanity are covered up, or spun into illusions of goodness, by our mass media.
They made laws that allow corporations and the wealthy to purchase all those favors with 'free-speech' campaign contributions that provide a return-on-investment of well over 300-to-1 on the average (SUMMARY). Here's an extremely-profitable solution to that problem: Public-financed political campaigns almost as profitable for the public as campaign contributions are for wealth-corporate donors.
If our Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and mass media lived up to American values -- instead of their right-wing values -- this stealthy Reverse Robin Hooding of America over the past few decades would not be happening.
Globally, through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), they do the very same thing: CLICK HERE.
Destroy Iraq to rebuild Iraq plus build a huge US-military infrastructure in Iraq (14 permanent bases so far) to fuel our defense and war-service industries, and keep posting fear alerts to fuel our new Homeland-Security industry -- which requires hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to flow yearly into US corporations for over-priced weapons and military construction and corporate war services in Iraq, for massive high-profit bomb-it-then-rebuild-it reconstruction in Iraq, for high-priced Homeland-Security products and services to make Americans feel safe; all these expenses are government overhead expenses -- are key parts of the overall Reverse Robin Hooding process.
If our Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen were truly "American," the ENEMY WITHIN would not be physically endangering and harming Americans on a mind-blowing scale. Our White House and Congress would not have funded militant Islam for seventeen years beginning in 1979 and armed and trained over 100,000 Islamic militants in guerrilla-warfare and terrorism skills. including al-Qaeda and Taliban, the leaders on American soil near Washington DC, into our proxy military weapon against Russians and Serbs that went out of control. The tragedy of 9/11 would not have occurred. The wars in the aftermath of 9/11, including the ENEMY WITHIN's stepped-up social and economic war on our citizens, would not be happening. As the result of just one of their war-on-America actions alone -- aggressive un-enforcement, and aggressive weakening, of safety and environmental laws that protect people from being hurt by corporations -- the ENEMY WITHIN kills at least ten-times more American citizens every year than 9/11 did, a higher rate than Saddam killed Iraqis.
Our free press, and broadcasters using our public airwaves, are supposed to keep us informed. They are supposed to sound the alarms.
Why don't they? Because they are part of the ENEMY WITHIN.
In the 1980s the ENEMY WITHIN took control of our Federal Communications Commission (FCC) -- which removed the Fairness Doctrine and public-service requirements from broadcasting, allowed hate broadcasting to form and grow and breed immaturity and inhumanity, and permitted media ownership to concentrate into the hands of a wealthy-and-powerful few. They formed a mega-corporate information monopoly that warps and hides important events and truth, and whose tentacles reach into nearly every crevice of our lives. How skillfully do they warp and hide? They gild the dangerous un-American activity of the ENEMY WITHIN into illusions of shining American goodness. They control the content of our press, radio, and television to their liking. They control what we think and talk about. They play our emotions, especially fear, like a fiddle. They engineer our will to serve their needs, they measure the results with slanted polls, they use those numbers to further sway us (Polls: When Measuring is Manipulating). They manufacture our consent. They shape our public mind. Our media and FCC: in bed with the right wing.
For example. They don't let us think or talk about our foremost duty as citizens: CLICK HERE. Or about the topmost skills to look for in our leaders: CLICK HERE.
They don't let us think or talk about the "American" common ground shared by all true conservatives and true liberals: CLICK HERE.
They don't let us think or talk about the pure human goodness that our Constitution instructs "We, the People" to provide, or about the pure human goodness that mainstream religion teaches. Instead they constantly feed us the latest utterances from the clergy of the Christian Right, a radical inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged in the 1800s and was not the religion of our nation's founders. Mainstream religion is much larger, and its clergy are alarmed by Christian Right's dangerous threat to the well-being of our citizens and democracy. But our mass media blocks the humanitarian voice of mainstream religion, with the same skill they silence the humanitarian voice of our Constitution.
They don't let us think or talk about basic Civics-101 stuff that all citizens are supposed to know about in regard to the war on Iraq. Such as how the Nuremberg Charter is supreme Law of our Land. Or how our war on Iraq is a "war of aggression" that violates American law and international law and is a war crime so evil it is condemned by the Nuremberg Charter as "the supreme international crime." Or how under international law and US law our President and Pentagon officials and military officers and troops are subject to trial and punishment for war crimes. Or how under the US Constitution our President and many Senators and many Congressmen are subject to trial and punishment for violating Articles 1 and 6. Here's that basic Civics-101 stuff that today's Americans are not allowed to know about: CLICK HERE.
As America commits war crimes abroad, the ENEMY WITHIN guides us to Wave the Flag with American Pride in support of it. How? Every day on TV we see our leaders and celebrities and news-anchors do it, and daily we see the War on Terror and Defending our Freedom logos on the tube and on cars and on neighborhood signs, so we feel obligated to go with the same flow. News of dissenters being singled out and punished reinforces our desire to go with that flow.
The ENEMY WITHIN is also taking over our nation's public education. They control what educators can teach about America. They don't permit our schools to instill core human development anymore: the core social/emotional/intellectual skills needed to understand and care about our Constitution. They don't permit our schools to teach good history, good citizenship, or good governance anymore. For example, today most children and adults think our President and Congress are the government. Wrong. "We, the People" are the government. The President and Congress work for us, and answer to us. If and when they misbehave, it is our patriotic duty to spank them with dissent. But our schools are not allowed to teach that key lesson in Civics 101. Here in Washington State they want to muzzle "pro-America" free speech by teachers, even in faculty lounges and school parking lots.
A consequence? The less socially/emotionally/intellectually mature we become and the less educated about "America" we become, the easier it gets for the ENEMY WITHIN to manipulate and deceive us.
They control the entire election process. Through their information monopoly they control what candidates and issues are discussed and which are not, they control the content and nature of political discourse, they control who is treated favorably or unfavorably in the media. Virtually every large newspaper, magazine, and broadcaster in America cooperates in that process of pumping up ENEMY-WITHIN choices and blocking and neutralizing opposing choices. No wonder their preferences are the ones most likely to end up on our ballots, and in our ballot boxes. Citizens being hurt the most by the ENEMY WITHIN, poor and minority citizens, are being blocked from voting by ENEMY-WITHIN campaigns of deception and force and erasure off voter lists. The bottom line? In essence they vote and we don't -- we're just media-manipulated subjects who cast ballots on their behalf, or we're kept from voting -- which undermines Articles 1 and 2 of our Constitution and democracy itself. More and more, they process those votes behind our backs due to the growth of computerized elections they control.
Since 1970 our mass media has refused to warn the public about the irregularities and fraud in corporate-controlled computerized elections. We need citizen-controlled computerized elections to assure accurate and honest results, with complete citizen oversight just like with paper ballots. But none of our leaders or news will push for this essential fairness.
The vital understanding of Civics 101 woven into this ebook -- the real American democracy and core wisdom and humanity taught by our Constitution and the ancient past of our species -- has been purged by the ENEMY WITHIN from our schools, leadership, governance, and public mind.
So much so many think our President, Congress, and Supreme Court are some sort of royal power that we must defer to and obey without question. Today many think unfettered power for wealth and corporations, and divine power in the White House and Pentagon, are healthy for America too.
Our knowledge and spirit of "America" are so wounded and crippled by the ENEMY WITHIN our patriotism malfunctions: many of us wave the Flag in proud support as the ENEMY WITHIN violates our Constitution, flouts international law, and steals and hurts on a massive scale here and abroad.
The ENEMY WITHIN is not "conservative." True "conservatism" and true "liberalism" are rooted in the spirit of 1776 and in the goals, principles, and rules in our Constitution.
The ENEMY WITHIN is a "right-wing" force sympathetic with the exploitation and oppression and inequality suffered under our American-Revolution enemy, 18th-century Corporate England: Rule by royal, divine, and corporate power. Rule by the power of wealth. Enforced by police-state and military power. MORE.
The ENEMY WITHIN is busily rolling back the justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty that America achieved since 1776. With success so fantastic it is beyond their wildest dreams.
The ENEMY WITHIN is busily morphing our government Of the People, By the People, For the People into government Of the ENEMY WITHIN, By the ENEMY WITHIN, For the ENEMY WITHIN.
Should "We, the People" continue to put up with this?
Our Constitution, written right after our American Revolution, in the very first sentence empowers and directs "We, the People" to provide for the common defense of our country. Including to rise up in a New American Revolution against today's ENEMY WITHIN.
The Framers fully understood how natural forces within America could endanger and harm America. So they wove two fundamental protections into our Constitution to keep those forces under control, to prevent an ENEMY WITHIN from ever forming or gaining power: separation of powers, separation of church and state. Although our Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and federal judges all pledged to uphold these two bedrock principles, they failed to do so. And they became the most dangerous members of the ENEMY WITHIN.
"We, the People" must rediscover what it means to be "American." We must reignite the spirit of 1776 against today's worse enemy. So that we can restore "America" to America.
Think of it as Paul Revere's ride, our Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolution happening all over again.
How did we succeed the first time? "We, the People" united. How large can our union be today? Roughly 200 million citizens: all the conservative and liberal Americans being hurt by the ENEMY WITHIN. As explained in this ebook, we outnumber their Christian-Right core by ten-to-one, their wealth-corporate core by a thousand-to-one.
In a New American Revolution, the only weapon needed is principled free speech volleyed throughout our nation by a united force of groups and citizens -- conservatives and liberals alike. By journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other true "American" groups and citizens.
The trick is to cajole and arm-twist our White House, Congress, and mass media to start working for "We, the People" again: Element 3 of the long-range plan.
If they refuse, then undertake Element 4. Create a new major political party that appeals to conservatives and liberals alike, a truly "American" party that will live up to our Constitution and will reform our mass media back into our voice of freedom. Far fetched? Hardly. Only a modest increase in voter turnout -- the increase consisting of citizens enthusiastic about restoring "America" to America -- together with a small shift of voters away from Republicans and Democrats in equal numbers to an "American" party, would remove the ENEMY WITHIN from power. This ebook explains.
Think of the 200 million citizens who would be better off in a real "America" that doesn't Reverse Robin Hood citizens or let corporations hurt the public: the tens of millions who voted Republican or Democrat before, the tens of millions who never voted before, the tens of millions less-fortunate citizens the ENEMY WITHIN fears and therefore prevented from voting before. Think of the power of those many tens of millions of "American" votes.
If we inform the entire public -- perhaps through an "American Democracy Underground" of conservative and liberal groups and citizens (all the many separate public-interest groups could talk to each other and unite), perhaps with a new "Independent American Media" of press and radio and television and web (all the scattered existing components could unite) -- it would be easy to organize and fire up the citizenry to take back America from the ENEMY WITHIN.
How? Make people see the wrong and feel the pain. Our first patriots did, and the people responded and created "America." All we have to do is restore that "America."
Real "American" democracy anyone?
TOP CONTENTS
Summary: the problem and solution.
The ENEMY WITHIN. Our federal executive, legislative, and judicial branches are combining into one federal-government power that serves wealth-corporate and Christian-Right interests. Our mass media became their accomplice; they produce news and entertainment that hides truth and deceives to promote, protect, and serve that consolidated wealth and power. In 1776 we fought a bloody war against wealth-corporate power, Corporate England, to create America. Christian-Right theology, a radical inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged in the 1800s and in the early 1900s helped trigger the Middle East unrest we see today, was not the religion of America's founders; the Christian Right delivers millions of election votes and strong political support for wealth-corporate and federal power, and is generously rewarded by the White House and Congress; Christian-Right voters make up about one-half of President Bush's political base (PBS NOW Feb-20-2004). That fusion of separate powers -- federal-government, wealth-corporate, Christian-Right, mass-media -- into a single right-wing state power is the ENEMY WITHIN.
It's the ancient wealth-and-power disease festering up again.
Their harm to America? Federal support of the Christian Right has built up one-half of our national debt and costs us $200 billion a year at the very least. Federal support of corporations and the wealthy has built up even more debt and the cost per year is far more. Those are just the debt burdens and treasury payouts, a small part of the total social and economic cost. Our government "Of the People, By the People, For the People" is morphing into government "Of the ENEMY WITHIN, By the ENEMY WITHIN, For the ENEMY WITHIN." We no longer have representative government: the President and Senators and Congressmen we vote for all represent the ENEMY WITHIN. We no longer have democratic processes including democratic availability of candidates, democratic informing of the electorate, and democratic elections: who runs for office, and who gets elected, is determined more and more by the ENEMY WITHIN and less and less by us. We are losing our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. The harm they also inflict on the rest of the world is lashing back at America. Citizens are hurting. So will our posterity.
What can we do? Exactly what we are supposed to do. Rediscover and live up to our Constitution -- all of it, not just our Bill of Rights -- and compel our leaders and media to do the same. By what authority? "We, the People" are the government, obligated to "provide for the common defence" against the ENEMY WITHIN. We fought such an enemy in 1776, and we can win again.
This long range four-element civic action plan, so sensible that any clear-thinking good citizen can come up with it, can be accomplished by a united "American" force of conservative-and-liberal individuals and groups cooperatively working as a team -- including journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible political and business leaders, and mainstream clergy. A National Civic-Action Congress may be needed to organize this alliance. If undertaken, this plan would cure our nation's political cancer and restore our Constitution's "America" to America. Every citizen, as an individual or member of a group, can take part. Here's a summary of Elements 1-4 with tips and links at the end:
Element 1. Inform the entire public about how the ENEMY WITHIN took control of our government, schools, media, and seriously harms our country: they violate our Constitution (SUMMARY) -- every American goal and responsibility listed in the Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state -- and they wound America so deeply we already lost our representative government (SUMMARY) and our democratic processes (SUMMARY), and we are rapidly losing our justice (EXAMPLES), civic unity and cooperation toward the common good (SUMMARY), national security (EXAMPLE), the general welfare (EXAMPLES), and liberty (EXAMPLE) for ourselves and our posterity. They also hurt the world, causing backlash that hurts America. Tell everyone how the ENEMY WITHIN hurts their own political base in the same many ways: how they hurt tens of millions of NRA members and evangelical Christians and their families and futures. Spread word to the public about the patriotic solution: "We, the People," as the government of America and supreme power in America, "provide for the common defence" against the ENEMY WITHIN. Tie it all together into a clear and hopeful picture -- state the problem, give the solution -- like our Declaration of Independence did.
Also, tie it into the far bigger picture: the ENEMY WITHIN is a virulent new strain of the ancient wealth-and-power disease that "We, the People" fought and defeated in 1776, the very same political cancer the Framers feared and wanted to prevent from ever infecting America.
A Senator said a while ago, "If the American public knew what's really going on, they'd revolt."
An example of how the ENEMY WITHIN hurts America and the world? They caused 9/11 (SUMMARY), and exploit the suffering and fear to carry out their control-and-plunder of Iraq (SUMMARY) and Reverse Robin Hooding of America (SUMMARY) they premeditated for years. Publicize this horrific betrayal and wrongdoing to incite moral outrage against the ENEMY WITHIN and its media machine, and to spark community cooperation to carry out the revolt: Elements 1-4.
Element 2. Fix our most dangerous national-security weakness, a problem that worsened rapidly during the past quarter-century as the ENEMY WITHIN gained power and grows worse even faster today: Weak core citizenship skills. Ignorance of "America."
How? Resurrect what America did so well in the past. Instill civic knowledge, civic ability, and civic desire into our future generations. 1) In our schools, re-introduce core human development: respect, responsibility, cooperation, critical thinking. These traditional adulthood skills, the core survival skills of our species, date back at least tens of millennia. They are the basic wisdom-and-humanity skills a human being needs to be a good citizen, to be able to understand our Constitution and want to live up to it. 2) Re-introduce American values and the core basics of American history and American democracy. All these vital citizenship-building elements could be woven back into K-12 education.
Over the years, strengthening harsh pressures from the ENEMY WITHIN pretty much removed the teaching of respect, responsibility, cooperation, and critical thinking from our public schools. Those political pressures from wealth-corporate and Christian-Right forces also removed the teaching of the knowledge and spirit of early American history, and American democracy, from our nation's classrooms. According to a 2003 survey conducted by the Representative Democracy in America Project, only 39 states require a civics or American government class for high school graduation and only 64% in the 15-26 age group surveyed had ever taken such a course: NEA Today Jan-2004, 2003 NCSL Civic Education Survey, Survey's press release. A one-semester civics class, usually taught like a health class, is not nearly enough. No wonder so many kids and adults today don't know the real meaning of our Flag. No wonder the American public can be easily manipulated by our leaders, news, entertainment, and advertising to accept and vote for and cheer for harmful "un-American" things. See the clear danger to our nation?
Instill the same zest for "America" into our adult population, too. As explained herein, Hollywood and media personalities could be persuaded to help out in a really big way.
A fully-mature and civics-educated adult public, when informed how the ENEMY WITHIN is hurting our country and our posterity and the world, would correctly react with moral outrage and community cooperation toward the common good. A mature and educated public would want to revolt just like the Senator says.
Element 3. Persuade our elected representatives and our mass media to switch clients. To stop protecting and serving the ENEMY WITHIN and to protect and serve "America" again. To switch from caring about and serving corporations, the wealthy, and Christian Right back to caring about and serving "We, the People" and our posterity.
Element 4. If Element 3 doesn't work, form a new major political party that would appeal to liberals and conservatives alike, a new party that would draw votes away from Democrats and Republicans in equal huge numbers: a new party that would actually live up to our Constitution and its "American" democracy. Why not call it the "USA Party." It would promote the general welfare of "We, the People" -- instead of serving the wishes of large corporations, the well-off, and the Christian Right. It would reform our corporate mass media back into serving "America," back into being our voice of freedom again. Since "We, the People" are the overwhelming majority, and with the correct strategy, the "USA Party" would be a surefire winner.
To pull it off we may need to form a National Civic-Action Congress to help organize our population into a united, effective, political force. First we would need to heal some of the Homeland Enemy's manipulative divide-and-conquer wounds -- deep wounds that turned our "domestic Tranquility" into a polarized and divisive country incapable of cooperating in good citizenship -- so that all participants can clearly see and fully agree with the real American values and real American democracy in our Constitution. This citizen congress would function somewhat like our American-Revolution Continental Congress, this time against an enemy worse than the enemy of 1776. Start small and grow in supreme power.
For more about this sensible and doable four-element plan, CLICK HERE. Also read the Conclusion of this ebook and its subsections Element 1, Element 2, Element 3, Element 4, Tips on how to accomplish Elements 1-4.
Odds of victory? The Constitution is on our side; those in the ENEMY WITHIN oppose and violate it. The truth is on our side; they have to constantly lie. Our greatest strength? "We, the People" are the overwhelming majority: we outnumber their Christian-Right core (20-30 million) by ten-to-one, their wealth-corporate core (less than a half-million) by a thousand-to-one.
How large can our union be? Roughly 200 million citizens, all the conservatives and liberals being hurt by the ENEMY WITHIN's War-on-America. See how "We, the People" can take charge of our America again?
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The new Enemy of 1776 and their Redcoats.
America no longer has representative government. America no longer has democratic processes including democratic availability of candidates, democratic informing of the electorate, and democratic elections. We are losing our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. America, and true patriotism, are breaking down.
For example, writing to our President and Senators and Congressman doesn't work anymore. They blow us off and do what their corporate and wealthy sponsors want, and what their religious beliefs and religious supporters want.
Our mass media, supposedly our voice of freedom, won't report any of that.
When our elected representatives misbehave and act against our wishes and against our Constitution, they and our mass media tell us it is unpatriotic and wrong to dissent like real Americans. By attacking and incarcerating dissenters, our Secret Service and FBI and local police send the same message. America's leaders, police, and media now work as a team to crush dissent.
How violently? Here's how they responded to patriotic dissent in Miami against our unjust international-trade practices that severely hurt other nations and their citizens: America's enemy within, Legal observer details police violence against FTAA protesters in Miami, PBS NOW Feb-27-2004, The terror of Bush's war on America.
FBI agents and local police go undercover to monitor citizens during meetings and outdoor gatherings. Surveillance and intelligence files are collected. A pacifist group run by the Quakers, The American Friends Service Committee, was filed by the Denver police under the "criminal extremists" category: PBS NOW Mar-5-2004.
Remember 1776? Today our leaders and press act like 18th-century British corporations and royalty, our police like Redcoats.
