Uprising in Ecuador: Gutiérrez, Gone! All of them, Out!
21 Apr 2005 21:52 GMTLucio Gutiérrez, who was elected President of Ecuador with the support of the social movements and the indigenous CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador) but subsequently turned his back on them, has been forced out by the Ecuadorian people after a week of massive protests. Gutiérrez abandoned campaign promises of broad social reform in order to kiss up to the IMF, back 'free trade' agreements with the US, allow increased US military presence, and generally sell out the Ecuadorian people to neoliberalism.
Street mobilizations began last week in the capital, Quito, then spread to Guayaquil and other cities across the country. Gutierrez tried to institute a State of Emergency, which the people of Quito ignored in defiance. A huge march on the presidential palace where Gutierrez was holed up was met by police repression [ story | photos ].
While the focus of media attention has been on the capital city of Quito, the southern city of Cuenca has been in open rebellion against its former president for the past week. The discontent had been simmering for some time but in the weeks and days before the ouster of Gutierrez it reached a boiling point. Daily, students manned street blockades and fought pitched battles with police over control of the streets while across town the main park overflowed every night with a diverse array of people who had come to protest the president and government. [ read the full story of Cuenca ]
Many in Ecuador, including the CONAIE, see the removal of Gutiérrez as the first step, not the end goal; they are urging the mobilizations to continue until the entire corrupt political class, neoliberalism, the Free Trade Agreement, Plan Colombia, and multinationals are all gone. They have taken up the cry of the Argentinean social movements, 'Que se vayan todos!' (They all must go!).
background in english: ZNet | from indybay.org: 1 | 2 | 3
Full coverage at Indymedia Ecuador
photos: Final march on the palace | March on 19th | Police repression | from Flickr | Audio (Spanish): Collage by RADIALISTAS | live radio streams: Radio La Luna, Quito | Púlsar Information Agency | radio.indymedia.org
related: IMC Ecuador | Radio La Luna | CONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador)
Estrategias anticapitalistas
Eduardo Campillo 22.Apr.2005 16:45
Enhorabuena a todos los que luchan por el cambio. Espero que no sólo echéis a Gutierrez y compañía de todo poder político sino que sean juzgados y se realicen cambios en el sistema democrático ecuatoriano. Se me ocurren algunos pero espero que a vosotros se os ocurran más y mejores.
-Convocar Asambleas Ciudadanas y convertirlas en Constituyentes llegado el momento.
-Disolver los antiguos partidos politicos.
-Gobernar desde una Asamblea de Ciudadanos que representen a cada uno de los sectores de trabajadores del país, elegidos por los votos de sus compañeros.
-Dirigir las fuerzas de seguridad desde el Gobierno de la Asamblea Ciudadana.
-Juzgar a los corruptos.
-Llevar a cabo una "economía de solidaridad", suministrando materiales y servicios a los débiles e intercambiándolos entre empresas.
-Expropiar empresas y convertirlas en cooperativas de trabajadores.
¡Viva Ecuador!
Anti Americanism Deep and growing everywhere
Mundo de Munz 23.Apr.2005 00:07
A Globalized Culture of Ignoration:
http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=12606
sainthoodromero@yahoo.com
Full article is 3394 words, easily cut to 2980 words, contact: sainthoodromero@!yahoo.com
By Enrique Munoz
A great benefit to the US with the end of the Cold War (WWIII) was the decline in anti-US propaganda and documentaries (mostly Soviet). Apparently the now terminal condition of mass absentia and the erosion of historical memory enable the US to lie, torture, incarcerate and ignore or break international law at will or whim,: A Power unto itself.
The first new Pope of the XXIst Century arrives at the most evil of times. With morality beyond mere human debate the only champions visible in the American backyard are Hugo Chavez with his Christian Socialism and the Mayor of Mexico City who may become President while in Jail. Who would (will?) Jesus vote for Pope?