Although our Constitution empowers "We, the People" to stop the harm and heal America, our schools aren't allowed to teach it. Our leaders and media won't encourage us to be truly "American" either.
Who is causing the breakdown of America? Who is behind the concealment and distortion, of the state of our nation, by our news and entertainment media? Who keeps us fearful and compliant, who neuters our spirit? Who keeps America in the dark about what it means to be "American?"
Who warps our patriotism into blind obedience to a dangerous un-American force that cleverly waves our Flag to merely appear American?
Who silences the real patriots of today? Who keeps our Minutemen at bay?
A small ENEMY WITHIN.
They are violating our Constitution to its core: Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state. Their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison.
Our system of corporate law that gives the ENEMY WITHIN much of its power -- a system of law that says a campaign contribution earning the corporate donor a 1000-to-1 financial return on the investment -- is "free speech." Campaign contributions buy tax cuts, subsidies, reduced workplace safety, reduced food safety, reduced drug safety, reduced vehicle and product safety, deregulation that permits massive fraud of common citizens, liability immunity that prevents corporations from being punished for committing harm, disallowing public oversight of computerized elections, formation of giant print/radio/TV information monopolies that are strongly corporate-biased, and so on. Our system of corporate law legalizes the bribery of our White House and Congress by the well-heeled. It legalizes the screwing of our democracy and the screwing of our citizens. Which reverses what we accomplished with our Declaration of Independence and American Revolution: CLICK HERE. How's this for a ray of hope. Our system of corporate law happens to be a legal house-of-cards that "We, the People" could blow down: CLICK HERE. After a strong united puff, we could have representative government again. Yes, a less-costly way to finance political campaigns is proposed herein, a cheap new way that would make voter turnout skyrocket and elections more democratic. Representative government and democratic elections, yes, we can get them back.
To repay the 20-30 million Christian-Right voters who keep them in power, the ENEMY WITHIN spends our tax dollars lavishly on Christian-Right causes. At least $2 trillion so far (CLICK HERE), almost 30% of our national debt. Today at the rate of about $200 billion a year, about 10% of all federal spending today and half of our defense spending. Here's how that $200-billion-a-year religion-based spending adds up. $100 billion annually for aid-to-Israel support of Christian Zionism (CLICK HERE) which equals the combined budgets of the National Science Foundation, EPA, NASA, Department of Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. Look at the second $100-billion-a-year chunk of religious spending in this common-sense way: if the Christian Right had not pushed hard for faith-based social spending ($67 billion annually proposed for Faith-Based spending), if the Christian Right had not pushed hard to build up America's proxy military weapon including al-Qaeda in the 1980s that aimed and fired itself at America on 9/11 (In 1980s, Christian Right pressured Congress to fund al-Qaeda, 'War On Terror' is a war on the proxy military weapon that America and Saudi Arabia developed and discarded), if the Christian Right did not control US Middle East policy (Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power, 5-part series on Christian Zionism), if the Christian Right did not push hard for a World War IV in the Middle East to intentionally cause violent conflict that hopefully would set off the Apocalypse (Yearning for Middle East fireworks that would dwarf 9/11 and the war on Iraq, Summary of Christian Zionism), if our President did not follow the "war on evil" dictates of his Christian-Right faith that wastes taxpayer money and American lives but instead followed the "foster citizen well-being" directives of his Constitution (CLICK HERE), then today we would be spending a lot less annually -- at least $100 billion less -- on Faith-Based spending, Homeland Security, wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, buildup for wars on Syria and Iran and North Korea, and on the missile-defense system that's a stepping-stone toward US Space Command's dream system of orbiting weapons to zap targets on Earth from outer space (In your face from outer space). Average Christian-Right-spending cost per taxpayer per year? Based on $200 billion per annum and 131 million individual income-tax returns for FY 2002, the White House and Congress force every American taxpayer to pay on the average an annual de facto $1500 religious tax to fund all their Christian-Right religious causes.
The religion of the Christian Right is fast becoming the state religion of America, complete with mandatory collections from taxpayers.
Explain this truth to the entire American public, including how the Christian Right's radical inhumane brand of Christianity emerged a century after 1776 and thus was not the religion of our nation's founders (5-part series on Christian Zionism), then watch what happens. See the hope? See why the Framers wove separation of church and state into our Constitution? See how the White House and Congress dangerously violate that crucial legal foundation of America, including by they violate the "no religious Test" provision of Article 6 when appointing judges? See why "We, the People" must stop them from acting so dangerously toward America and the world?
Another dose of hope. If fully informed, even many members of the NRA would clearly see how the ENEMY WITHIN is dangerously unpatriotic. They would see the plain wrong and awful harm being committed by the ENEMY WITHIN -- especially how the ENEMY WITHIN is hurting their families and futures in several ways including by the police-state intrusion into their lives -- and they would pitch in to do the right thing for America. Like our first Minutemen did.
This ebook provides a clear big-picture look at America's core problem. And a sensible big-picture solution that is doable.
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Is it too late?
We must face up to our nation's core problem: an ENEMY WITHIN, worse in character than the Enemy of 1776, is taking control away from "We, the People" and removing "America" from America. And we must execute the solution required by our Constitution.
Every real American has a critical part to play, conservatives and liberals alike. Especially journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other true "American" groups and citizens.
Or is it too late. The ENEMY WITHIN has already messed up our public mind so badly that many of us wave the Flag in proud support as the ENEMY WITHIN violates our Constitution and inflicts harm on ourselves and the world, and on our posterity.
Had the ENEMY of 1776 brainwashed Colonial Americans as effectively, many of our great patriots would have deemed it "negative" and "wrong" to dissent against Corporate England, issue a Declaration of Independence, and work together to win a Revolutionary War and write a Constitution.
In 1776, Americans united and cooperated as a team.
Today is very different.
Has the ENEMY WITHIN already removed so much traditional wisdom and humanity from our citizenry that we are too partisan and factious to unite in a common cause to restore "America" to America?
Are we too competitive and combative against each other to cooperate as a team -- to cooperate as United Citizens of America -- to fight for representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty?
Has the ENEMY WITHIN already dragged the American public down to its low social/emotional/intellectual level? A level so low it makes true "American" democracy impossible? A level so low we prefer "Amerikan" democracy over "American" democracy? A level so low we prefer "Amerikan" democracy's majority flow of domestic-and-international inhumanity? A level so low we prefer "Amerikan" democracy's outcome: more loss of liberty, more social and economic hardship, more harm and loss of life -- all by the hands of fellow Americans -- and more retaliatory 9/11s from the world we hurt?
Hopefully not.
Here's how wonderfully we Homo sapiens -- and we American citizens - did use our minds and hearts including fairly recently: CLICK HERE. Will we do so again, including to cooperate to carry out our Constitution?
Our evolutionary ancestors millions of years ago, such as monkeys and chimps, had a strong sense community cooperation. They valued and demanded fairness, and punished those who misbehaved. Modern research shows how non-human primates still do so today: CLICK HERE.
Wanting to be treated fairly and wanting justice -- and cooperating to carry it out -- are in our genes. It's also in the long history of our species, in the early history of our nation, and in our Constitution.
To deal with the unjustness being inflicted by the ENEMY WITHIN, just do what's natural.
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When wisdom sleeps, a beast awakes.
On March-20-2003 one of our two daughters asked, "Dad, why are we bombing Iraq?" She couldn't tell from the news, and neither could we. So we ferreted out hidden and lost truth from the present and past, and the big picture simply drew itself. Our species fully understood the whole answer, the cause and the solution, tens of millennia ago (Wisdom of our 'primitive' forebears). The founders of America wove that same wisdom deeply into our Constitution to prevent such a war from ever happening (America's two vital protections).
When our history gets lost, when our wisdom gets lost, a natural cycle that plagues our species repeats itself again:
A few seize power and hoard wealth, and inflict suffering on the rest.
Then the victims do something about it. Such as the American Revolution, French Revolution, 9/11.
Today the inflicted suffering is masked by labels and logos we resonate with. "Enduring Freedom" (suffering inflicted on Iraq, suffering we're not told about). "Compassionate Conservatism" (suffering inflicted on America, suffering we're finally beginning to admit is happening).
In the early 1800s, we began to forget why we created America. And we dropped our guard. An ENEMY WITHIN, driven by the same urges for wealth and power that drove the Enemy of 1776, arose among us and slowly grew. Around 1980, their separate forces began to fuse into a single right-wing state power that's now taking control away from "We, the People" (1980s fusion of power). The war on Iraq is just one of the many symptoms (Iraq-war SUMMARY).
A Senator: "If the American public knew what's really going on, they'd revolt."
Our Constitution issues the directive for such a revolution: "We, the People . . . provide for the common defence." It calls to all citizens, conservatives and liberals alike, to rise up and unite in a common cause: to defend America against the ENEMY WITHIN.
Every newspaper, every radio and television station, has the patriotic duty to spread that call.
Every school has the patriotic duty to teach our new generations the most important civics lesson of all: we must constantly guard and defend America against the ENEMY WITHIN, and our mass media -- as our voice of freedom -- must sound the alarms. Otherwise what our species understood tens of millennia ago, and what our founders feared in 1787, will happen: America will corrupt into an Amerika.
Hear the roar of the falls ahead? Whether or not we go over the edge is up to us: "We, the People."
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Already purged: our foremost civic duty.
According to our Constitution, "We, the People" are the government. Every citizen -- as a member of our government of the People, by the People, for the People -- has a foremost civic duty: to "establish justice," "provide for the common defence," "promote the general welfare," and "secure the blessings of liberty" to "ourselves" and "our posterity." "We, the People" furnish all this human goodness. God has nothing to do with it, except for when some individuals may feel the need to ask in prayer for personal divine help to carry our Constitution: God and Country. Our Constitution embodies a bright, uplifting spirit of human nature -- people are naturally moral and good -- which happens to be more Buddhist than Christian: Ancient origin of our Constitution. This is what it means to be a true "American."
NOTE. The born-again Christian Zionism of the Christian Right -- an inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged a century after 1776 and thus was not the religion of our nation's founders -- incorrectly believes that goodness comes only from God, which is directly at odds with our Constitution. The Christian Right's aggressive political action to force their inhumane beliefs and behaviors onto America are hugely harmful and hugely costly and hugely illegal. The Christian Right violates:
- The Preamble. As when they lobby for war including for taxpayer support of the bin-Laden/al-Qaeda proxy weapon in the 1980s, for inequality and injustice here and abroad, for federal acts that threaten the well-being of our posterity.
- Article 6. As when they sway the White House and Congress apply "religious Test[s]" to appoint Christian-Right judges.
- Amendment 1. As when they pressure Congress to pass laws that give favor to their religion.
- Separation of powers. As when they influence the executive/legislative/judicial branches to combine into a Christian-Right religious power.
- Separation of church and state. As when they persuade our federal government to codify Christian-Right religious doctrine into federal law and to vigorously enforce it, and to create a Christian-Right judiciary to uphold those laws.
But an ENEMY WITHIN is exploiting America and taking control. A sign? They already purged our above foremost civic duty from our public mind, and from our schools and leaders and government. How complete is the purging? Most of us don't even know that "We, the People" are the government! In several ways they prevent us from governing America in accordance with our Constitution. They corrupted our principled "American" democracy into an unprincipled "Amerikan" democracy: an illegal and dangerous blend of market-based "Madison-Avenue" democracy where wrongdoers can be adulated as glorious winners and wrongdoing can be celebrated as righteousness, "right-wing" democracy that strips away separation of powers and separation of church and state and slides our nation into fascism and a state religion, and "kakistocratic plutocracy" which is government Of, By, and For the least-principled few who hold the bulk of wealth and power. They are busily removing much of the justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty that "We, the People" accomplished in the 20th-century. They quietly take at least a half-trillion dollars from our treasury every year and plunder other nations even worse. They violate our Constitution to its core and flout international law. They kill vastly more people here and abroad than terrorists do. Besides harming America in many serious ways from the inside, blowback from their mistreatment of the world is harming America from the outside (think 9/11). As seen from abroad and by real patriots here, they soiled our Flag into a vulgar symbol of arrogance and inhumanity. America is no longer "America."
Although the world out there sees how America turned lawless and inhuman, even toward itself, we Americans are kept totally clueless. Our press and radio and television, once our voice of freedom, switched clients: they became the Voice of the ENEMY WITHIN. As their client loots and destroys and kills both here and abroad, in their news reports and talk shows and prime-time dramas they cloak the wrongdoers and wrongdoing with deceptive illusions of patriotism and goodness. Deception is a weapon used against an enemy. America's deceptive mass media became a weapon of mass destruction against America.
Use these lessons as a tool to SEE this problem. And to SOLVE the problem: "We, the People" must take out the destructive power of the ENEMY WITHIN, and take over their weapon, to take back America.
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Many symptoms, one problem, one solution.
A sampling of symptoms of the core problem:
In Dec-2000 the Supreme Court blocked a full counting of Florida votes, and based their decision on strong partisan support. In doing so, the Supreme Court violated our Constitution: Article 2, separation of powers. Our press did not report this massive wrongdoing.
We no longer have an "American" democracy based on the goals, principles, and rules in our Constitution. We no longer have a representative government. We no longer have democratic processes including democratic informing of the electorate and democratic elections. The type of government we actually practice, "Amerikan" democracy, is illegal according to our Constitution. Technically, we don't even have a "democracy" anymore. But our news won't connect the dots and tell us any of this.
Dangerous social and economic policies are wrecking our nation and hurting our citizens and futures. A mini-summary:
President Bush, and many in Congress, preach that government shouldn't provide for people. They say families, friends, neighbors, individual fortitude, and religion should do it. And that people should fend for themselves. So they intentionally starve and burden our federal government so that government can't provide for people. How? They reduce revenue: they give more than $800 billion a year in tax relief and subsidies to corporations and the wealthy (REFERENCE) and permit them to cheat on their taxes to the tune of $300 billion a year (REFERENCE). They increase wasteful spending: they boost overhead spending on world domination-and-plundering which includes homeland-security spending now needed to protect us from the angry backlash triggered by the White House's and Congress' international inhumanity (the current-and-future tax dollars to pay for it, that come more and more from the middle class and poor and less and less from corporations and the rich, flow to their corporate clients); they boost spending on Christian-Right causes (REFERENCE). Which forces our federal government to borrow more heavily, which further increases our huge interest payments on the huge national debt that will burden our posterity. They cut useful spending that invests in America's infrastructure and citizens; they drain Social Security, Medicare, and veterans federal trust-fund accounts to finance gifts to corporations and the wealthy; they are working to cut many public benefits including Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and education. One major success? A starved, over-extended federal government that spends mostly on wasteful overhead and on payouts to the rich, with little money left in the bank to provide for people. Another major success? A multitude of domestic policies that transfer wealth from the poor and middle-class to the rich: How they Reverse-Robin-Hood America. President Bush and Congress are thus removing much of the social-and-economic progress and justice that America accomplished in two centuries: We the People are losing our fair taxation, low-cost high-quality public education, low-cost energy, low-cost health care, standard of living, job and financial security, worker rights and workplace safety, food and drug safety, environmental safety, and more. Instead of selecting judges, cabinet heads, agency directors, and advisory panels on the basis of expertise or on how well they'll serve the common good, our President and Congress select them on the basis of how well they'll serve right-wing ideology and the industries they regulate; they put foxes in all the hen houses. As intended by our nation's founders, corporations are chartered and carefully regulated by government to serve the public. But our President and Congress fail to enforce regulatory laws, and they enact deregulation, which enables corporations to screw the public. Our Constitution states that the purpose of our government -- the purpose of America -- is to provide for people: CLICK HERE. On several fronts, our President and Congress engage in subversion against that humanity called for by our Constitution. Our mass media covers it all up.
Interest expense on our national debt? $330 billion in FY 2002. That's more than we spent on the Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch, Department of Justice, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), all International Assistance Programs, NASA, Department of Energy, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of Education, Department of Labor, and Veterans Affairs combined (www.federalbudget.com). That overhead expense is rising fast and will soon exceed our national-defense expense, $370 billion in FY 2002. That massive wasteful spending interferes with America's ability to provide for its people, the whole point. The rising unfairness of our tax system will shift the burden more and more onto our nation's poor. Our mass media won't say a word.
America is becoming less and less fair to its citizens. That unfairness comes from our elected representatives, who serve their major campaign-contribution donors (0.15% of the population) rather than the public interest. The inequality gap is the widest since 1929. Our federal government gives more money to wealthy private universities than it does to public colleges that enroll 80% of all students. Higher education for the middle class and poor is in jeopardy. America's middle class is being destroyed. There is little upward mobility anymore. The tax burden is being shifted to lower-income citizens, who receive fewer and fewer benefits in return; the opposite is happening for the rich. Congress is changing laws to allow corporations to harm citizens, and to protect corporations from being punished for the harm they cause. Read: A Question of Fairness: Winners and Losers / Rewriting the Rules / Tax Justice (PBS NOW Nov-21-2003).
The Guardian UK describes the growing poverty, healthcare, and inequality crisis in America: Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen, Land where calling an ambulance is first step to bankruptcy, Why America's plutocrats gobble up $1,500 hot dogs. Reuters: Nearly 36 Million Americans, 1/8 of Population, Living in Poverty.
Due to declines in nutrition and health care resulting from America's growing inequality, the average height of American adults has plateaued and may now be declining. In contrast, European and British adults are now considerably taller than Americans and are growing taller. Americans shrinking as junk food takes its toll.
America jails and imprisons a higher percentage of its people -- mostly racial/ethnic minorities and the poor for committing minor offenses as white-and-rich major offenders get off scot-free -- than any other nation in the world: CLICK HERE.
Public education is under vigorous attack by corporate and Christian-Right forces out to 1) privatize, desecularize, and dumbatize our schools, 2) reduce public funding to schools that serve less-well-off students and boost it for schools that serve well-off students, 3) place higher education more and more out of reach of needy students (Quality higher education: members of the working class need not apply?, Thousands of low-income students cut from Pell Grant program, But Boot Camp Is Still Free: Bush, Congress quietly slash key grants for college, Rich Kids Go to College, Poor Ones to Baghdad ). They are deliberately forcing public education to fail. Mandated student testing and "No-Child-Left-Behind" testing of school performance -- imposed only on public schools and not on private or charter schools -- are two of their tools designed to destroy the quality of education (Education Reform: Leaving the Teachers Behind). Since Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, children's reading scores have stalled or declined in the nation's largest states (Student Test Scores Faltering, Falling in Major States, New Government Data Reveal). Although federal-government data show that public schools on the average outperform charter schools in delivering academic achievement, although charter schools are not required to bus kids to school as public schools must, although charter schools suddenly stop operating when no longer profitable and disrupt children and family lives, wealthy community leaders and our corporate mass media all push for charter schools. Inexpensive high-quality public schooling of the recent past -- K-12, community college, university -- is being transformed into expensive lower-quality privatized corporate-based schooling (Why is Scholastic, the World's Largest Supplier of Children's Books, giving a Venue to the "Dark Side?", Teachers, Before Buying "Tampering with Nature" for the Classroom, Know the Truth about John Stossel, The Hidden Push to Privatize Public Schools) and religion-based schooling. Where traditional broad-and-deep learning needed for good living and good governance is replaced with narrow-and-shallow knowledge and skills that corporations and fundamentalist-religions want people to have. Where students are not taught that a key purpose of democracy itself, and good citizenship, is to prevent wealth and power from consolidating and taking control and exploiting citizens. Where good citizenship and critical thinking are replaced with blind obedience to corporate-and-religious ideology and authority. Core human development -- the core "values" of respect, responsibility, and cooperation along with participatory-art programs that develop critical-thinking skill -- are being banished from our nation's schools. As adults, students won't have the wisdom or humanity -- or the desire -- to be clear-thinking socially-responsible active good citizens. A dangerous effect? It handicaps the ability of "our posterity" to govern America in accordance with our Constitution. Reading is a democratic activity, theocracies discourage it, Khomeini's Iran and the Soviet Union had similarly degraded views of literature, and Bush's America is heading the same way, into a war on reading and on its human gift of deep understanding: The war on words. The corporate news machine silences our nation's alarmed educators. Bush's Education Policies Aim To Undermine Democracy and Dumb Students Down, Recruiting the armies of ignorance. A reason for the silencing? One powerful media corporation that influences the content in many newspapers, The Washington Post Company, has strong economic interest in for-profit education and mandated student testing: Kaplan, Inc, The Conflict of Interest Corrupting the Washington Post, Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post, Part I Part II.
A child born in America today is $124,000 in debt the moment he draws his first breath. Another top story our news won't report.
In the past, our mass media praised leaders who transferred excess wealth from rich to poor and improved the lives of common people. Today, our news and entertainment media glorify the well-off who Reverse Robin Hood and hurt their fellow citizens: CLICK HERE.
The religion of the Christian Right is fast becoming our harmful and costly de facto state religion. It is a pessimistic and inhumane version of Christianity that emerged in the late 1800s, about a century after our Constitution was written, and thus was not the religion of our nation's founders: Summary of Christian Zionism. The inhumanity of the Christian Right includes their removal of "giving to and helping others with nothing asked for or expected in return" from the Good Samaritan principle (CLICK HERE), their support of social inequality and social injustice that is so wrong it alarms mainstream theologians (CLICK HERE), their support for keeping women subservient to men and for killing homosexuals and abortion doctors (CLICK HERE), their support of USA-led war in Jesus' name (CLICK HERE), their support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians which they see as necessary to trigger the Book-of-Revelation "end times" (CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE), their support for the Islamic terrorism that led to 9/11 (CLICK HERE). Christian fundamentalists drive US Middle East policy and push for fireworks that will dwarf 9/11 and Iraq as part of a general "World War IV" (Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power, CLICK HERE). They see gruesome human tragedies in the Middle East -- in Israel, in Iraq which they believe is the New Babylon -- as "necessary according to prophecy" (CLICK HERE). Their latest "Left Behind" novel, "Glorious Appearing," celebrates violent, bloody ethnic cleansing of all non-Christians from the face of our planet as the height of piety (CLICK HERE). A prominent Christian-Right preacher, during the Vietnam war, proposed bombing dikes to cause flooding that would kill at least a million civilians (CLICK HERE). Their Christian Zionism, using the Jewish people as proxies to carry out the Apocalypse in which the Jewish people are intended to die, is perhaps the worst form of anti-Semitism the world has ever seen (CLICK HERE). Christian-Right theology is being enacted by Executive Order through Faith-Based Initiatives in violation of Article 6 of our Constitution: CLICK HERE. Christian-Right theology, in violation of separation of church and state, is being codified into federal law by unified effort of our executive and legislative branches: laws banning "partial-birth" abortions, and laws that criminalize harm to embryos/fetuses, are well-planned steps toward defining life in federal law as beginning at conception; laws that restrict rights of citizens who are homosexual are in the works. The White House and Congress are striving to have those religion-based laws ruled Constitutional by the Christian-Right judges they install: CLICK HERE. Officials and judges are being appointed, and funds from our treasury are being disbursed, on the basis of Christian-Right religious tests -- be Christian Right or lose out -- which violates Article 6 and separation of church and state: Part 22. Our President is supposed to be driven by our Constitution to carry out the secular humanitarian goals of America stated in the Preamble. Instead, Christian-Right religion drives President Bush to war on biblical "evil" and to not care about expending American money and American lives in a religious crusade that generates backlash at America and weakens our national security: CLICK HERE. Our federal government now spends about $200 billion a year supporting all Christian-Right causes, including $100 billion yearly to support Israel to hurry up the Apocalypse, and to fund those religious causes every taxpayer on the average is forced to pay a de facto $1,500 annual religious tax: CLICK HERE. As evidenced by their strong support of ENEMY WITHIN actions that threaten and hurt America and the world, as evidenced by their yearning for history to end as soon as possible in violent strife, CLICK HERE, the Christian Right obviously has no concern for the "general Welfare" of regular Americans or for "our Posterity." It all works so extremely well for the Christian Right: as the ENEMY WITHIN creates more and more domestic and world misery, more and more in America seek heavenly escape from the despair by joining Christian-Right religion, who then vote in greater numbers for Christian-Right presidential and congressional candidates who in turn appoint more Christian-Right judges, who together ramp up the inhumanity of America's domestic and foreign policy even more to satisfy the growing numbers of Christian-Right voters, which boosts the misery and despair even more. A cruel and vicious cycle exploited to solidify power. Although it is illegal to merge "God" and "Country" into "God and Country," CLICK HERE, they do it anyway. Christian-Right voters make up about one-half of President Bush's political base: PBS NOW Feb-20-2004. As anyone can plainly see, the Christian Right -- and our federal executive/legislative/judicial and corporate/media partnership with them -- are totally at odds with the purpose of America: "We, the People . . . establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . ." Our emerging Christian-Right state religion violates our Preamble, Article 6, Amendment 1, separation of church and state, and separation of powers (CLICK HERE). Our mass media won't breathe a word about any of this illegality and inhumanity.
Acting toward killing one person is bad enough. Isn't America's $100-billion-a-year spending toward the Christian-Right goal of ending history, which means the earthly death of everyone, an evil far worse?
See why the Christian Right doesn't care about driving up our national debt, which places a huge financial burden on our posterity? If things work out right for them, there won't be a posterity.
In the 1980s -- in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Virginia -- our leaders bred and grew Islamic terrorism into a proxy military weapon against the Russians to bolster our national security. They funded Islamic terrorism with our tax dollars for seventeen years. All with strong pressure and backing from the Christian Right. And thereby sowed the seeds of 9/11. Was this mentioned during Ground Zero ceremonies?
Every time our President says the goal in Iraq is to fight terrorism or foster democracy or defend our freedom and isn't about controlling the region or looting oil, he is lying. Our news programs, talk shows, television dramas, and movies participate as a team in the President's DECEPTION. For example, did our news explain the first mission of our troops: to secure Iraq's oil facilities and oil ministry? Or how Executive Order 13290 (March-20-2003, the day the bombing began), UN Resolution 1483 (extorted from other nations on May-22-2003), Executive Order 13303 (issued within hours after UNR 1483), and Executive Order 13315 (Aug-28-2003) altogether authorize total control and massive looting of Iraq's assets including the oil by the United States (CLICK HERE)? Or how takeover of Iraq's oil was a primary goal since 1992?
Besides perpetuating many serious lies about Iraq, including by not telling us how the war is a premeditated armed heist of a sovereign nation's assets, President Bush also lied about international and American law and about who he really serves. His string of lies misled America to commit and celebrate a war of aggression, a war crime so immoral it is condemned by the Nuremberg Charter as "the supreme international crime": CLICK HERE. His string of lies pressured America to turn into a lawless rogue nation after 9/11: CLICK HERE. The mass media and right wing crucified and tried to impeach President Clinton for having lied that he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinski. Why don't they crucify and impeach President Bush for his vastly more serious and dangerous lies?
Three days after Arnold Schwarzenegger won the governorship of California, an aide announced plans (that began two years earlier) to bilk the electorate out of a $9-billion refund from Enron and the other energy traders that scammed the state. Enron bragged about stealing millions a day from California:" Enron Tapes Hint Chiefs Knew About Power Ploys, Enron Traders Caught On Tape, Enron tapes expose blatant criminality of corporate America. Energy deregulation has already cost the state $50 billion due to Enroning, yet Arnold plans to accelerate energy deregulation and the Enroning of Californians. Arnold Unplugged - It's Hasta la Vista to $9 Billion if the Governator is Selected, Arnold to Settle Lawsuits for Pennies on the Dollar?, Arnold's Agenda To Bring California Back, Enron E-mails Confirm Schwarzenegger-Ken Lay Meeting, Emails show Enron may have influenced FERC probe on California power crisis, refunds, New push to deregulate energy: Schwarzenegger electricity plan fuels fears of another debacle, Schwarzenegger Pulls a Cheney, The Lay Loot. Historically, "whenever deregulation has been introduced, wholesale electricity prices have spiked at hundreds of times the cost of production:" Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity. It sure happened to California, and under Arnold it will continue to happen. By remaining utterly silent, and by pumping up Arnold, our news and entertainment industries are accomplices in that huge crime by energy traders. How massive is the larceny? The quiet $50-billion California energy scamming, so far, is a theft 10,000-times larger than a $5-million bank robbery that would certainly be hot news.
Arnold's win is a triumph of "Madison-Avenue" democracy, where advertising and PR enables wrongdoers to be adulated and wrongdoing to be glorified, over the principled "American" democracy that our mass media no longer serves.
In our "Madison-Avenue" democracy, even the rigging and corrupting of our representative government is framed as something good. Our newspapers and news anchors fawn over who's collecting the most millions of dollars in campaign contributions. Those winning the legalized-bribery horse race -- that is, the candidates most likely to grant big favors to a few corporate donors at the expense of the public good and public treasury -- are praised and glorified.
Every time the right wing says the media is "liberal," every time the corporate mass media calls itself "liberal," it feeds a myth that was crafted with the intent to deceive our public mind.
And so on.
All those symptoms are due to a single core problem: an ENEMY WITHIN is taking over our nation.
What happened? Despite the two vital protections they wove into our Constitution in 1787 -- separation of powers, separation of church and state -- what the Framers dreaded most emerged around 1980. All three branches of our federal government -- executive, legislative, judicial -- began to fuse together and merge with wealth-corporate, Christian-Right, and mass-media power into a single right-wing state power that is harming our citizens and damaging our nation: the ENEMY WITHIN.
The ENEMY WITHIN is violating our Constitution to its core: Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state.
One of the consequences? Our special "American" form of government -- government Of and By the People, For the People -- is morphing into a government Of and By the ENEMY WITHIN, For the ENEMY WITHIN.
Doom and gloom? Not at all. It's a single problem that "We, the People" have a civic duty to fix.
The solution? To eliminate all the symptoms, we must fix the one core problem.
Working for change in the usual way is not effective. Journalists reporting a single symptom in each article or book, such as about one politician's string of lies or one corporation's string of misdeeds -- never tying it all together which leaves us confused, never providing an effective solution which leaves us feeling powerless and hopeless -- doesn't work. Activists and public-interest groups separately tackling the myriad individual symptoms -- with small and weak fragmented forces, with little public support for each isolated cause, each lone splintered force attacked full on by the entire might of the ENEMY WITHIN -- doesn't work. The ENEMY WITHIN, unified and organized, likes that strategy. They watch us confuse ourselves, demoralize ourselves, divide ourselves. Then they pick us off, one by one, and conquer (more about how they divide and conquer: A B C).
Trying to solve America's core problem by electing a Democrat to the Presidency will not work, because the Democratic Party is one of the two wings of the Consolidated Wealth and Power Party, America's political monopoly: CLICK HERE. However, electing a new President who is less "ENEMY WITHIN" is an excellent first step. Electing a new President who is not "ENEMY WITHIN" will take united effort and time.
Think of America as our brick home. Even from our best information sources, all we ever learn are bits and pieces of unrelated information, about mortar crumbling here or a brick falling out there, with so many missing pieces of news it's impossible to see the clear picture or whole picture: behind the clouds of dust, the ENEMY WITHIN's wrecking machine is ball-and-chaining the walls and jack-hammering the foundation, and our entire house is weakening and crumbling and falling down.
Think of single-issue activists as single-brick activists: each group tries to fix its particular brick, unaware of other damage nearby on the same wall, unaware of other groups trying to fix their damaged bricks, unaware of how all groups could work together as a coordinated team, unaware of the house as an entity, unaware of the wrecking machine causing all the damage, unaware of the dangerously weakening separation-of-powers and separation-of-church-and-state foundation that will cause the entire house to collapse. For activism to be hugely successful, every activist -- at the very least -- must be aware of the house, the forces of destruction, and the entire fix-it crew.
Think of reality as a big picture puzzle. On any day, good journalists present a few true pieces of the puzzle to a small portion of the public, one piece of puzzle per journalist. Then within hours those pieces vanish from public awareness. Next day, or next week, different pieces of the puzzle are made known. Then they vanish from our public mind, too. Meanwhile, to the bulk of the public, untrue pieces of the puzzle are presented by journalists employed by the ENEMY WITHIN. Day after day, those untrue pieces are re-presented over and over again. And we remember them. What about most of the pieces of the big picture puzzle? Good and bad journalists never present them. They don't even hint that huge areas of the puzzle -- of reality -- are missing. Reality perceived by the general public? Mainly just false bits and pieces.
Also think of reality as a rain of events that pools into a flow: CLICK HERE.
A hint for activists and journalists. Whenever you present a piece of the puzzle, or a single-drop event, relate it to the entire picture or entire flow.
Some Native American languages were constructed to do exactly that. Whenever you spoke you related it to the whole in place and time, which made deception among community members impossible and thus helped to assure their common well-being and survival.
More hints for activists and journalists: CLICK HERE.
See what we have to do? Everybody has to unite into a powerful political team to incapacitate the wrecking machine. And then repair our damaged home.
The trick is to create a united and focused "American" force to combat the united and focused right-wing force of the ENEMY WITHIN. A strong fusion of all our separate forces is needed for public-interest activism to succeed, for "We, the People" to win during elections.
A united "American" force of conservatives and liberals would drain votes away from Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers. As explained in this ebook, it would take just careful small shifts in the voting numbers to remove the ENEMY WITHIN from power. Such an effort could be directed by a smart-thinking well-organized coalition of conservative and liberal true "Americans," a group vastly larger than the ENEMY WITHIN.
We need to see the clear big picture and the single core problem: the ENEMY WITHIN is removing "America" from America. We need to comprehend and execute the solution called for by our Constitution: "We, the People . . . provide for the common defence" against the ENEMY WITHIN. Journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other concerned groups and citizens must link together and unify and organize like the ENEMY WITHIN does. We need to rise up and unite as "Americans" to defend our nation, and focus our unified conservative-and-liberal "American" force against the ENEMY WITHIN like how a focused beam of curing energy wipes out a cancer.
To pull it off, we can't remain aimless and apart like the ENEMY WITHIN wants us to. Individuals and groups, conservative and liberal, must work together as one powerful "We, the People" coalition. The potential power of such a force is awesome.
Think of this broad-based total solution as a long-overdue, major maintenance and tune-up of "American" democracy. Or as a New American Revolution to restore "America" to America.
Odds of victory? The Constitution is on our side; they oppose and violate it. The truth is on our side; they have to constantly lie. We're the overwhelming majority: we outnumber their Christian-Right core by ten-to-one, we outnumber their wealth-corporate core by a thousand-to-one.
The thought of 200 million citizens carrying out their foremost civic duty to restore our nation back into the "America" our Constitution calls for, would be the ENEMY WITHIN's worst nightmare.
TOP CONTENTS
More dangerous than Communists within.
An ENEMY WITHIN, a virulent new version of the enemy of 1776, is busily removing "America" -- our "justice," "common defence," "general welfare," and "liberty" -- from America.
Our vital democratic processes -- free speech and dissent, writing to our Senators and Congressman, relying on the news for honest information, voting during elections -- barely work anymore. A sure sign the ENEMY WITHIN is taking over.
The White House and Congress bred and grew Islamic terrorism into a proxy military weapon. In the 1980s, with strong urging and support from the Christian Right, they funneled billions of our tax dollars to Muslim militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they forced the Saudis to match our contributions to the mujahideen (the birth of Saudi funding of Islamic militants). In Pakistan (1986-1992) they set up camps and trained 100,000 militants including al-Qaeda and Taliban in how to carry out guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks, and they trained the leaders at a CIA facility in Virginia near Washington DC. After 1992, those camps in essence moved into Afghanistan and became al-Qaeda camps. They used that lethal proxy weapon against Russians in Afghanistan (1980s) and against Serbs in the Balkans (1990s). They funded Islamic terrorism for seventeen years beginning in 1979. To read the history, CLICK HERE and scroll. Then, their weapon went out of control and aimed and fired itself at America (9/11).
In addition to damaging our representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty -- in addition to causing terrorism against our nation -- the ENEMY WITHIN kills more American citizens than terrorists do: more than ten-times the number of 9/11 victims every year. They are vastly more dangerous than terrorism.
Remember the old threat from Communists within? That pales in comparison.
Our press and radio and television, once our voice of freedom, cannot reveal any of this. They became partners of the ENEMY WITHIN.
If "We, the People" don't unite to "provide for the common defence" against this national-security threat, we will lose more than our Bill of Rights.
How large is the Christian-Right core of the ENEMY WITHIN? About 20-30 million individuals, roughly 10% of our population: 5-part series on Christian Zionism, end of Part 2 (possibly as high as 15%-18%: Apocalypse Please). "We, the People" outnumber them by ten-to-one.
How large is their wealth-corporate core? Less than a half-million individuals, about 0.15% of our population: CLICK HERE. "We, the People" outnumber them a thousand-to-one.
If our troops had been correctly taught the meaning of our Flag, if our troops had been warned that their commander-in-chief is the figurehead of the ENEMY WITHIN, if our troops had been told how the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were planned before 9/11 and have nothing to do with a war on terror or defending America, if our troops had been educated how the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq violate international laws and US laws including our Constitution (CLICK HERE), they would have refused to obey their President because of their solemn oath to serve their Country by upholding our Constitution.
Are we patriotic and courageous enough -- "American" enough -- to fight the ENEMY WITHIN by living up to our Constitution?
If so, consult the sensible long range four-element plan herein, spread it around, and start waving our Flag for a New American Revolution!
TOP CONTENTS
Our course: from "America" to "Amerika?"
Roots of patriotism crucial for the well-being of America -- core human development of our youth and population, basic education about the histories of America and humankind, fundamental education about our special "American" type of democracy, good citizenship and good leadership as defined and required by our Constitution, vital news and honest news from our mass media -- are all being banned in today's America. The consequences are devastating.
For example, most Americans today don't know what "America" is all about. Although we proudly wave and display our Flag, we're fairly clueless about what it means. Why? The bare basics of our history and Constitution -- such as our foremost civic duty, our nation's fundamental protections (they are not the Bill of Rights) and the common-ground responsibilities of all "Americans" -- have been kept out of our schools and public mind for decades.
An ENEMY WITHIN helped to create that national-security weakness, and is busily exploiting it. With success so fantastic it's beyond their wildest dreams.
The new right wing -- and its voice and protector, the corporate mass media -- are the ENEMY WITHIN. They are violating our Constitution to its core, removing our special "American" democracy, and sliding our nation into a fascistic "Amerika."
They corrupted "American" democracy into an unprincipled un-American form of democracy that subverts We-the-People governance, an illegal and dangerous "Amerikan" democracy that prevents representative government and democratic processes, prevents attainment of our nation's basic goals stated in the Preamble, and violates our Constitution in other major ways: a blend of market-based "Madison-Avenue" democracy (where you toss legal principles, moral principles, and good sense out the window and adulate high poll numbers instead; where lawbreaking and wrongdoing, including endangering and harming yourself and others, are "right" and "good" if manipulative advertising and PR make those misdeeds and survival-incorrect behaviors acceptable and popular), "right-wing" democracy (that strips away separation of powers, separation of church and state, and slides our nation into fascism with a scary Christian-Right state religion), and "kakistocratic plutocracy" (government of, by, and for the least-principled few who hold the bulk of wealth and power). The "right-wing" democracy we do have is illegal according to our Constitution: CLICK HERE and HERE. Technically, we no longer have a "democracy"; we have a "kakistocratic plutocracy:" CLICK HERE. They are preventing representative government: CLICK HERE. They are preventing democratic processes including democratic elections: CLICK HERE. They quietly take at least $0.5 trillion from our treasury every year: CLICK HERE. On a massive scale they are looting and destroying both here and abroad, with frenzy after 9/11: CLICK HERE. They commit vastly more physical harm against American citizens on American soil than the terrorists we fear: CLICK HERE.
All so skillfully we hardly know it or care.
However the rest of the world sure knows and cares and is striking back. With strengthening trade blocs from the many weaker nations we exploit and harm. With Islamic terrorism, the lethal proxy military weapon we bred and used against the Soviets in the 1980s and the Serbs in the 1990s.
These Civics 101 lessons offer a big-picture analysis.
And a comprehensive solution: a New American Revolution of citizens and groups -- conservative and liberal alike -- uniting into ONE powerful force against ONE common right-wing enemy. Like our forebears did against right-wing Corporate England to create our nation in the first place.
It would be a long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up. The tech manual? Our dust-covered Constitution that we haven't carefully read or heeded in years. We need to focus on more than just the Bill of Rights.