The US of Amnesia and The Tide of Anti-Americanism
(Go Away Gringo !) --
"Erosion and “Reversal of Historical Memory: The re-emergence of colonial wars and colonial rule in the 21st century and the growth of national liberation movements and anti-colonial resistance reflect the erosion of historical memory in the imperial countries, among Western intellectuals as well as sectors of the masses (especially in the US) and the elites.
The “erosion of historical memory” was evident in Europe between the two world wars, as Germany re-armed and prepared to conquer and colonize Europe. Germany’s pacifist, and even revolutionary, anti-military consciousness immediately following World War I lasted at most 15 years, after which the Nazis were able to launch Germany into a new frenzy of re-armament and territorial conquest. In the post-WWII period, US mass anti-war sentiment reflecting the horrors of death and disability have been of short duration: A brief 5-year period after World War II (1945-49) before launching war on the Korean peninsula (1950-53); followed by mass “anti-war” sentiment from 1953-1963; the US invasion of Indo-China and the 12-year war (1963-1975) led to the re-emergence of very extensive mass anti-war sentiment which continued for 15 years till the First Gulf War. During the 1990’s, US anti-war sentiment temporarily re-emerged just prior to the Second Gulf War (January-February 2003) and then virtually disappeared, at least from the streets. “Mass historical memory”, history teaches us, can be a temporarily powerful sentiment in imposing restraint on the militarist side of imperialist expansion, but history also demonstrates that “memory” can be eroded and overcome over time (shorter or longer) by determined imperial decision-makers and propagandists.”
-- James Petras on Imperialist War :
The Dripping Fat of the US Brain Sears the World’s Sensibility
George Bush can venture abroad only with an army of guards, spies and staff. He essentially takes over part of a country wherever he goes. Since the days of America's Founding Fathers, America has regarded "the foreign world" with suspicion. Never more than now, it seems. Under George Bush, anti-Americanism has reached new heights. (Pew Research Centre says new depths).
Anti-Americanism spans the globe, it mutates according to local conditions, and it is seldom straightforward. The iconography of America is a shorthand for many global fears: the Bush administration, a Republican-dominated Congress, Hollywood Cultural Imperialism, a spendthrift nation of borrowers living off their unfair advantages in global banking and investment, a place where millions of foreign students are corrupted or disappear, the Shinning City land of economic opportunity, a big regional power, the big world power, irrationally deadly drug war policies, the memory of something once done by the United State, a set of political values that have enshrined rule by the rich in the name of a false freedom, a manipulated democracy reduced to WTO Tribunals, and economic neo-liberalism, and so on.
Some of these fears and anti-Americanism may wax or wane in importance according to time, circumstance, propaganda or wishful thinking. Contradictory views of America exist as many want to believe in the US even as they know its intrusive ways, how it uses people and countries and often supports death squads and rightwing coups. Down with America! rings from the streets of most of the world and from the movements for sovereignty from billions of poor people. And let us not forget obesity epidemics, that dripping fat and the images of a pudgy white smugness. One can spot it in Cheney's snarly smile and Condi's puffed cheeks. The divine right of American superiority resounds from its smart bombs and the billions piling up in Wal-mart, Exxon and Citi Bank.
Bush Creates Enemies Out of French Fries and an Axis of Evil
France is a country that rails against American hyper-puissance (hyper-powerdom). Most French silently or not cheer when rustic or celebrant thugs lay waste to any McDonald's and many believe the attacks on the twin towers were "an appalling deception" to justify American adventurism. France is also home to Gaullism, a form of right wing nationalism saturated with anti-Americanism. From France to Australia people go to American movies, take holidays in the United States, eat in McDonald's (rustics permitting) and shop in places that look much like American giant stores. Still in most polling more than 50 percent of the people in most countries perceive American influence as harmful. In several it is over 70 percent.(BBC World Service January2005)
Iran has had the largest radically anti-American fervor continuing strong for the longest time. Protests and sermons denounce the Great Satan and all his doings (Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-America from its roots to its technology and blasphemy). Anti-Americanism is central to the ideology of Iran's ruling Shia clerics.