What's perhaps scariest about the ENEMY WITHIN? This. To win millions of Christian-Right votes at election time (Christian-Right voters make up about one-half of President Bush's political base: PBS NOW Feb-20-2004), the White House and Congress take $3 billion from our treasury every year and give it to a terrorist nation (CLICK HERE & HERE) to help fulfill religious prophecies that radical Christian fundamentalists misconstrue from the Bible and pray for and long for: drive Palestinians off their land to form the Kingdom of Israel which will herald "end times" -- rise of the Antichrist, battle of Armageddon, second coming of Christ, the final Judgment, and the end of history ("end times") -- the sooner the better (Cutting Edge Ministries, endtime.com, leftbehind.com, raptureready.com, America, "Left Behind:" Bush, the Neocons and Evangelical Christian Fiction). 20-30 million Americans (5-part series on Christian Zionism, end of Part 2), roughly 10% of our population, want history to end as soon as possible. The ENEMY WITHIN caters to that yearning. Sure makes my hair stand up on end. Christian Zionism, which emerged in the 1800s before the Jewish Zionist movement did, calls for the Jewish people to return to their Biblical homeland and remove the Palestinian inhabitants by whatever means necessary in order to start the Book-of-Revelation process toward "end times." Christian Zionists helped to spur Jewish longing for a homeland and the Jewish Zionism movement. Thus Christian Zionists exploit the Jewish people as pawns to fulfill "end times" Biblical prophecy, which is a horrifying form of anti-Semitism. The people that Israel must ethnically cleanse out of the way, the Palestinians, are victims of Christian Zionism also. Bloody ethnic cleansing in God's name is considered so pious by the Christian Right it is glorified in their latest popular novel: CLICK HERE. Christian Zionists gained tremendous political influence in the 20th-century. Britain's Prime Minister in 1917, a Christian Zionist, issued the Balfour Declaration -- written by a former Christian-Zionist British Prime Minister -- which promised Zionists a national home in Palestine which would require displacing the Palestinians who lived there. Christian-Zionist control of the British government in the early 1900s led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Today, Christian Zionists strongly sway US foreign policy in favor of Israel -- in favor of oppressing Palestinians -- in order to hurry up the arrival of "end times." Although Christian Zionism and its powerful influence on American politics is reported abroad (5-part series on Christian Zionism, Evangelical Christians and the Sharon lobby, Exodus of the Palestinian Christians, Apocalypse Please, Marching on Babylon, God save America), America's mass media will not say a word. Not even about a dangerous consequence: how America's lavish subsidizing of Israeli tyranny against Palestinians fuels terrorism against America. Our mass media teaches that Palestinians are terrorists and that Israel is defending itself, but in reality the opposite has been true since long before Israel's statehood: CLICK HERE and HERE (the first link also explains how today's Israeli-Palestinian unrest was directly caused by failure of the British government to keep church separate from state in the early 20th-century). So far the White House and Congress have taken about $2 trillion from our treasury to support the Israeli-Palestinian conflict desired by America's Christian Zionists, an amount equalling about 30% of our national debt (the total cost for Americans is $3 trillion; the portion funded by the US Treasury is about $2 trillion: The Real Cost of US Support for Israel: $3 Trillion, The Costs to American Taxpayers of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: $3 Trillion). That is, the White House and Congress borrowed that $2 trillion to spend it on a Christian-Zionist religious cause. That cumulative borrowing now costs our nation $100 billion in interest payments every year. Total payout from our treasury annually to Christian Zionism? $3 billion for aid + $100 billion for interest = $103 billion per year = a fourth of our defense budget = the combined budgets of the National Science Foundation, EPA, NASA, Department of Energy, and Housing and Urban Development (www.federalbudget.com). Just to support the aid-to-Israel portion of the Christian Zionist biblical-prophecy agenda alone. That portion of Christian-Zionist support costs each taxpayer an average of $800 per year (based on 131 million individual income-tax returns for FY 2002, www.irs.gov). This de facto religious tax is a rather expensive and dangerous violation of separation of church and state. The total de facto religious tax we pay annually to support Christian-Right causes is about twice that: CLICK HERE.)
To get elected and re-elected, the White House and Congress spend $4000 tax dollars a year to buy each of the 20-30 million Christian-Right votes in regard to aid to Israel. But they won't tell us, and our news media won't tell us either. So figure it out for yourself: $100 billion federal spending a year for aid-to-Israel Christian Zionism (see above paragraph); 50 million citizens voted for the right-wing Presidential candidate in Nov-2000, about half were members of the Christian-Right core (5-part series on Christian Zionism, end of Part 2, PBS NOW Feb-20-2004, Apocalypse Please); $100 billion per year, divided by 25 million Christian-Zionist voters in Nov-2000, equals $4000 per vote per year.
Add in all the other Christian-Right spending, and the cost is $8000-per-year to buy each of the 25 million Christian-Right votes with taxpayer money.
The latest Left Behind novel -- Glorious Appearing -- depicts Jesus returning to Earth to bloodily slaughter everyone on our planet who is not a born-again Christian. The novel celebrates ethnic cleansing as the height of piety: Militant Christianity versus militant Islam, America, "Left Behind:" Bush, the Neocons and Evangelical Christian Fiction, Betting on apocalypse.
For the Christian Right, the Book of Revelation is a godsend for warmongering: Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelation is Must Reading.
"Messianic theology is centered on the belief in a hegemonic Israel as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ. Although this doctrine is certainly an important part of the Christian Right's support of a militaristic and expansionist Jewish state, fundamentalist Christian Zionism in the United States ascribes to an even more dangerous dogma: that of Manichaeism, the belief that reality is divided into absolute good and absolute evil." "The Christian Right constitutes nearly one out of seven American voters and determines the agenda of the Republican Party in about half of the states." ". . . it has long been recognized that US fundamentalist support for Israel does not stem from a concern for the Jewish people per se but rather from a desire to leverage Jewish jingoism to hasten the second coming of Christ." Read: US Christian Right's grip on Middle East policy.
PBS NOW producer: "[Christian Zionist 'A'] is what is known as a "Christian Zionist," a Christian who believes that God gave the biblical land of Israel to the Jews, and it belongs solely in Jewish hands. In the Christian Zionist view this will lead to the return of the Christian messiah, Jesus. That event is called the Second Coming. Christian Zionists say it is all in the Bible. First the Jews hold all of biblical Israel, then Jesus returns." Christian Zionist 'A:' "We will never limp, we will never wimp, we will never vacillate in our support of Israel." That support means support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and opposition to any peace settlement that would give any land to Palestinians. PBS NOW producer: "Rapture is the moment, according to these Christians, when believers in Jesus will receive a divine reward. They will meet their lord in the sky and be taken up to heaven. . . . That's the theme of a group of Christian novels which together have sold over 60 million copies in the U.S. alone. Among them are the LEFT BEHIND series, which has popularized the prophecy of a gruesome fate for non-believers, including a world war, Armageddon, leading to the end of the world: Apocalypse." Christian Zionist 'B:' "I believe the Apocalypse could happen within the next 20 years, very possibly." Read the transcript, including how the Christian Right makes up about half of President Bush's political base: PBS NOW Feb-20-2004.
Here's another scary peek into the soul of the Christian-Right religion our federal government spends about $200 billion a year to support ($100 billion a year just for Christian Zionism): "Our most important message is one of supreme hope and confidence! We see that world events are spiraling toward precisely the conclusion the Bible foretold at the End of the Age. Therefore, we can take confidence in the reality that the Rapture of the Church is close, and getting closer by the day! If anyone should ever say to you that we are "negative," just remind them that the specific negativity we see in world news is necessary according to prophecy in order for conditions to be ripe for the appearance of Antichrist. We are getting closer every day to the Rapture!" Read it for yourself on this Christian-Right website, Cutting Edge Ministries, and on others like these: endtime.com, leftbehind.com, raptureready.com. Here's a summary of their Kingdom-of-Israel, End-Times, Rise-of-Antichrist, Battle-of-Armageddon, Second-Coming-of-Christ, Final-Judgment beliefs: CLICK HERE. Notice how carrying out that prophecy -- which they yearn for and pressure our White House and Congress to implement -- would end history and human life on earth ("end times"), and would prevent their own posterity from ever being born. Apocalypse Bush! Why Care for the Planet When the End Times are Almost Here? Vote Bush and Hop On the Salvation Train!
Fulfilling Christian-Zionist goals would obliterate America and our posterity, which puts the Christian Right strongly at odds with our Constitution. See why the words "our Posterity," in the Preamble of our Constitution, don't mean much to the Christian Right? See why good citizenship toward establishing justice, insuring national ability to cooperate as "Americans," providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity, have so little meaning for the Christian Right?
Spending tax dollars to deliberately kill one innocent person would be bad enough. Isn't America's $100-billion-a-year spending toward inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and fulfilling the Christian-Right goal of ending history -- which means the earthly death of everyone -- an evil far worse?
See why the Christian Right doesn't care about driving up our national debt, which places a huge financial burden on our posterity? If things work out right for them, there won't be a posterity.
In the early 1900s, Christian Zionism helped trigger the Middle East unrest we see today: Christians and Zion: British stirrings. This important history is kept hidden from the American public.
Israel's quest for a "Greater Israel," and for an oil pipeline from Mosel in northern Iraq down to Haifa in Israel, delights the Christian Zionists who control US Middle East policy. Christian Zionists backed Saddam's war on Iran, and they pushed for the sale of 500 American bunker-buster bombs for Israel to unleash on Iran. Israel, however, has to worry about the state-of-the-art Russian-made Iranian missiles that it has no defense against. Christian Zionists in America can hardly wait for this blowup to happen. Israel and Iran chart collision course, Countdown to Armageddon?.
October 2004. Prominent neo-conservatives, and their Christian Right allies, are calling for future US covert and military action in the Middle East against alleged "terror masters" in Tehran as part of a general "World War IV" against alleged Arab and Islamic extremism: Sidelined Neo-Cons Stoke Future Fires.
In 2001, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was formed to lead a "determined attack on need" (Faith-based Initiatives). However, in order for recipients to receive the help they need, they must acquire faith in a Christian-Right God that is less humane than the God of mainstream religions. A manager of a federally funded faith-based welfare organization explains: "In one of my conversations with God, one time I said, "God, you are so great. You are so powerful. Why can't you meet the need? Why are there hungry children? Why are there abused children? Why, Lord, as powerful as you are, can't you stop the pain?" And he spoke back to my heart and said, "Because I don't respond to need. I respond to faith." And unless we have the faith to ask him for help in our lives, he can't respond to what's wrong." (PBS NOW Sep-26-03). That un-Christian concept of helping others is a terrible distortion of the Good Samaritan parable which teaches that giving to or helping others is an unselfish act of human goodness with nothing asked for or expected in return: The evangelicals who like to giftwrap Islamophobia. Although Congress voted down the faith-based programs, the White House is enacting them by Executive Order. Six federal departments and more than 30 government agencies were instructed to give religious organizations access to billions of taxpayer dollars per year. The total pie is $67 billion per year. The first slice, offered by the White House on Sep-22-2003, is $28 billion per year. (PBS NOW Oct-10-2003, Faith-based groups encouraged to apply for federal money, Pulpit Bully, Grantseeker's Guide to Faith-Based Funding, FaithBasedCommunityInitiatives.org, Bush's Faith-Based Changes Scrutinized: He has made changes without Congress' OK.) These billions of our tax dollars a year, including for construction projects, are awarded primarily to organizations that proselytize a radical Christian-Right version of God. By not dispensing funds to Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Native Religion, et al. organizations -- and by strongly favoring Christian-Right organizations over mainstream-Christian organizations -- the White House is imposing a religious test. The funding also violates separation of church and state. Our mass media, the servant of the ENEMY WITHIN, cannot report any of this.
Mainstream theologians are alarmed by the Christian Right. Its radical fundamentalist Christian religion is taking control of all three branches of our federal government. The followers of the religion condone the inhumane acts of the Christian-Right executive/legislative/judicial leaders they support: intentionally bankrupting our treasury in order to make social programs impossible, pampering the rich and oppressing the needy, generating inequality and disadvantage for the poor, creating and carrying out policies that reduce the capability of less-fortunate citizens to function at basic human levels. Those acts are immoral, they insult God, they are contrary to Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), they violate the universal principles of human-to-human goodness taught throughout the Torah, Bible, and Koran. Theologians are alarmed by how the Christian Right dangerously threatens democracy in America. (PBS NOW Oct-24-2003.) Our mass media won't report this.
The religion of the Christian Right is becoming our de facto state religion: CLICK HERE. That religion acts against the universal moral teachings of the world's major religions (CLICK HERE), against the religion of our nation's founders (Christian-Right theology emerged in the late 1800s a century after America formed: 5-part series on Christian Zionism, Apocalypse Please), against our Constitution (which states that goodness -- in the form of justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, liberty -- comes from We the People, not from God: CLICK HERE), against the teaching of wisdom and humanity by our families and communities and schools (CLICK HERE; the Christian Right wants to replace those core ethics and critical-thinking skills with unquestioning faith and blind obedience), against the cultural heritage of humankind (CLICK HERE), and against the biological nature of our species (CLICK HERE). They want Israel to drive Palestinians off their land to create the biblical Kingdom of Israel that will trigger the "end times" leaving Jews and Muslims and all other non-believers "left behind" (CLICK HERE). We taxpayers contribute $100 billion a year -- just for the aid-to-Israel portion -- to help make that biblical prophecy happen, which works out to $4000 per year for each Christian-Zionist voter in America. That religion, our de facto state religion, is extremely pessimistic and inhumane. Our mass media should but won't warn the American public.
The Torah, Bible, Koran, traditional core human development, Native Cultures, cultural heritage of our species, and Constitution of the United States all have same universal moral common ground: be good to people, take care of the less fortunate, with no religious strings attached. They all teach selfless human kindness. The Christian Right, however, deviates from that ancient tradition of humanity. Our mass media will not point out that scary contrast.
At the end of 2002, our national debt was $6.4 trillion and climbing $1 billion a day. Declining federal revenue, caused by tax cuts for the rich and by our falling economy the tax cuts are supposed to cure, together with rising federal spending are fueling more federal borrowing. Our national-debt interest expense, $330 billion in FY 2002 (each taxpayer paid a $2500 share), is fast approaching our national-defense expense, $370 billion in FY 2002. Federal revenue from all sources in FY 2002 totalled $1.7 trillion. The ratio of interest expense to total revenue? 20%. It's like being so overextended that your credit-card interest payment eats up 20% of every paycheck. As our national debt accelerates, soon our interest expense will exceed our defense expense. Experts looking ahead see a $40 trillion debt: current debt + $7 trillion borrowing to cover added deficits + $25 trillion borrowing to cover Social Security and Medicare and veterans's health benefits and other trust-fund liabilities. Congress secretly withdrew from our trust funds to pay for tax cuts and loopholes and subsidies for corporations and the rich. Interest expense on that $40 trillion debt would exceed the entire $1.7 trillion revenue of FY 2002. The skyrocketing national debt, and its crushing interest-expense burden, spells economic and social disaster. Especially for our posterity: A child born in America today is $124,000 in debt the moment he draws his first breath. Although this social irresponsibility by the ENEMY WITHIN is driving America into ruin, our newspapers and radio and television will not say a word. (www.federalbudget.com, www.irs.gov, PBS NOW Sep-26-03.)
As of 9/11/2004, our national debt was $7.4 trillion and climbing $1.5 billion per day.
The ENEMY WITHIN kills, and manipulates our citizens to unwittingly help kill, more Americans every year than were killed by terrorists during 9/11 and at a higher average annual rate than Saddam killed Iraqis. A sampling:
After auto companies and the media persuaded us to switch from cars and minivans to the more-dangerous SUVs and pickups, we kill more fellow Americans every year than were killed during 9/11: CLICK HERE.
Washington fails to comply with the 1977 Clean Air Act standards for coal-fired power plants. The EPA estimates that 30,000 Americans die annually as the direct result: Under Clear Skies. By this one War-on-America act alone, the ENEMY WITHIN kills ten-times more of us every year than were killed by terrorists during 9/11.
Because the ENEMY WITHIN drives up the price of health insurance, like they drive up the price and not the underlying cost of higher education to grow the student-loan industry, 43 million Americans can't afford to buy health insurance which directly causes about 18,000 deaths per year: Institute of Medicine of The National Academies Jan-14-2004.
They also relaxed rules and enforcement for other forms of public safety -- including food safety, prescription-drug safety, workplace safety -- which directly results in more death of Americans every year. They systematically dismantle our public safeguards and thereby assault human life: Bush Administration Cuts More Than 200 Proposed Regulations for Protecting Public Safety, House Committee to Try to Nullify State Food Safety Laws, GOP looking to repeal food-labeling law, EPA's new stealth campaign to kill regulation of harmful air pollutants, Congress Told FDA Failed Public on Vioxx, When Advocates Become Regulators: Bush installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys, or spokespeople for the industries they oversee. Vioxx, just one of many dangerous drugs, killed 10,000 citizens a year for five years; the FDA, which knew about the deaths yet did not recall the drug, today works for the pharmaceutical industry and not for We the People anymore (PBS NOW Jan-7-2005).
Their depleted-uranium weapons cause radiation illness and premature death in Yugoslavians, Afghanis, Iraqis, our troops, and cause birth deformities in their newborn. Depleted uranium, a component of toxic nuclear waste, besides radioactive uranium contains radioactive plutonium and americium. Advantages of such weapons? In addition to the superior destructive power -- uranium is 67% heavier than lead and therefore packs 67% more wallop -- it is a profitable way to dispose of nuclear waste. See REFERENCES and paragraphs below.
In this way they kill more than 50,000 Americans a year. See how our Homeland Enemy, whose homicides are covered up by its media machine, is a worse evildoer than Saddam ever was?
To enable their corporate clients to escape responsibility and to prevent citizens from receiving justice, the White House and Congress create laws that make it difficult for victims and survivors to sue and collect for wrongful harm and death: Corporate America and political allies limit citizens' rights to sue, Look Who's Behind 'Tort Reform', Watch Out for Corporate Regulation ... of Citizens.
Radioactive dust, from depleted-uranium ammunition and bombs, is poisoning our troops as well as civilians in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq: Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops. Our troops, and their civilian victims, are suffering from lingering radiation illnesses and premature death. The victimized populations will suffer birth deformities for generations. Urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. More: CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE. Our mass media won't report any of this.
Uranium Medical Research Centre (UMRC) studies show that the US military may have used a new type of uranium bomb in Afghanistan: Discovery of a New Type of Uranium Weapon used in Afghanistan, Uranium Radiation Levels in Afghanistan not attributable to Depleted Uranium. Our mass media won't report this.
From 1990 to the present, during the two Iraq wars and during the sanctions and bombing in between, the USA killed about one-half million Iraqi civilians -- far more than Saddam Hussein did. Currently our ENEMY WITHIN kills more than 50,000 Americans a year within our borders (REFERENCES) -- far more than the rate Saddam killed Iraqis. News reports from within America reverse the relative levels of killing.
Public records show how the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq were planned well before 9/11: This war on terrorism is bogus. For Iraq, the planning began in 1992. Immediately after 9/11, the ENEMY WITHIN skillfully spun our nation's horror and grief into a "Remember 9/11," "War on Terror" advertising banner to promote and launch those earlier-planned wars that are not in the least about fighting terrorism. Saddam Hussein was their friend. Today a different tyrant more brutal than Saddam, the president of Uzbekistan, is their friend. They bred Islamic terrorism for use as a proxy military weapon in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Balkans in the 1990s, and funded it for seventeen years: CLICK HERE. Bin Laden was their friend. Al-Qaeda was the Pentagon's friend. The Taliban was their friend. In the 1980s they promoted and financially aided al-Qaeda and the Islamic terrorism that led to 9/11, and forced the Saudis to begin funding Islamic terrorism, all with strong support from the Christian Right: CLICK HERE. From 1986 to 1992 during Operation Cyclone, in Pakistan the CIA trained 100,000 Islamic fighters in how to carry out guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks including al-Qaeda and Taliban, and they trained leaders at Camp Perry near Washington DC in Williamsburg, Virginia. In the 1990s, those Pakistan terrorist-training camps in essence moved into Afghanistan and became al-Qaeda camps. The director of Pakistan's intelligence service (ISI) had $100,000 sent to a key 9/11 hijacker, confirmed by the FBI, and on the morning of 9/11 he was in Washington DC meeting with the two chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees: CLICK HERE. While airlines were grounded after 9/11, they gave permission for private Saudi jets to fly around America, pick up millionaire funders of terrorism, and fly them out of the country: CLICK HERE. In Afghanistan today, terrorism against civilians is rampant, worse than ever against women, and Afghanis have the highest levels of radioactive-weapon poisoning ever measured in a civilian population: CLICK HERE. In Iraq today, their radioactive-weapon debris poisons the population, and they terrorize civilians including by withholding restoration of water and power and by destroying acres of family farms with bulldozers and by trashing and looting homes and by gunning down civilians and by teaming up with Saddam Hussein's former secret police: CLICK HERE. They support Israel's state terrorism: CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE. They still operate a terrorist-training school, US Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning GA founded in 1946, for their Central and South American clients: CLICK HERE. Terrorists against Venezuela's democracy are being trained in Florida; our US ambassador to Venezuela claims that the training of those terrorists is "is not necessarily a crime": Is the US plotting to murder Venezuela's president?. Pakistan seems to be the core of Islamic terrorism today and the world's most dangerous terrorist nation because their Islamic militants want access to their nukes, and they proliferated nukes but in 2001 President Bush blocked investigation into it: CLICK HERE. They are soft on American White-Christian terrorists: CLICK HERE. To cover up their massive past-and-present involvement with terrorism, including their intent and wrongdoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, they wave their very effective "Remember 9/11," "War on Terror" advertising banner. Every time you see the "War on Terror" logo as you watch the news, every time you hear "War on Terror" from a public official or celebrity or news anchor, every time hear "War on Terror" in a movie or television drama, you witness the ENEMY WITHIN in skillful action.
They may wave their banner to drum up support to attack Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela. Stay tuned.
They are equally skillful at hiding behind our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Flag, family values, heartland values, images of young children, the Bible, even their Faith, to commit and cover up their wrongdoing and harm.
Their deceptions are engineered by their Madison-Avenue advertising and public-relations agencies. Nazi Germany admired and employed the same techniques to shape the public mind of the Third Reich. Also just like Nazi Germany, our mass media became an integral part of the propaganda machine of the New Right Wing. CLICK HERE.
Honesty within a nation is vital to its well-being and survival. Deception is used only as a weapon against an external enemy or against those you want to exploit and control, never against the people you care about.
To assure the well-being and survival of "America," our citizenry must be taught how to recognize propaganda, and how to see through propaganda. But our newspapers and radio and television won't teach these vital skills. The ENEMY WITHIN won't let our public schools teach it either.
Although an ordinary citizen doesn't have the First-Amendment right to yell "Fire!" in a packed theater due to the harm it would cause, our courts say the ENEMY WITHIN has the First-Amendment right to commit all the above wrongdoing and harm.
All the above wrongdoing and harm, being inflicted on America and the world, is currently permitted in our current "Amerikan" democracy that has no similarity to "American" democracy and isn't a real "democracy."
There is a way out.
Hear the roar of the falls ahead? Whether or not we go over the edge is up to us: "We, the People."
TOP CONTENTS
No longer taught: how to be a true "American."
On March-20-2003 one of our two daughters asked, "Dad, why are we bombing Iraq?"
Our first attempt at an answer, which consisted of a few of the Civics 101 lessons herein, was scary and depressing. A friend told her, "It needs a solution." It also lacked hope. So we kept at it.
Our quest for a full answer led us back to our daughter's elementary-school report card published by the Seattle Public Schools in 1970. Four of the learning goals listed are the core attributes you need to be a human being, the core human development you need to become a mature adult. These four root skills -- respect, responsibility, cooperation, critical thinking -- give you the capacity to understand and care about our Constitution. They give you the baseline wisdom and humanity you need to be a true "American." They are the foundation of good citizenship.
As well-educated people know, individuals deprived of this core human growth between their birth and early twenties lack the basic wisdom and humanity they need to be mature, fully-functioning adults.
For "American" democracy to survive and thrive, this core human development is needed in our population as a whole.
Up until the late 20th-century, families, society, and schools in America all worked together to plant, water, and grow the four seeds of adulthood. That social cooperation dates back to the dawn of our species. It was for the purpose of survival.
These Civics 101 lessons contain history, citizenship, and news not being taught or reported today. Although this information is as basic to our democracy as breathing is to living, some find it startling or controversial. Any true "American," being a mature adult, is not put off -- or set off -- by any of it.
A true "American" gasps, "I had no idea I was never taught what "American" democracy is or what our Constitution really means!" "I had no idea that so many important events are distorted in the news or never reported!"
A true "American" is enraged by how the right wing and mass media are violating America and the world.
A true "American" reacts, "The long range four-element plan makes sense! Somehow, We the People must unite and just do it!"
Our quest for a full answer also led us back to our nation's founders, and to the Constitution they produced.
Philadelphia, 1787, Constitutional Convention. The Framers wanted America to last forever. "We, the People . . . establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . ."
So they wove two vital protections into our Constitution, two bedrock principles of long-term national self-preservation: Separation of powers. Separation of church and state.
Why those two principles? Because of what history teaches. When wealth and power concentrate into the hands of a ruling few, when corporations take control, or when religion takes control, the government goes berserk and inflicts harm on its own nation and citizens. And often on other countries and their people. Causing the nation's justice, national ability of citizens to cooperate, security, general welfare, and liberty to suffer.
They knew about the ravages of the Crusades, Inquisition, Anglo-European monarchies, 18th-century Corporate England. They knew why those ravages happened: concentrated wealth and power went dangerously crazy. They didn't want that fate to befall America.
They wove those two principles into our Constitution in an attempt to prevent wealth and power from ever consolidating and hurting citizens like this: The Reverse Robin Hooding of America. To prevent Presidents, Congresses, and federal courts from ever serving God in a gruesome and expensive way like this: A peek into the soul of the Christian Right, $100 billion a year, $2 trillion so far, spent toward the Christian-Right goal of ending the world. To prevent America from terrifying the world with space weapons like this: 007's Spectre grows real, right under our noses.
Little did our founders know how that wisdom of community survival -- the dire need to keep wealth and power in careful check -- entered human culture at least tens of millennia earlier. Or how it was a crucial part the Native American culture surrounding them. (Perils, prevention, and cure of the ancient wealth-and-power disease.)
Perhaps our founders did foresee how brilliant minds would someday warn about the dire consequences of citizens dropping their guard and allowing wealth and power to consolidate and take over. Such as Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and George Orwell's "1984" and Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," great works that describe the un-American type of nation we are now sliding into.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, British fusion of church and state directly caused the Israel-Palestine unrest we see today: CLICK HERE. In America today, fusion of church and state is causing this expensive and dangerous nightmare: America's de facto Christian-Right state religion. Our forebears tens of millennia ago and the Framers of our Constitution, if alive today, would have this to say: "It's so very sad when people forget the basic lessons of the past."
Separation of powers, and separation of church and state, are the two bedrock principles of our Constitution. They are the foundation of "America."
If our schools today were allowed to infuse full-strength "American" democracy -- and if our news and entertainment media would reinforce it -- then every high-school senior, every college graduate, every naturalized citizen, every journalist and news anchor, every parent and teacher, every politician and CEO, every member of the clergy, and every other adult citizen including every President, Senator, Congressman, and federal judge would know and live and breathe these core "American" fundamentals and bare-basics of good citizenship. Here is what it means to be a true "American:"
Within America's wide diversity is a common ground that bonds all of us together, conservatives and liberals alike: the goals, principles, and rules that make America "America." Our Constitution.
What does it say?
"We, the People" govern America. "We, the People" are the government.
What do we do? We "establish Justice, . . . provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty."
For whom? For "ourselves and our Posterity."
This is our "American" duty, the common ground of all diverse citizens.
We do it through the Of-the-People representatives we elect to carry out the operation of our government Of the People, By the People, For the People.
We also do it during our daily lives as citizens. Such as by persuading our elected representatives to carry out their and our "American" duty -- persuading them directly, or indirectly through the process of dissent. Such as by participating in civic action to carry out the goals of our Constitution. Such as by living and breathing this duty day to day, by setting good examples as true "Americans" for young citizens to follow, by teaching these "American" bare-basics to our offspring. Such as by carrying out a tradition of our species that's at least 40,000 years old: instilling and demonstrating the core human skills of respect, responsibility, cooperation, and critical thinking into our young -- basic adult skills necessary to understand "America," and to have the natural desire and inner ability to protect and preserve "America."
In this way we govern ourselves, for the benefit of ourselves and our posterity.
Our Of-the-People representatives are the help we hire during democratic elections to operate our government Of the People, By the People, For the People. They carry out our foremost civic duty on our behalf. Even the President is our hired help. They, and the judges they appoint, are not royal or divine. They don't rule us. Or carry out the will of God on our behalf. They are not our shepherds. And we are not their flock. They don't serve the wealthy. They don't serve corporations. They don't serve religion. In 1776 we issued a Declaration of Independence, in 1775-1783 we fought a bloody Revolutionary War, and in 1787 we created our Constitution to get out from under all those kinds of oppression; we cooperated to accomplish "America," and we vowed to cooperate to defend and protect "America" to benefit ourselves and our posterity. We shepherd our Of-the-People representatives to listen to us, to obey us, to serve us. If and when our hired help misbehaves against the goals, principles, and rules of our Constitution, it is our patriotic duty to spank them with dissent until they do behave -- including the President -- and to replace them if they don't.
"We, the People" rule ourselves, for ourselves and our posterity. Our hired help don't rule us: we shepherd and discipline our hired help to do our bidding for the good of the whole. This is the spirit of "America."
What is "the government?" Our hired help -- the President, Congress, judiciary, agencies -- are not the government. They merely work for us. "We, the People" are "the government." During jury duty, "We, the People" have the final say about laws passed by our hired help (we can nullify unjust laws such as the Patriot Act): CLICK HERE.
Likewise, we allow corporations to exist in order to serve us. When corporations misbehave against the goals, principles, and rules of our Constitution -- and commit harm against the common good -- it is our patriotic duty to reform and regulate those corporations so they do behave. If they refuse, it is our patriotic duty to revoke their charters. Or socialize them (kept out of our news is how America has many public-owned-and-run financial and utility corporations that serve citizens extremely well). A major reason for our Declaration of Independence and Revolutionary War was to eliminate oppression and harm by corporations: CLICK HERE. Today's system of corporate law that grants excessive power to corporations is a flimsy legal house-of-cards that "We, the People" could blow down, because the 1886 Supreme Court decision that bestowed "corporate personhood" never really happened: CLICK HERE.
We don't let our leaders deceive us, including by operating in secrecy, because deception by leaders against citizens is an act of war against America itself. Our "Justice," "common defence," "general Welfare," and "Liberty" all require truth and openness from our leaders.
For the same reasons, deception by the mass media -- by distorting and hiding events -- is dangerous to America. We insist on a truthful mass media. An honest mass media is our voice of freedom.
Suppose corporations and the wealthy bribe our leaders with generous campaign contributions to pass laws that favor corporations and the wealthy, and suppose they're allowed to actually write those laws. Suppose religious groups collaborate with our leaders to pass religion-based federal laws (that define life as beginning at conception, give rights to the unborn, strike against homosexuals), and to spend huge amounts of treasury money on religious causes (such as on Christian Zionism, about $2 trillion so far), in exchange for tens of millions of Christian-fundamentalist votes at election time (Christian-Right voters make up about one-half of President Bush's political base: PBS NOW Feb-20-2004). Suppose our leaders pass discriminatory laws in order to receive hate-group votes (much longer sentences for possession of crack cocaine than for powdered cocaine, three-strikes laws for minor offenses by poor and minority citizens, unlimited secret incarceration of foreigners without just cause). Suppose our law-and-justice authorities routinely go soft on domestic White-Christian terrorists and crack down mainly on foreign non-white non-Christian suspects who are often innocent: CLICK HERE. Suppose corporations, the wealthy, radical religion, our President, and Congress all join together to force public education to fail: to "privatize" education into corporate hands, to make higher education more expensive and out of reach of the needy, to teach free-market-corporate values and fundamentalist-religion values instead of the real American values listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, to eliminate the teaching of core human values and critical thinking and real "American" democracy from our schools -- which would handicap our posterity into being unable to function as vigilant good citizens. (Yes, all of this is happening.) Our mass media is supposed to sound the alarms. Our mass media is supposed to warn us, inform us, and urge us to rise up and stop it.
About God and Country. America is a secular nation. As documented in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." This affirmation became supreme Law of the Land a decade after our Constitution was written (under Article 6, treaties are supreme Law of the Land). "We, the People" -- not a Christian God -- are the supreme power in America. Our Constitution is silent about God (except for "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven") and mentions religion twice: in Article 6 and Amendment 1. Article 6 stipulates, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States," therefore in conjunction with separation of church and state it is illegal for any elected or appointed federal/state/local official to use religion to qualify, or to allow religion to influence, any decision or action made during performance of public duty including during military service. Amendment 1 stipulates, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," therefore Congress cannot pass laws that give favor to religion (Executive Orders have done so as a loophole around Amendment 1, but they violate the intent of Amendment 1 as well as separation of church and state). Therefore any law or Constitutional Amendment that gives favor to religion, or to religious belief such as anti-abortion belief or anti-homosexual belief, violates our Constitution. Thus our courts have ruled that the use of "God" in pledges and oaths is purely secular and has nothing to do with religion, the reason why it is Constitutional (SO HELP ME GOD? What Has Happened to the Oath?). The words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "in God we trust" in mottos and on money -- entirely secular words in order to be legal our Constitution -- cheapen God and perhaps violate one of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." Our President, and all others in civilian and military service, do not take an oath to serve God and Country. The oath is to serve our Country, period. The Presidential oath, spelled out in our Constitution, contains no reference to God. George Washington added the phrase "So help me God" to the end of his oath, almost every president has added it since, and it was included in civilian and military oaths (but never added to the Presidential oath). The meaning of the phrase? Besides the literal meaning -- "If these weighty and difficult responsibilities prove too much for me to handle on my own, personally HELP me God" -- the words assert sincerity and commitment to serve America, nothing more (The Oath of Office, A Historical Guide to Moral Leadership). The President, Senators, Congressmen, judges, and all those in civilian and military service swear to uphold our Constitution -- including separation of church and state and its provisions in Article 6 and Amendment 1. They swear to serve our "Country," not "God and Country." For any public servant to even hint at a divine or legal connection between God and Country is a serious violation of our Constitution. Whenever any elected representative or judge or candidate espouses allegiance or service to "God and Country," our democracy watchdogs -- reporting through our mass media -- are supposed to quickly warn us of the danger. Especially when a President serves God in illegal and inhumane ways like these: A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
The human spirit embodied in our Constitution is far more Buddhist than Christian: Our foremost civic duty, Ancient origin of our Constitution.
Considering how the Christian Right helped to cultivate al-Qaeda and cause 9/11 (CLICK HERE), considering how the Christian Right pressures the White House and Congress to heavily spend and borrow to support Palestinian oppression and killing (CLICK HERE, HERE, HERE) that breeds animosity against America and likely more terrorism, it is extremely vital to keep God out of government, to keep church separate from state.
Thomas Jefferson: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." As a natural and eager part of our good citizenship, "We, the People" are vigilant to all threats to our special "American" democracy. "We, the People" agree that the vital principles of separation of powers and separation of church and state must be enforced and maintained at all costs. Whenever the White House and Congress and Judiciary have even the slightest appearance of uniting as one political force, whenever political candidates try to court religious voters, whenever the President and Congress try to select federal judges on the basis of religious belief, whenever anyone tries to combine "God" and "Country" into "God and Country," "We, the People" and our mass media vigilantly sound the danger alarm. History, and the Framers, teach us why: CLICK HERE. "We, the People" agree to prevent the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our federal government from combining into a unified political power. "We, the People" agree to prevent corporations, wealth, and religion from controlling members of our federal government -- in order to prevent executive/legislative/judicial federal powers from combining with wealth-corporate power and with fundamentalist-religion power and with mass-media power into a consolidated right-wing power that could slide our nation into fascism with a state religion. For example, as true "Americans" we certainly don't allow our President to request and our Congress to write corporate-friendly laws, wealth-friendly laws, fundamentalist-religion-friendly laws, hate-friendly laws, liberty-unfriendly laws, and then allow the President and Congress to select and appoint like-minded right-wing federal judges for the specific purpose of upholding those un-American laws. This eternal vigilance is Civics-101 good citizenship.
Our mass media has the social responsibility to be as vigilant, and to help us be vigilant: CLICK HERE.
Why must we be so vigilant to maintain separation of powers and separation of church and state, and to maintain representative government and democratic processes? It's a key part of our national-defense duty as ordinary citizens: "We, the People . . . provide for the common defence" including against all threats to our "American" democracy. We are obligated to defend America against an ENEMY WITHIN that could awake and grow and slide our nation into a fascistic Amerika that would harm our representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. To prevent us from having to fight for our freedom all over again.
Why all this? Because our Constitution instructs "We, the People" to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." That is, to be vigilant and protect and preserve "America" forever.
Being an American isn't about demanding rights. Or about having them delivered on a silver platter.
Being an American isn't about saying and doing, "This is a free country. I can do anything I want. You can't tell me what to do."
Being an American is about living and breathing real "American" values, about living and breathing real "American" democracy.
Being an American is about carrying out our most vital civic responsibility -- to maintain separation of powers, to maintain separation of church and state -- so that our rights and freedoms can happen.
Being an American is about carrying out the foremost civic duty spelled out in the first sentence of our Constitution.
Being an American is about doing our part -- especially leaders, educators, parents, members of the news and entertainment industries -- to make sure that our citizens have the core mental ability to be good citizens: mature enough to understand and care about our Constitution, mature enough to have the desire and willingness to contribute to the common well-being of our nation and citizens.
Being an American is about cooperating as a member of a socially-responsible "We, the People" team to carry out the wisdom, humanity, and supreme law in our Constitution.
Living, breathing, and preserving this "America" is our common ground.
This is what it means to be a true "American."
This is what "America," "patriotism," and our "Flag" are all about.
Those who don't stand on this common ground are not "American."
Those who act against this common ground are dangerous enemies of "America." Those who do so while waving our Flag are dangerous fake Americans.
Why don't our schools teach the core basics of "American" democracy anymore? Why don't the new federal-mandated tests measure core understanding of "America?"
Why does America teach and practice an illegal and dangerous form of democracy instead, "Amerikan" democracy: a blend of market-based "Madison-Avenue" democracy (where you toss legal principles, moral principles, and good sense out the window and adulate high poll numbers instead; where lawbreaking and wrongdoing, including endangering and harming yourself and others, are "right" and "good" if manipulative advertising and PR make those misdeeds and survival-incorrect behaviors acceptable and popular), "right-wing" democracy (that strips away separation of powers, separation of church and state, and slides our nation into fascism with a scary Christian-Right state religion), and "kakistocratic plutocracy" (government of, by, and for the least-principled few who hold the bulk of wealth and power)?
Because the ENEMY WITHIN is taking over America including public education.
Without question, oil is at the heart of the war on Iraq: Oil in Iraq: the heart of the Crisis, Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil.
Prior to 1972, foreign oil companies took most of Iraq's oil wealth. The US and UK took 75%: Iraq: the Struggle for Oil. In 1972, Iraq nationalized its oil resources in order to benefit from its own oil wealth. They kicked out American and British oil companies for not playing fair, but allowed oil companies from other countries to remain. Quickly, Iraq's oil earnings rose eight-fold (Smithsonian magazine May-2003).
During the 1970s oil crisis, America considered invading the Middle East to take over oil fields including Iraq's: Washington weighed military seizure of Arab oilfields in 1973.
When threats to US oil supplies arise, the United States will use whatever means are necessary to ensure the continued flow of oil. This principle, known as the Carter Doctrine, was first articulated by President Jimmy Carter in January 1980: The Carter Doctrine in perspective. The Carter Doctrine has remained part of US foreign policy ever since. It mushroomed into the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) (Sep-2000) which became the basis for The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Sep-2002). PNAC and NSS champion far-flung offense by our US military including with nuclear, chemical/biological, and space weapons whenever Washington DC deems necessary (also read Part 27). The 1980 Carter Doctrine and 2002 National Security Strategy give the go-ahead to use the US military as a mercenary force to control and procure the oil resources of other sovereign nations. Including the natural resources of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Columbia, and Venezuela.
The planning for the bombing, invasion, and occupation of Iraq began in 1992, soon after the first Iraq war in 1990-1991. The decade-long plan is well-documented: CLICK HERE.
During the illegal 1991-2003 bombing of Iraq by the US and UK -- illegal because the No Fly Zones imposed by the US and UK were not sanctioned by the United Nations -- the US purchased the bulk of Iraq's oil output through middlemen. In essence, Iraqi oil fueled the US and UK aircraft that bombed Iraq. Those third-party oil purchases rose sharply during the months preceding the March-20-2003 launch of Shock-and-Awe. Read: Bulk of Iraqi oil exports end up in United States, UN says (1999), US refiners buying overwhelming majority of Iraqi oil exports (2001), US Again Becomes Top Consumer of Iraqi Oil (2002), What did the oil companies know, and when did they know it? (2004).
In 1998, Congress gave the go-ahead to oust Saddam: Congress First Voted to Back Regime Change in Iraq in 1998, HR4655: Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Section 5 of the act, "DESIGNATION OF IRAQI DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION ORGANIZATION," led to the current US-puppet government in Iraq.
Long before he was elected, Bush intended to wage war on Iraq: Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, Let's Not Forget: Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President.
"[A]ccording to former Iraq administrator General Jay Garner, the first priority of the Bush administration was to roll out plans . . . for Iraq's "privatization":" Madrid: Victim of US 'blowback'. The White House wanted Garner to impose "privatization" of Iraq, "free market economic schemes" drawn up by the US as early as 2001: General Sacked by Bush Says He Wanted Early Elections. "Bush administration was making plans to privatize the Iraqi economy right after the 2000 election, two years before the invasion:" Bush Administration Planned Privatization of Iraq in 2001 - Well Before 2003 Invasion.
"In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised . . . and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11." The Lie Factory.
Soon after taking office in January 2001, President Bush ordered his staff to find an excuse to invade Iraq to take its oil. CBS News 60 Minutes on Jan-11-2004, in the center of the screen in full view of millions of American citizens, revealed a National Security Council document drafted in the early weeks of the Bush administration which showed plans for the post-invasion dispersal of Iraq's oil assets among the world's great powers starting with the major oil companies. Read: Bush, Oil & Iraq: Some Truth at Last, The Rummy/Wolfowitz War Letters, Former cabinet member: Bush pushed war with Iraq long before 9/11, Former Bush aide: US plotted Iraq invasion long before 9/11, Bush was demanding excuse to invade Iraq in January 2001, says ex-treasury secretary, Bush decided to remove Saddam 'on day one'.
"There's something almost obscene about a map that was studied by senior Bush administration officials and a select group of oil company executives meeting in secret in the spring of 2001. It doesn't show the kind of detail normally shown on maps - cities, towns, regions. Rather its detail is all about Iraq's oil." "As the documents show, prior to the U.S. invasion, foreign oil companies were nicely positioned for future involvement in Iraq, while the major U.S. oil companies, after years of U.S.-Iraqi hostilities, were largely out of the picture. Indeed, the U.S. majors would have been the big losers if U.N. sanctions against Iraq had simply been lifted. "The U.S. majors stand to lose if Saddam makes a deal with the U.N. (on lifting sanctions)," noted a report by Germany's Deutsche Bank in October 2002." ". . . those who took part in the Cheney task force - including senior oil company executives - were very interested in Iraq's oil and specifically in the danger of it falling into the hands of eager foreign oil companies, rather than into the rightful hands of eager U.S. oil companies." Read: Crude Dudes.
"The plan [Sept-2000 PNAC drawn up for Dick Cheney (vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother), and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff)] shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."" This war on terrorism is bogus.
In the months before 9/11, the CIA, FBI, and White House counter-terrorism staff found that Iraq posed no threat to the United States: CIA Intelligence Reports Seven Months Before 9/11: Iraq Posed No Threat To US, Containment Was Working, Bush ignored terror threat, claims ex-aide, Failures of a 'war president'.
The day after 9/11, the Secretary of Defense with full backing of the President wanted to bomb Iraq immediately, and the President wanted an intelligence report that linked Iraq and Saddam to 9/11 even though the CIA, FBI, and White House counter-terrorism team had no evidence to support such a link: Bush ignored terror threat, claims ex-aide, Failures of a 'war president'.
The day after 9/11, Bush's chief counter-terrorism advisor told the White House and Pentagon, "[I]nvading Iraq or bombing Iraq after we're attacked by somebody else, it's akin to, what if Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor instead of going to war with Japan said, "Let's invade Mexico."" CBS Sixty Minutes, March-21-2004: Leslie Stahl interviews Richard Clarke.
A few days after 9/11 -- nearly all the terrorists were from Saudi Arabia -- our President decided to bomb and invade Iraq. 9/11 was the "Pearl-Harbor" excuse President Bush and his team needed.
"Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. . . . [this detailed investigation] exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.": The Lie Factory. Also read Team Spirit. America's news media had a decade of opportunity to investigate and report all this. Instead, they went all out to assist the White House and Pentagon manipulate and deceive the American public.
In January-2002, the Department of Justice legal-weaseled around the Geneva Conventions to enable secret detention and harsh interrogation of prisoners abroad. In February-2002, President Bush wrote: "I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the department of justice that I have the authority to suspend Geneva [conventions] as between the US and Afghanistan." "I reserve the right to exercise this authority in this or future conflicts." Subsequent hardball interrogation including homosexual rape and torture resulting in death inflicted by US troops and US-paid contractors -- which are violations of the Geneva Conventions and Article 6 of our Constitution and the War Crimes Act by the commander-in-chief on down -- have become standard practice throughout the US global gulag. (References: Bush memos show stance on torture, PBS NOW May-21-2004, Jan-2002 Department of Justice memos, This is the New Gulag, Abuse, Torture, and Rape Reported at Unlisted US-run Prisons in Iraq, Torturing Children, Secret Film Shows Iraq Prisoners Sodomized, This is the New Gulag: Bush has Created a Global Network of Extra-legal and Secret US Prisons with Thousands of Inmates, Afghan gulag. Note: The memo showing intent to commit torture, and subsequent commission of torture, constitute clear proof of the President's violation of US Constitution Article 6 and US War Crimes Act.)
In February 2002, more than a year before the invasion, President Bush signed a formal order for a war on Iraq: Bush 'wanted war in 2002'.
"F--k Saddam, we're taking him out," explained President George W. Bush in March 2002, a year before he launched the war: First Stop, Iraq. Months later, Britain's Prime Minister literally had to drag our reluctant President to try for help and a blessing from the UN because our President did not intend to do so: CLICK HERE.
In October 2002, US gave date of war to Britain five months before invasion.
In early 2003 the US mounted a "dirty tricks" spying operation at the UN, which secretly bugged office and residence telephones of UN delegates and read their emails, in an effort to win UN approval for war on Iraq. The US extorted member nations of the UN -- threatening to cut their aid, to put up trade barriers to their products, to lock their companies out of future contracts in Iraq, to mount smear campaigns to persuade Americans not to buy their products -- if they didn't vote for the war on Iraq. It didn't work. CLICK HERE.
In February-2003, a month before the war, the White House issued "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Sustainable Growth" -- a report that was in the works from the first days of the Bush administration -- outlining plans for the privatization and looting of Iraq's state assets. It is a plan to sell off the oil fields, pipelines, and oil infrastructure of Iraq to private business, to take over the banking sector, and to turn what is left of Iraq into a rigged free-market asset-looting and profit-looting paradise for foreign corporations -- similar to how the World Bank, IMF, multinational corporations, and major powers harmed the Federation of Yugoslavia, Argentina, and many other countries since World War 2. It also contains plans to rewrite Iraq's laws including copyright laws, business-regulation laws, and tax codes. Read Privatising, Adventure Capitalism, The Great Iraq Heist: The Iraqis are paying for the war waged against them, Ambitions of Empire: The Bush Administration Economic Plan for Iraq (and Beyond), The Economic Colonization of Iraq: Illegal and Immoral, Privatizing Iraq, Gunpoint democracy in Iraq, NATO's looting of Yugoslavia.
On March-20-2003, the day the shock-and-awe bombing began, President Bush issued Executive Order 13290: "Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property" (Executive Order 13290 of March 20, 2003). It authorizes America to take Iraqi bank and national financial assets, including assets of the oil ministry, "in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States."
The first invasion mission of our troops? They took over and secured Iraq's oil facilities and oil ministry.
On May-9-2003, our State Department submitted plans to the United Nations for total USA/World Bank/IMF economic control of Iraq: US tables a transparent plan for plundering Iraqi oil.
On May-22-2003, after a campaign of mob-like extortion against other nations -- similar to the pre-war bullying (CLICK HERE) -- the UN caved in to America's demands and issued UN Resolution 1483 which gives total control of Iraq's affairs and assets, including oil, to America: UN Resolution 1483 (May-22-2003), UN legal fig leaf for illegal war: Paris, Berlin, Moscow sanction US occupation of Iraq, The UN vote on Iraq: the political issues.
Hours later on May-22-2003, President Bush issued Executive Order 13303: "Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest" (Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003). It makes America the administrator of the Iraqi Development Fund and future oil sales that will feed it. Executive Order 13303 grants total legal immunity to US corporations that touch Iraqi oil, and unilaterally declares that Iraqi oil is the unassailable province of US corporations.
On Aug-28-2003, President Bush issued Executive Order 13315: "Blocking Property of the Former Iraqi Regime, Its Senior Officials and Their Family Members, and Taking Certain Other Actions" (Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003). It makes sure that all additional government and Baath official property will be transferred into the Fund. Executive Order 13315 expands upon Executive Order 13303 and places all of Iraq's state assets under total control of America.
Executive Order 13290, UN Resolution 1483 extorted by the Bush administration from other nations, Executive Order 13303, and Executive Order 13315 altogether authorize total control and massive looting of Iraq's assets including the oil by America: CLICK HERE.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 1483, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is required to deposit all the proceeds of Iraqi oil exports into the Development Fund. The resolution was intended to ensure that Iraq's secretive US-led CPA does not engage in any dubious practices with Iraq's oil. Under international law, Iraq's US and British occupiers are supposed to use the oil money only to benefit the Iraqi people. However other than weekly and total Iraqi oil sales, the CPA provides no other public oil data or any reasons for weekly fluctuations of deposits into the fund. $7.27 billion in crude oil exported since war began.
However, right under the nose of UNR 1483, dubious practices seem well underway:
April 2004. Iraq's oil production and outflow and sales -- all controlled by the US -- are not being monitored, and production/outflow/price/sales data are lacking and incomplete: Watchdog agency faults lack of Iraqi oil metering, cites paucity of oil data, International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) for Iraq, Key oversight body in Iraq needs more time to review coalition spending, Watchdog group calls on UN to extend Iraqi oil oversight board mandate. In late-March/early-April, oil money flowed into the Development Fund for Iraq at approximately $250 million per week, from reported 2.5-million-barrels-a-day oil sales at $30 a barrel that should have earned about $500 million a week (Iraqi oil: Hanging in the balance). Something smells. To whom is much of Iraq's oil being diverted? Who is receiving Iraqi oil at cut-rate prices? Who is skimming the Development Fund for Iraq? The invaders/occupiers and their clients? American news won't report this.
May 2004. Iraqis complain about being denied access to oil revenues. US imposed secrecy on oil deals, exportation, and use of revenues. US is systematically milking Iraq of its oil in "daylight robbery." Saudi ambassador to UK/Ireland: "there were those in America who were thinking in those terms of acquiring the natural resources of Iraq for America." Iraqis want full access to oil revenues, Iraqis fail to regain control of oil revenue.
June 2004. We Have Always Spent Iraqi Money on That: Conquer and Plunder Follows "Shock and Awe" (no accounting, more theft by US), UN raps US over Iraqi oil revenues stolen, Billions of Revenue from Oil 'Missing'.
July 2004. Financial Controls in Iraq Are Criticized by Overseers, Audit: Poor control of Iraq oil money, How has the US been spending other people's billions? (of Iraq's oil revenues), Report highlights unchecked looting of Iraq's oil resources.
August 2004. 'Staggering Amount' of Cash Missing In Iraq.
October 2004. The world has lost Iraq's oil, Iraq audit can't find billions.
Additional reports of US looting of Iraq: REFERENCES.
Collateral damage? 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed including women and children mostly from air strikes and artillery including cluster-bombing. Many thousands more wounded and maimed. Future radiation sickness and birth deformities caused by the toxic radioactive dust spewed from more than 1000 tons of our depleted-uranium weapons. REFERENCES.
To pull off their Iraq venture, the White House and State Department and Defense Department needed to hide their decade-long premeditation to invade, dominate, and plunder. They needed to hide international law. They needed to hide American law. They needed to persuade Congress to break international law and American law. They needed to persuade our troops to break international law and American law. They needed to dirty the hands of the American public, to persuade us to wave the Flag in United-We-Stand proud support of breaking international law and American law. They needed a "Pearl Harbor," a 9/11. They needed skillful propaganda to constantly exploit 9/11 suffering and fear of terrorism. They needed to grossly exaggerate the danger of terrorism. They needed a way to crush dissent and pillory dissenters -- especially dissenting members of Congress and dissenting journalists -- as dangerous, as evil, as traitors. They needed a complicit news-and-entertainment media to constantly fill and refill that propaganda into our public mind. They got it all, and did it all, superbly.
A summary of the lawbreaking:
The UN Charter specifies that "the parties to any dispute . . . shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation." But President Bush refused all the many earnest offers for negotiated solutions, Dreamers and Idiots, and belligerently went to war.
The 2003 war on Iraq is a premeditated war of aggression. The well-documented premeditation dates back to 1992: CLICK HERE.
The UN Charter forbids countries to wage war except 1) in self-defense in response to armed attack, or 2) when authorized by the UN Security Council to preserve or restore international peace.
If a war fails to meet these two specific criteria, then it is an unlawful act of aggression defined and condemned by the Nuremberg Charter as "the supreme international crime."
The Nuremberg Charter states: "The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international law: a.Crimes against peace: i.Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; ii.Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)."
Furthermore under the Nuremberg Charter, complicity in a war crime is itself a war crime. The fact that a person was following the orders of a government does not absolve that person of responsibility for committing a war crime.
Article 6 of our US Constitution states: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;"
The UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and Nuremberg Charter are treaties signed by America. Therefore the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, and Nuremberg Charter are supreme Law of the Land.
By taking an oath to uphold our Constitution, the President and Congress and all military officers and troops therefore take an oath to never violate the UN Charter, Geneva Conventions, or Nuremberg Charter.
Therefore violating international law contained in those treaties, including commission of war crimes, violates our Constitution.
Under the War Crimes Act, committing a war crime is a federal felony.
Committing war without a Declaration of War by Congress violates Article 1 of our Constitution.
The war on Iraq is not self-defense in response to attack on America by Iraq, or in response to any threat of attack on America by Iraq, and it was not authorized by the UN Security Council. Therefore the war on Iraq is a war of aggression condemned by the Nuremberg Charter as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Since President Bush and his Iraq-war backers planned, prepared, initiated, and waged a war of aggression on Iraq (a.i) -- and since they participated in a common plan to accomplish their war of aggression on Iraq (a.ii) -- they are war criminals who committed the Nuremberg Charter's "the supreme international crime."
In addition, the White House without objection from Congress planned and conducted torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions: CLICK HERE.
Under international law, under our Constitution, and under US felony law, all American personnel taking part in the war on Iraq -- including our President, Pentagon officials, military officers, and rank-and-file troops -- are subject to trial and punishment for committing war crimes.
Under our Constitution, our President and many Senators and Congressmen are subject to trial and punishment for the high crimes of violating Articles 1 and 6 of our Constitution.
See why our leaders refuse to let America join the International Criminal Court dedicated to bringing war criminals to justice? See why our leaders and press routinely badmouth the ICC? See why our leaders strongarm nations not to join the ICC, and punish nations for joining the ICC? US bludgeons nations to reject war crimes court, US House wants aid cut to countries that hand Americans to war crime courts, Law unto themselves, US is Retreating From International Legal System, Study Finds, Congress Seeks to Curb International Court, US Threatens to Cut Aid over Court: Congress Wants Immunity Accords for Americans, Congress threatens to cut aid in fight over criminal court, Congress Pushes Penalties for Global Court Support, Aid Cuts Threatened by US Over War Crimes Tribunal, United States Undermines International Criminal Court.
See why our leaders go against the wishes of the American public, who in a national poll overwhelmingly favored our country to join and use the ICC? America and the World.
See why our leaders are withdrawing America from the international legal system? US is Retreating From International Legal System, Study Finds.
See why our leaders don't want basic understanding of our Constitution, such as basic understanding of Article 6, taught in America's schools anymore?
In October 2002, Congress voted to unlawfully transfer to the President the decision-making power of whether to launch a first-strike invasion of Iraq: The First Lie. Which the President then exercised. See how the President and Congress are subject to trial and punishment, under US law, for violating the war-powers provision in Article 1 of our Constitution?
Since 9/11, our White House, State Department, Pentagon, and news and entertainment industries have steadily worked together as a team to promote a variety of reasons to war on Iraq, CLICK HERE and HERE, until the reasons stuck in our public mind. They work hard to keep us perceiving their falsehoods as truth, their illusions as reality. That process is called "manufacturing consent." It manufactures "will of the people."
They employ the same advertising and public relations techniques that the Nazis admired and used to mold the public mind of the Third Reich: The Nazi / Corporate America / Madison Avenue connection. Also just like in Nazi Germany, our mass media became a key member of the propaganda machine.
First, they softened us up by selling us their "Citizen-Fear" and "Citizen-Compliance" products: Trading on fear, Lessons in how to lie about Iraq, The top post-9/11 products from the White House, The perils of Madison-Avenue democracy.
Then, the hard sell of their "War-on-Iraq" product began.
Their major justification for the war? Iraq was responsible for 9/11. They issued powerful emotional reminders to our troops: pocket photos of 9/11; "Remember 9/11" shoulder and helmet patches; decks of "Iraq's Most Wanted Playing Cards" picturing war criminals responsible for 9/11. But according to our Deputy Secretary of Defense on Aug-1-2003, Iraq played no part whatsoever in 9/11: Wolfowitz: Iraq was not involved In 9-11; no ties to al-Qaeda.
How effective is their taxpayer-funded national brainwashing campaign against our citizenry? Despite the fact that Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, had no connection with al-Qaeda, had no WMDs, had no long-range weapons to deliver them, and never posed any threat whatsoever to America, as of late 2003 most Americans believed that Iraq was behind 9/11 and remains a dangerous threat to America.
Other things they twist and hide:
In the UK, a respected member of Parliament explains how the war-on-terror excuse is utterly bogus: This war on terrorism is bogus.
All the war-on-Iraq excuses are bogus: To defend America after 9/11. To defend and protect our freedom, justice, liberty, democracy, citizen rights, the American Way, our American soil, and national security. To fight a war on terror. To fight evil. To defend America against further Iraqi terrorism. To get even because Saddam Hussein, and the terrorists he harbored and trained in Iraq, caused 9/11. To destroy WMDs (weapons of mass destruction): nukes and chemical/biological weapons. To destroy a breeding ground of world terrorism because Saddam and Osama worked together. To prevent Iraq from handing out WMDs to terrorists. To defend America against long-range weapons launched from Iraq: long-range missiles and radio-controlled drones, carrying WMDs, that could reach America. To take out an evildoer, to take out a brutal killer of his own citizens, to impose justice on a war criminal. To liberate a repressed people. To introduce democracy and liberty to Iraq. And so on. All bogus. SUMMARY.
A high-ranking military officer, who was part of the Pentagon's special unit created to manipulate intelligence data, reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth about Iraq: The new Pentagon papers.
A retired Air Force Colonel identifies 50 fake stories manufactured by the White House to market their war on Iraq: America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed, Part 1, Part 2.
2004 foreign news reports about America planting WMDs in Iraq: US Unloading WMDs in Iraq, New Reports on US Planting WMDs in Iraq.
From 1959 to 1990 Saddam Hussein was our friend, a key intelligence and foreign-policy asset, even while he was murdering his own people with chemical-weapon material and know-how that America provided. Our White House, State Department, Pentagon, and Congress condoned his mass killing of civilians. See the photo and video of our current Secretary of Defense shaking hands with Saddam: CLICK HERE. Notice how both are warmly smiling.
A primary function of their well-designed "Remember 9/11," "War on Terror" logo and banner? To make invisible how their Afghanistan and Iraq military actions were planned long before 9/11. And to cloak their massive past involvement -- and present involvement -- with international terrorism: CLICK HERE.
For example we are never told how the White House and Congress with Christian-Right support bred and funded Islamic terrorism for seventeen years, What good friends left behind, and stopped funding it three years after the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic terrorists in 1993. We are never told how they created the proxy US-military weapon of Islamic terrorism that went out of control and aimed and fired itself at America, CLICK HERE, which created the "Pearl Harbor" they needed to launch their war on Iraq.
Those who planned and promoted the war will hugely profit from the war: those in the White House, Pentagon, and their corporate clients.
As of April 2004, fourteen US military bases are under construction in Iraq: One year on: From liberation to jihad. The new US military bases, intelligence facilities, World Bank offices, and broadcasting centers in the Middle East -- including on Iraqi soil -- function like Crusader castles did in the Middle Ages. Would we put up with any foreign country doing that on our soil, using arrogant and brutal military force to steal our land and do as they please? America's Empire of Bases, Dismantle the Military Goliath, The US Global Empire, Twenty-first Century Gunboat Diplomacy.
The White House, Pentagon, and their corporate clients prefer a "stable totalitarian regime" in Iraq -- "The CIA believes that democracy would bring in anti-US powers, something which is not desired by Washington" -- not a real democracy: It's all about the Iraqi people. They want a US-puppet government in Iraq like Afghanistan's, not a genuine Iraq democracy: Bush & Democracy Hypocrisy, The Hypocrisy at Home, Democracy and robbery, Theater of Contradictions, May-2004: White House pushes ahead with plans for Iraqi puppet state. The interim Iraqi constitution written under US-supervision and signed by the US-chosen Iraqi Governing Council on March-8-2004 -- it states that all laws, regulations, orders, and directives issued by US authorities shall remain in force, including those that allow the US to continue to hold on to power long after 'sovereignty' and 'democracy' have been declared, including those that allow foreign corporations to keep taking Iraqi assets for years -- maintains total US control of Iraq under a US-puppet government: Fatal flaws in interim Iraqi constitution, Iraq Under the US Thumb, Bremer has destroyed my country, Iraq's illegitimate interim constitution. The average Iraqi, in April 2004, perceived the US-puppet CPA/IGC as a dictatorship like Saddam's: One year on: From liberation to jihad. By causing democracy in Iraq communities, Shiite cleric Sadr became an enemy of the US: Iraq: Sadr Attacks US with Democracy. The ENEMY WITHIN doesn't want democracy in Iraq as badly as they don't want democracy in Venezuela or in Haiti, where they are hard at work using our tax dollars to destroy genuine democracy. America has deposed at least 20 functioning democracies since World War 2, according to former CIA official John Stockwell, yet the American people know little if anything about this sordid history. The White House fears free elections in Iraq: Of course the White House fears free elections in Iraq. Because a truly democratic Iraq would take back control of their nation's oil, and force out the USA again like in 1972.
UN Resolution 1546 signed June-8-2004 -- which welcomes "end of occupation" on June-30-2004, and promises "full sovereignty" -- is a sham. The new interim government was appointed by the US and is not representative of Iraq. Iraqis: "The Americans are transferring power, but only to their own agents." Although the resolution provides for a review of the US military presence after a year and permits the new interim government to ask for US troops to leave, it is not likely to do so: all of the new ministers are supporters of the US invasion of Iraq and were carefully vetted by Washington, they are disliked by the majority of Iraqis, and they are completely dependent on the US military for their safety and survival. The interim government has no veto over US military operations; US forces will retain full powers to roam throughout Iraq searching homes and detaining prisoners at will. The real center of political power in Iraq is to be the US embassy, the largest in the world, with a staff of nearly 4,000. Which will rely on the bureaucratic apparatus established by a small army of US advisers since the invasion and supervised by a series of US-appointed monitoring bodies. Overall Iraq-government finances, including all oil revenues, will continue to be vetted by a US-appointed committee including US, World Bank, and IMF representatives. The interim government will have to honor all contracts signed by the US-led occupation authority. Thus US officials, backed by US-led troops, will continue to dominate every aspect of Iraqi life -- and from US-embassy headquarters the heist will continue: corporate clients will continue to plunder the assets of Iraq as well as America's treasury for occupation/security expenses and destroy-and-rebuild expenses -- after "full sovereignty" and "end of occupation" are declared. Read: UN press release, UNR 1546 (2004), UN Security Council rubberstamps Washington's continuing subjugation of Iraq, The street speaks - Iraq's UN-backed government is made up of CIA pawns, American fib factory, Washington installs new puppet regime in Baghdad, Full sovereignty for Iraq after 30 June?.
"The Bush Administration is using the military invasion and occupation of Iraq to advance a corporate globalization agenda that is illegal under international law, has not been chosen by the Iraqi people and may ultimately prove to be even more devastating than twelve years of economic sanctions, two U.S.-led wars and one occupation. The Administration's ultimate goal is to take the agenda to the entire region." "In direct conflict with its obligations under international law, the Bush Administration is fundamentally altering Iraq's economic laws to U.S. corporate advantage and is not adequately restoring and providing Iraqis with fundamental necessities such as water and electricity. Fortunately, clear alternatives exist to ensure that the U.S. adheres to its obligations and that Iraq's reconstruction is achieved." "The goal of the Bush Administration, as stated in the economic orders already enacted in Iraq is to, 'transition [Iraq] from a ... centrally planned economy to a market economy.'" "Transformation of an occupied country's fundamental laws is illegal under international law. It directly violates the international convention governing the behavior of occupying forces, the Hague regulations of 1907 (the companion to the 1949 Geneva conventions, both ratified by the United States), as well as the U.S. Army's own code of war as stated in the Army field manual 'The Law of Land Warfare.' Article 43 of the Hague Regulations requires that an occupying power 're-establish and insure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.' Resolution 1483 of the UN Security Council issued in May 2003, specifically instructs the occupying powers to follow the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Convention in Iraq. Indeed, in a leaked memo written on March 26, 2003, the British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned Tony Blair that 'the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorized by international law.'" The Economic Colonization of Iraq: Illegal and Immoral.
US "handover of power to Iraq," "sovereignty for Iraq," and "democracy in Iraq" are media fictions designed to make America feel good about itself, to believe all is well in Iraq, to divert public attention away from Iraq, as America's consolidated wealth and power continues to dominate and plunder Iraq under a Disney-like veil of deception. Who's Sovereign Now, The Handover: Restoration of Iraqi sovereignty - or Alice in Wonderland?, Another Whopper: Iraqi "Sovereignty", The Hand-Over That Wasn't: Illegal Orders give the US a Lock on Iraq's Economy, Iraqis have lived this lie before, Liberation will only come when the Americans leave, The struggle for sovereignty, So much for democracy: Iraqis plan for introduction of martial law, Iraqi regime prepares for martial law, The new Saddam, without a moustache, Iraq as the 51st state, The withdrawal of foreign troops is the only solution, Iraq's Leaders Resisting US Legal Demands, Washington renews war crimes immunity in "sovereign" Iraq, Washington installs new puppet regime in Baghdad.
The great reconstruction robbery -- that's robbing Iraqis and Americans: Advocates of War Now Profit From Iraq's Reconstruction, Bush Cronies Profit from War in Iraq While Our Soldiers Die Every Day, The multibillion robbery the US calls reconstruction, Iraq Funds Are Focus of 27 Criminal Inquiries, New Iraqi Gov't Left With Fraction of Rebuilding Funds, Iraq gets fraction of US aid billions, Iraq gets fraction of US aid billions ("US occupation authorities had spent nothing on healthcare or water and sanitation, two of the most urgent needs for Iraqis"), Iraq War 'Will Cost Each US Family $3,415', Iraq War Analysis Paints Grim Picture. More references.
In justifiable defense of their country Iraqis are killing US troops and collaborators, thwarting US economic takeover and control, and curtailing US looting. Oil pipelines are constantly being sabotaged, stopping flow. The hoped-for foreign investment in Iraq's economy, and subsequent privatizing of Iraq's national assets into the coffers of foreign companies, haven't materialized. What company is going to risk seeing its employees beheaded on television? The citizens of Iraq are winning. In Anger, Ordinary Iraqis Are Joining the Insurgency, The resistance campaign is Iraq's real war of liberation, Nationalism Drives Many Insurgents as They Fight US. More references.
History glaringly predicted Iraqi resistance. "They came as liberators but were met by fierce resistance outside Baghdad. Humiliating treatment of prisoners and heavy-handed action in Najaf and Fallujah further alienated the local population. A planned handover of power proved unworkable. Britain's 1917 occupation of Iraq holds uncanny parallels with today - and if we want to know what will happen there next, we need only turn to our history books..." Iraq, 1917.
September 2004: Quietly behind the scenes in Iraq, the National Foundation Congress plans the democratic future of Iraq. A secretariat of 25 representing all factions -- including Baathists, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians -- meets twice a week. They operate distant from the Allawi-led US-puppet government they don't trust and consider detrimental to Iraq. Iraq's National Foundation Congress is like America's Continental Congress during the American Revolution. The Iraqi leader seeking a peaceful path to liberation, Iraq's National Foundation Congress formed in December 2003, Nov-18-2004 statement by the Iraqi National Foundation Congress.
The war on Iraq is a violent, destructive, bloody, premeditated bank robbery (to top of Iraq-war SUMMARY).
The bank? The sovereign nation of Iraq that never harmed America, and posed no threat to America.
The loot? Oil, as well as most other Iraqi assets.
The armed robbers? The White House, Congress, and US Military.
The crimes? On top of the massive larceny -- and massive destruction of the nation's infrastructure(reconstructing the destruction is extremely profitable for the corporate clients, who also profited during the destruction) -- the assault, slaughter, maiming, and radioactive-poisoning of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens during a heist that was planned by America a decade earlier: SUMMARY of the carnage.
Number of Iraqi civilians killed during the heist? 100,000 as of November-2004. Collateral damage.
Future Iraqi casualties from being poisoning by radioactive depleted-uranium ammunition and bombs? Radiation illnesses, premature death, and birth deformities for generations: SUMMARY of uranium poisoning.
The clients? Corporate America. Under high-margin no-bid contracts, they will profit from American taxpayers and from Iraqi oil proceeds to rebuild the destruction caused by thirteen years of US bombing. They will profit from supplying and servicing the war and occupation; the longer and bloodier and more destructive the occupation, the more bullets shot and missiles fired and bombs dropped, the more $1500-a-day mercenaries paid 30-times better than our troops hired by corporate contractors (Washington fields mercenary army in Iraq, Warriors for Hire in Iraq, While US GI's get shot, corporations and mercenaries make $1000's per day, US$1000/day paid to South African mercenaries in Iraq, "Support Our Mercenaries"), the more corporate war services and reconstruction needed (Outsourcing the War, The Rising Corporate Military Monster), the greater the profiteering. They will also hugely profit from the acquisition of Iraqi assets including by selling off the looted oil for many years. SUMMARY of the plundering.
Their accomplices? Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, movies -- that is, the entire American mass media -- as well as the Christian Right: they help the bank robbers and their clients cover up their unforgivable bad with fictitious good so they can manufacture American-citizen consent for their crimes.
Also complicit are the millions of patriotic Americans who defend these crimes -- crimes that violate international law and our Constitution (CLICK HERE) -- and cheer the whole thing on: CLICK HERE.
Today our White House, Congress, US Military, Corporate America, Christian Right, and mass media set examples that teach our citizenry -- and our new generations -- an extremely warped and deviant sense of right and wrong that will drag down and harm America. Here's what they teach: It's OK for America to belligerently plunder a small and weak nation, and in the process arrogantly shoot up the place and gun down innocents without caring in the least. But would it be OK for other countries to do the same to America? It's "negative" for ordinary Iraqis to complain. But would it be "negative" for us to complain if foreign troops did the same to America? It's wrong for Iraqi citizens to fight back in self defense and kill our troops. But would it be wrong for American citizens to kill foreign troops in self defense who invaded and plundered us, who destroyed our highways, bridges, airports, power plants, water supplies, hospitals, churches, factories, and crops, who gunned down our ambulances and aid workers, who destroyed and looted our homes, who cluster-bombed and kicked through front doors and assaulted and shot our family members, who took away our livelihoods and futures? What ever happened to, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?"
Suppose trigger-happy foreign troops on American streets gunned down civilians like this: Massacre in Samarra: US lies and self-delusion. Wouldn't you want to dash home, grab your rifle and ammo, and fight back with vengeance?
Suppose foreign troops on American streets crushed a prominent Christian-fundamentalist preacher to death under their tank and drove off unconcerned, the same way our troops crushed a prominent Shiite cleric to death in Baghdad: More violence targeted against US occupiers of Iraq, Iraq through the American looking glass. Wouldn't our President and other Christian fundamentalists, and our press, howl for revenge?
More and more, our troops realize how they were lied to and suckered into being expendable mercenaries for corporate clients: US Soldiers to America: "Bring us home now; we're dying for oil and corporate greed!". Written by a veteran: Uncle Sam wants you . . . dead! Our military is not fighting for freedom, it's fighting for corporate profits.
Citing oil-motivated war, killing of civilians, and lies, a US soldier refuses to return to Iraq: US soldier refuses to return to Iraq, AWOL Soldier Pledges to Wage No More War.
The decade of planning for the war on Iraq, the exploitation of 9/11 to launch the war, the belligerent unilateral nature of the war, the immediate re-takeover of Iraq's oil -- and the campaign of manipulation and deception by the White House, Congress, Pentagon, defense industry, Corporate America, Hollywood, and news media to pull it all off -- altogether comprise just one symptom of America's "right-wing disease."
That political disease dates back to the 1800s, when America began to forget the primary reason why we issued our Declaration of Independence and fought our Revolutionary War and created America in the first place: to get out from under right-wing Corporate England.
Around 1980, a dangerous new strain of the right-wing disease flared up: a fusion of separate powers -- federal-executive/legislative/judicial power, wealth-corporate power, Christian-Right power, mass-media power -- into a single right-wing state power that's exploiting and hurting America and the world including "We, the People" and "our posterity." Like THIS. Virulently so after 9/11. They are the "new right wing," promoted and protected by the corporate mass media they own and control. They are the ENEMY WITHIN, the latest strain of the ancient wealth-and-power disease that dates back to the dawn of our species.
President Clinton lied that he didn't have sex with Monica Lewinski. Our mass media crucified him, and the right wing spent millions of our taxpayer dollars trying to impeach President Clinton for that lie.
President Bush lied that the war on Iraq isn't about oil at all, a vastly more serious lie, and perpetuated many other serious lies about Iraq. He also lied about American and international law, and about who he really serves. His string of lies misled America to commit and celebrate with pride a "war of aggression," a war crime so very immoral it is condemned by the Nuremberg Charter as "the supreme international crime." His string of lies pressured America to turn into a lawless and immoral rogue nation after 9/11: CLICK HERE. Why don't the mass media and right wing crucify and impeach President Bush for his far more immoral lies?
About political labels: Liberals. Conservatives. Left-wing. Right-wing. (See immediately below.)
About political myths: Liberal Media (CLICK HERE). Big-Government Tax-&-Spend Liberals (CLICK HERE). Democrats are Liberal, Republicans are Conservative (CLICK HERE).
The purpose of our nation -- and the foremost civic duty of all citizens and leaders -- are spelled out in the first sentence of our Constitution: "We, the People," the government of America and supreme power in America, "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." These are humanitarian goals, progressive goals, "liberal" goals. They are America's values common to all citizens. See how our Constitution, and our country's values, are "liberal?" See how the Law of our Land requires all of our citizens, and all of our leaders, to be just as "liberal?"
For the purpose of fostering understanding of this ebook, we define political labels in terms of how the actions of a political entity affect our country, citizens, and posterity.
True "liberals" seem rooted in the spirit of 1776 and in the ideals of our Constitution. They act with wisdom and humanity in a manner that fosters our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty, for ourselves and our posterity. True "liberals" strive to achieve these goals of our Constitution, to live and breathe these true "American" values.
True "conservatives" think and do the same. True "conservatives" and true "liberals" -- both being true "Americans" -- share the very same "American values" and foremost civic duty and common ground, and both want to protect and preserve our nation's two fundamental protections through vigilance and dissent including to keep "God" and "Country" completely separate. True "conservatives" and true "liberals" strive for representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty, for ourselves and our posterity.
Disagreements between true "conservatives" and true "liberals" are largely about how to carry out the wisdom and humanity in our Constitution. The true "conservative" way is to achieve it at lower cost, through sound fiscal policy and reduced government overhead, without sacrificing the infrastructure-and-social investment needed to keep America economically, morally, and defensively strong. This is starkly different from the "right-wing" results of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II: CLICK HERE. To help cover up its record of dangerous irresponsibility and reckless harm, the "right wing" hijacked the "conservative" label.
In America, capitalism coexists with socialism -- federal socialism such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), our Interstate Highway System, hydropower and navigation and flood-control on our nation's waterways; municipal socialism such as the giant electric utility that lights and powers Los Angeles, and Seattle City Light that replaced capitalist-supplied power with its public-supplied power and immediately cut electric rates by 95%. (Note: Public power is always a better deal. Historically, "whenever deregulation has been introduced, wholesale electricity prices have spiked at hundreds of times the cost of production:" Power Play: The Fight to Control the World's Electricity.)
The "left wing" seems united against capitalism. However, socially-responsible capitalism that serves the public interest is good capitalism, and many corporations do operate that way. When corporations operate wisely and responsibly, the public good and good profits do go hand in hand. As the founders of our nation well understood, corporations must be watched and regulated by "We, the People" to prevent them from harming America and the public good.
The "right wing" -- especially the new right wing, the ENEMY WITHIN that began flaring up around 1980 -- seems rooted in the culture and aspirations of the 18th-century Corporate-England Empire that we declared independence from and revolted against and overthrew: rule by royal and divine power, rule by corporate power and by the power of wealth, enforced by police-state and military power. The "right wing" acts unwisely and inhumanely in a manner that harms our representative government, democratic processes, justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. They act toward inequality and oppression, and against the well-being of ourselves and our posterity. They violate our Constitution's Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, and separation of church and state (their violations of our Bill of Rights are minor infractions in comparison) like this: CLICK HERE. The "right wing" is not "American."
Many liberals, and many in the left wing, are not "liberal." Some even act "right wing."
Although many conservatives are "liberal" (True Conservatives Would Back Kerry, Conversation with a Conservative, A Former Republican Senator: 'Frightened to Death' of Bush), most conservatives are "right wing."
As explained in this ebook, "Liberal Media" and "Tax-&-Spend Big-Government Liberals" are well-crafted myths designed to deceive the public:
In reality, our corporate mass media is the voice and protector of the "right wing." Everybody would know how extremely "right-wing" our media has become during the past quarter-century: CLICK HERE.
If we had "Liberal Media," most talk radio would be liberal. But the opposite is true. In October 2004, total weekly broadcast hours of local and national right-wing vs. liberal programs was 13.7 to 1: Talk Radio in America: Conservative vs. Progressive. Right-wing talk radio is almost 14-times bigger than liberal talk radio.
If our mass media was "liberal," Ralph Nader and Michael Moore would always receive kind and respectful treatment in the news, frequently so. Dissenters would be treated as celebrities.
Everybody would know how "liberal" America is. We would all know about the studies showing how the majority of Americans want abortion to be legal, support equal opportunity in the workplace for gays and lesbians, think labor unions are a good idea, agree with the goals of the Civil Rights movement, agree with the goals of the environmental movement, believe that health insurance should be provided equally to everyone, want fewer non-violent offenders sent to prison, want stronger gun-safety regulations, and how even rank-and-file NRA members want better gun safety for America. (Dude, Where's My Country by Michael Moore).
Everybody would know the names of mainstream-religion leaders, the names of Thomas-Jefferson-quality politicians, the names of pro-democracy personalities. The names of fundamentalist-religion preachers, rabid-right politicians, and hate-radio personalities would not be household words.
Everybody would know how pre-Revolution Americans gladly taxed themselves, to benefit themselves.
Everybody would fully understand the separation-of-church-and-state provision in Article 6 of our Constitution -- "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" -- and how in conjunction with separation of church and state it is illegal for a President, or for any elected or appointed federal/state/local official, to use religion to qualify, or to allow religion to influence, any decision or action made during performance of public duty including during military service. Everybody would know why "God and Country" is illegal and dangerous.
Everybody would know that "trickle-down" economics are actually "trickle-up," that "free market" is code for "rigged market," that "privatizing" public utilities and public services make the cost go up and the quality go down.
Everybody would know how "globalization," "free trade," "privatization" of a country's services and utilities, "World Bank and IMF assistance" -- as currently practiced -- is actually dishonest, un-democratic, destructive, predatory rigged-market capitalism. We would all understand how it's an extremely sophisticated form of international theft that leaves economic and social ruin. Citizens in one of the many victimized nations, Senegal, calls it "savage capitalism." Yugoslavia, Argentina, and Iraq are other victim nations.
Everybody would know how even NPR and PBS lean to the right today: Major 'Liberal' Outlets Clog Media Diets, Right Wing Now Hijacking PBS by Moving to Control Content, PBS Adds Insult to Injury, PBS Panders to Right With New Programming. Many years ago, PBS served the public interest with socially-responsible programming. Such as how the banking industry exploited African Americans and how hundreds of public servants in the federal executive, legislative, and judicial branches profited from that exploitation: CLICK HERE. And how at the dawn of the nuclear age America's electric-power-industry executives chose an old dirty-and-dangerous type of nuclear reactor instead of the new cleaner-and-safer type developed by the Atomic Energy Commission, how the AEC's test reactors were destroyed to cover up the mistake, how the press fueled irrational nuke paranoia that lasts to this day: CLICK HERE. PBS is not allowed to broadcast truth like this in the public interest anymore.
In reality, "right-wing" administrations such as Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II cause federal-government power, control over state/local government and citizens, and spending to increase. That is, "right-wing" administrations spend more federal money, and make federal government bigger, more than "liberal" administrations do.
Although the reported size of federal government drops, the actual size escalates. They privatize federal jobs: for every civil-servant job eliminated, they add at least ten-times as many contract positions (Contracts With America). Similarly with their privatization of the military (Privatizing War).
The total cost of running our federal government escalates, spending that citizens must pay for with taxes.
However, citizens don't experience the taxes right away because right-wing administrations prefer to pay by credit-card: deficit spending and heavy borrowing to pass the costs onto future generations. Who will get stuck with crippling tax bills for the massive principle payments and interest payments rung up on credit by today's right-wing spending sprees.
Other myths? Democrats are "liberal" and Republicans are "conservative." In reality -- as judged by how they violate our Constitution's Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state (all explained in this ebook) -- Democrats are more "right wing" than liberal and Republicans are more "right wing" than conservative.
Never jump to a conclusion from a political label or stereotype. Instead, judge by what individuals and groups actually do in regard to the goals, "American" values, principles, and rules in our Constitution.
The political label and tilt of this ebook author? "American," a blend of true "liberal" and true "conservative." We think most Americans are "American" deep down inside also.
In America today, who actually does the voting?
"We, the People" certainly don't.
The ENEMY WITHIN does.
We mistakenly think we get the truth and all the facts from our mass media: Today's deceptive, biased, manipulative media. We mistakenly think we get a full slate of political parties and candidates and issues to choose from: Today's wealth-&-power political monopoly. We mistakenly think we're able to vote wisely. We have absolutely no idea of how powerfully the mass media, marketing campaigns, disinformation campaigns, and right-wing-corrupted public education shape our public mind to think and vote in favor of the right wing, or to not go to the polls at all. Not to mention the many kinds of behind-the-scene right-wing campaigns that block voters from going the polls, and their post-election tampering that alters the vote behind our backs.
They illegally prevent democratic processes like these: They preventing the publishing and broadcasting of information our democracy needs. They deceive and manipulate the electorate. They preventing public discourse of critical democratic issues. Using their attack machine they prevent "pro-America" political parties from forming, they block "pro-America" candidates from reaching voters, they prevent dissent. They prevent democratic elections. They force us to practice "Madison-Avenue" democracy instead of "American" democracy.
The FCC -- by removing regulations that prevented mass-media information monopolies from forming, by removing public-service requirements from broadcasting, by removing the Fairness Doctrine which then led to the rise of right-wing hate broadcasting -- today allows a highly-biased highly-propagandized mass media that strongly favors the right wing to inform the public about political candidates and political issues. Perils of "Madison-Avenue" democracy, Part 20: Our block-the-truth, spin-the-truth mass media, Part 23: America's weapon of deception against "America", Part 29: Our media and FCC: in bed with the right wing, MORE 1, MORE 2. The political messages contained in radio/television programming and news throughout the year, to a very large extent, falsely glorify the right wing and falsely demonize the We-the-People wing. Corporate mass-media political messages are not honest: the information is incomplete, and the information is manipulative and deceptive. The only way for the We-the-People wing to educate the public is through paid advertising, an extremely tiny percentage of the year-round total of political messages. For all practical purposes, only pro-right and anti-We-the-People political messages shape the American public mind because NO OTHER KIND OF POLITICAL INFORMATION COMES FROM OUR MASS MEDIA. In this manner, a tiny handful of media owners -- using unwitting proxies: voters they brainwash with biased and incomplete and often false information from their corporate information monopolies, voters who are educated in corporate-influenced schools that prepared their minds for easy brainwashing by a corporate mass media -- elect a right-wing Presidency and a right-wing Congress, who then install a right-wing judiciary. The FCC made that happen, and in collaboration with media owners they plan to strangle our democracy even more brutally.
Clear Channel Communications, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and the Fox Broadcasting Company -- who together reach a huge portion of the American public -- are extremely right-wing in slant. The FCC lets them operate like a mega-giant right-wing state broadcaster.
Broadcasters typically refuse to air political ads for liberal candidates and liberal issues, and they jack up the rates during the crunch right before elections. Which means primarily only those well-connected to the ENEMY WITHIN can get elected and therefore mainly laws and policies favoring the ENEMY WITHIN can ever get enacted. PBS NOW Feb-6-2004.
Broadcasters typically won't feature liberal talk-radio hosts, even though liberal talk-radio hosts can draw huge audiences and make huge profits for the broadcasters: PBS NOW Feb-13-2004.
Broadcasters, more and more, are replacing honest political news-and-analysis with political advertising that makes them tons of money.
Broadcasters, and the press, don't tell the public how the presidential debates are not "debates." The Commission on Presidential Debates -- which sounds like a federal-government commission -- is a private corporation created by the Republican and Democratic parties to serve the Republican and Democratic parties. It is funded by corporations that give money to Republicans and Democrats to get elected and re-elected. Only Republican and Democratic candidates are allowed to participate in the 'Presidential Debates' -- candidates from all other political parties are locked out. A 'Presidential Debate' consists of responses to questions selected by or made known to the candidates beforehand. PBS NOW Sep-24-2004, How the GOP and Dems Secretly Control the Presidential Debates.
The right-wing attack machine forces US journalists to produce material that does not offend the right wing, otherwise they may lose their jobs: CLICK HERE.
The FBI has shut down independent-media sources on the web: Feds Seize Indymedia Servers, US seizes independent media sites.
"Liberal Media" is a myth crafted and promoted by the right wing to deceive the public into thinking the media is liberal: CLICK HERE and HERE.
The right wing skillfully limits our choices of political parties, political candidates, and political issues: CLICK HERE. In part by using the tool of "Madison-Avenue" democracy: CLICK HERE.
The right-wing ENEMY WITHIN uses the same Madison-Avenue advertising and public-relations techniques that the Nazis admired and utilized to shape the public mind of the Third Reich: CLICK HERE.
"We, the People" don't really do the voting anymore. We are merely proxies whose choices are skillfully limited to right-wing choices of different flavors, whose minds are expertly manipulated to vote the way ½-million big political-campaign donors and 25-million members of the Christian Right want us to vote.
Since "We, the People" are liberal in accordance with our liberal Constitution, the ENEMY WITHIN therefore removes large numbers of liberals from the voting process. They use several methods:
They purge poor and minority voters from registered-voter lists, and they misinform and intimidate poor and minority citizens to prevent them from voting: CLICK HERE. Secret voter purges are a national scandal: How America Doesn't Vote, Vanishing Votes, Voters are Being Threatened, Intimidated, and Lied To.
ChoicePoint Inc. -- who for the state of Florida fingered 94,000 residents, mainly poor and black, as felons ineligible to vote (it was found out later that fewer than 3,000 had a verifiable criminal record therefore nearly everyone on the list DID have the right to vote but were not allow to vote for president in Nov-2000 -- is the major supplier of DNA fingerprints to the executive branch of our federal government: Ground Zero as Profit Center.
ChoicePoint Inc. was hired by John Ashcroft's Justice Department to try to undermine Venezuela's August-2004 election: Venezuela Floridated.
They mount campaigns to keep Native Americans, African Americans, ex-felons with the right to vote, and other minority voters away from the polls: Battle of Little Big Vote, Groups Say GOP Moves to Stifle Vote, Minorities Bear Brunt of 'Subtler' Bias at US Polls, Report Says, GOP's Black Radio Scam-paign: GOP uses voter-suppression strategy to keep blacks away from the polls, Millions Blocked from Voting in US Election, Republican Bullies at the Voting Booth.
In the runup to the November 2004 elections, independent media reported how some election officials discarded thousands of voter registrations submitted by liberal pro-democracy workers.
They prevent the full counting of liberal votes. In Nov-2000, the Bush-Cheney team flew workers from Washington DC to Florida to bully election workers to stop counting votes, unethical actions later approved in federal court. In Dec-2000, the Supreme Court ordered Florida to stop counting votes. One million black votes didn't count in the 2000 presidential election; it's not too hard to get your vote lost -- if some politicians want it to be lost. Aug-2004, they're still doing it in Florida: Madame Butterfly Flies Off with Ballots. Florida Fixed Again? Absentee Ballots Go Absent
During the 2004 primary elections, independent media reported how some election officials discarded or 'lost' absentee ballots marked Democrat.
They keep us feeling hopeless to keep us away from the polls, to suppress the vote, because a big surge in voter turnout would drive the ENEMY WITHIN from power: CLICK HERE. For example, they won't give us hope by reporting the successful fights by other democracies against the harm caused by excessive power of corporations and the wealthy, such as in Venezuela and Bolivia.
Here's an insidious scheme to suppress the youth vote: Punkvoter.com to Urban Outfitters: Stop Trying to Suppress Youth Vote and Activism; Letter from Ministry's Al Jourgensen to Richard Hayne, President of Urban Outfitters.
In case we don't vote correctly, soon the ENEMY WITHIN will have a foolproof backup: nationwide privatized computer elections with legalized vote tampering.
In summary. The current practices of A) fostering a biased, deceptive, manipulative mass media that favors the right wing and discourages democratic hope among common citizens, B) purging poor and minority voters from registered-voter lists as well as destroying or 'losing' voter registrations from liberal citizens, C) conducting misinformation campaigns and intimidation campaigns against poor and minority citizens to prevent them from voting, D) corporate marketing campaigns designed to prevent liberals from going to the polls, E) preventing a full counting of votes through physical intimidation of election workers and by court rulings from right-wing federal judges, and F) computerized vote tampering and physical vote tampering by discarding liberal absentee ballots -- are all preventing democratic elections.
According to Article 1 and Article 2 of our Constitution, "We, the People" -- not anyone else -- are supposed to elect members of Congress (directly), and the President (indirectly through an electoral college). However in the above several ways, the ENEMY WITHIN does much of the voting instead. That wide-ranging corruption and rigging of all of our democratic processes violates Articles 1 and 2 of our Constitution.
As we describe in this ebook, the right wing is attacking every American goal stated in our Preamble as well as the bedrock principles of our Constitution. On several fronts, they are crippling the capacity of We the People to govern our nation. Our mass media -- which should be sounding Paul-Revere alarms to We the People -- instead spins it out, covers it up, and assists the right wing in harming our nation and the world.
The right wing -- and their mass-media ally -- have become the enemies of "America." Enemies far more dangerous than terrorism.
Particularly horrific is the right-wing assault on public education, that is, their heavy assault on the development and education of our nation's children. For example, schools are no longer allowed to instill the traditional mental skills of respect, responsibility, cooperation, and critical thinking needed for adult maturity, good citizenship, and living full lives. Through its political-pressure shaping of federal/state education mandates that severely reduce education quality and drive up education costs, and by attacking good teachers, the right wing forces our schools to produce "arrested development" in children -- ethical illiteracy and survival-incorrect soft thinking -- that prevents our young from maturing into fully-functioning adults (CLICK HERE). Removal of arts programs is also contributing to the decline of critical-thinking skills (CLICK HERE). Nearly as horrific, the right wing successfully forced the teaching of "American" democracy out of our schools including these core basics: CLICK HERE and HERE. Attack-machine heat on teachers to degrade education quality and shortchange students functions like THIS and THIS. The serious danger to America? Although today's students are sufficiently educated to become financially successful and perhaps famous, due to right-wing mandated and right-wing enforced arrested human development, many students lack the capacity to understand or care about our Constitution as adults. Some will become Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Court judges, generals, CEOs. Who will then do serious harm to our country, to our citizens, and to the world. All without remorse. See it already happening?
Standardized testing, the right-wing campaign that makes our President seem like the savior of education, is a dangerous smokescreen. The mandated tests are designed by, published by, and scored by corporations beholden to the right wing. It forces teachers to "teach the test" -- to teach what the new right wing wants our children to learn, not what parents and school districts want their children to learn, not what America and the world need our children to learn. It forces focus on mindless and superficial rote learning, not on deep learning. For example, do any of the standardized tests measure deep understanding of these vital core basics: ABCs of American Democracy? Standardized testing is also part of the right-wing plan to force public education to fail, so that education must be "privatized" and corporate run.
Perhaps their most important education goals? For every American to be clueless about what it means to be an "American." For every American to be unaware of the new right wing and its mass-media partner and the harm they are causing (CLICK HERE). For every American to be an easily manipulated dumbatron (Lessons in how to lie about Iraq).
By preventing schools from instilling the human development needed for deep understanding and good citizenship, by removing basic education about our nation, and by replacing traditional education with mandated right-wing education taught by corporations, they can easily manipulate Americans as they please. See it already happening?
Our corporate mass media is assisting. They headline, "Public schools don't meet federal goals." But they won't report the story that educators, parents, and communities want told: "Federal goals don't meet education needs," "Federal mandates prevent good education AND drive up costs."
One powerful media corporation that influences what appears in many newspapers, The Washington Post Company, has strong economic interest in for-profit education and mandated student testing: Kaplan, Inc, The Conflict of Interest Corrupting the Washington Post, Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post, Part I Part II.
The right wing's systematic destruction of our educational quality and public mind, assisted by our mass media, is a massive national tragedy. And a massive crime.
Our founders never foresaw a political power as sinister as the new right wing and its mass-media partner.
This core-basic democracy manual, an ebook in progress, ties it all together and proposes a solution, like our Declaration of Independence did. Which led to our first fight against the right wing: the American Revolution against Corporate England.
Our hope? Conservatives and liberals alike will unite and cooperate in a common cause to defend America against the ENEMY WITHIN. And to restore the "American" democracy they are fast taking away. Our Constitution requires "We, the People" to take this action to "provide for the common defence."
We wrote this for all concerned citizens. For ordinary citizens to easily participate in Element 1 by circulating this ebook, now a resource on CivicPowerUSA.org. For journalists, educators, citizen-action and public-interest groups, responsible leaders, mainstream clergy, and all other true "American" individuals and groups to participate in Elements 1-4 in a much bigger way.
Freely link to CivicPowerUSA.org and its documents, especially from pro-democracy and public-interest websites. Freely use the content in whole or in part -- and freely use the ideas and themes -- in any way possible to help teach and restore democracy to our nation.
Freely use the content to help create a public document much better than this one: a Re-Declaration of Independence. Bring it to the entire American public and call for a New American Revolution.
We thank independent journalists -- especially on the web and on PBS, especially foreign sources -- for providing truth that America's mass media hides and twists. We thank bright human spirits, great writers, their publishers and broadcasters -- of today and the past -- for opening our eyes and expanding our minds. We thank America's public-education system that existed a half-century ago -- parents and family, news and entertainment, political and business leaders, public figures, school boards, school administrators, classroom teachers, university departments of education, local/state/national government, all working together to produce at the very least respectful, responsible, cooperative, sharp-minded youth with core civic knowledge -- for teaching us good citizenship and how to think.
TOP CONTENTS
Our choice: accept the disease or go for the cure.
America's most dangerous threat? The ENEMY WITHIN: the new right wing and its voice and protector, the corporate mass media it owns and controls.
Think of the ENEMY WITHIN as a political disease infecting America, a very ancient disease that re-awoke as we slept.
Besides violating several major parts of our Constitution -- Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state -- and hurting most of us in several different ways including by knowingly poisoning our troops with depleted-uranium radioactivity (Death By Slow Burn - How America Nukes Its Own Troops), the right wing is turning America into a dumb, mean-spirited nation the rest of the world hates. In part for cluster-bombing children during the robbery of a weak nation's oil (Cluster bombs liberate Iraqi children), and proudly waving our Flag about it.
The right wing has seriously damaged America. So much so our country isn't "America" anymore. Worry not. We can get it back.
Our Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War were against the 18th-century right wing. The tea tax paid to England helped to subsidize the East India Company, a monopoly owned by the British royalty and wealthy. The East India Company received tax exemptions and tax refunds from England so that it could engage in cutthroat rigged global trade against the Colonies. Which triggered the Boston Tea Party. (The Boston Tea Party). But the right wing created new versions of the Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War, and erased the originals from our history books. The right wing also erased "American" democracy from our schools, culture, and government. As well as the meaning of our "Flag" and the meaning of "patriotism."
We the People need to fight a New American Revolution. Against the right wing. Again.
It would be easier this time. We're the overwhelming majority (the hard-core right wing is tiny), the Constitution is on our side far more than you may realize (they are seriously violating it), and the truth is on our side (they have to constantly lie).
Who runs the right wing? Those who want to own the world: the few who control the big corporations. And those who want to end the world: the few who preach extremist religion that yearns for Armageddon (Summary of Christian Zionism). They form a dangerous corporate/religious coalition. The founders of our nation would have feared them.
Who is the majority? We the People are. How large is the right wing's wealth-corporate core? About 0.15% of our population: CLICK HERE. We outnumber them a thousand-to-one. How large is the right wing's Christian-Right core? About 10% of our population: 5-part series on Christian Zionism, end of Part 2 (possibly as high as 15%-18%: Apocalypse Please). We outnumber them by ten-to-one.
Today, only about 33% of those eligible to vote bother to vote (PBS NOW Feb-22-2002.). About 17% of all eligible voters vote Republican, and most are being hurt by their right wing. Democrats, who share the vote 50-50 with Republicans, are pretty much right-wing also and are hurting citizens and hurting America too.
Suppose We the People formed a new political party. A new party that would appeal to conservatives and liberals alike, and heavily draw votes away from Republicans and Democrats. A new party that would provide hope, and fire up many more citizens to vote -- the Republican Party's worst nightmare because new voters tend not to vote Republican. The new party would live and breathe the goals of our Constitution: the justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty of We the People and our posterity. See how the current 17% Republican, 17% Democrat percentages of all eligible voters would nosedive? See the possibility of having an "America" again?
The new right wing has a plan, and they are proceeding full bore:
Control and steal from America and its citizens. They are stealing our money from our treasury, at least a half-trillion dollars a year, and from our future generations. Our money is just one of many items on their list. They are stealing our justice, civic unity and cooperation toward the common good, national security, the general welfare, and liberty. They are stealing the capacity of We the People to govern our nation, such as by preventing representative government, by preventing democratic processes, by removing the core essentials of American history and American democracy from our schools and public mind, by replacing our "American" democracy with "Amerikan" democracy. That is, they are removing "America" from America. How? In legal terms, by violating our US Constitution -- Preamble, Article 1, Article 2, Article 6, separation of powers, separation of church and state -- high crimes worse than treason the founders of our nation would have dealt with severely.
Control and steal financial resources and natural resources from the rest of the world by using strong-arm diplomacy and covert operations, by using globalized predatory rigged capitalism with help from the World Bank and IMF and WTO, and by using our US military including future space weapons when more muscle is needed -- without regard for collateral damage to the victimized nations or their citizens, without regard for the blowback against America, without regard for the death and disability of thousands of our troops they duped into being their mercenaries. Such as with Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Iraq, and their many other wars. Such as their d