The affection for America among the less-pious Iranians and among the young is a form of anti-regime defiance that might evaporate quickly if their country were attacked.
The US has a long history of deceptions burned into Persian memory: the Shah (with help from the UK Little Satan), the US Hostage Crisis, the asset seizures, blockades, shot down airliners, the oil platforms that the US attacked in the Iran-Iraq war and the murky US support for Saddam Hussein. Now Iran must cope with the complete chaos introduced into the region by the brutal invasion and a perpetual occupation right next door (Both doors: Iraq and Afghanistan, and Pakistan). America's surreal campaign to spread democracy across-the region is itself regarded as another imperial and illegal act of interference.
Infinite Fuel for the Fires of Anti-Americanism
Palestine and the feeling among Muslims almost everywhere that the United States is pro-Israeli Zionists, anti-Palestine and indeed anti-Islam, a feeling that has intensified, according to the polls, since September 11th 2001. Anti-Americanism is nowhere more acute than in the Muslim world. In Indonesia, the biggest Muslim country, anti-Americanism is weak but widespread. People are happy to curse the United States-a current rumor suggests it could have given warning of the December tsunami but chose not to. Insurgent attacks in Indonesia have been directed at Americans and their allies and so have not provoked a strong domestic revulsion.
In all Arab countries near majorities of people are clearly ready to take up arms in pursuit of al-Qaeda's jihad. Arab anti-Americanism is a younger phenomenon than its European counterpart. It shares with much of Europe the distaste for the banality and ultimate wickedness of American materialism. Except the Arabs (less than Europe) are under direct threat from the US and their US-backed Arab leaders. The newest wave of anti-Americanism became widespread in the Middle East with America's open support for Israel after the 1967 six-day war. Until then the US allies seemed the greater evil: for example the British-French-Israeli attempts to overthrow the Nasser regime in Egypt. But since 1967 America has been considered by Arabs to be incomprehensibly pro-Israeli: the source of much of the national budget for the Israeli government and its massive war machine. And the source of many many US vetoes in the UN that would have restrained and condemned Israeli occupations.
In plenty of other places anti-Americanism flourishes. In Greece it was America's backing for the rule of the colonels (1967-74) and the bludgeoning of Serbia. In Spain, it was the support of the Franco regime, first through indifference (1936 –39) and then with American military bases (1950s). Some say Spain's dislike for America pre-dates Spain's modernization. When American soldiers arrived at Torrejon and other bases in the 1950s, the Spanish left saw them as collaborators, not liberators. Most of the left in Europe is anti-American, for familiar reasons: America is materialist, imperialist, interventionist, etc. And right-wingers, too, are sometimes hostile toward the Cowboy Gringos.
Latin Americans may think they have better reasons to harbor a grudge. Mexico, for instance, lost about half its territory to the United States in the war of 1846-48. In the January BBC survey, only 11% of Mexicans had a mainly favorable view of the influence of their northern neighbor, less. even than the proportion of Argentines, who are in other respects more hostile. Cubans have resented the United States ever since 1898, when their hard and long-fought war of independence against Spain was in effect stolen from them by the Yanquis prosecuting the Spanish-American war. The United States then made some 30 military interventions in and around the Caribbean in the next 30 years, many of them under Smedley Butler, a marine corps general, who summed up his career thus:
“I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico ... safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China, I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.”
For most of the 19th century, Latin Americans-including their great liberator, Simon Bolivar-had drawn inspiration from the American colonists' anti-British revolt. But the war of 1898 and the interventions that followed turned most of them against the great power next door. The hostility remains, in varying degrees, though 20 years of US arranged wars have whipped many of the people into submission with the usual elite-controlled rigged democratization, emigration and trade. (Especially in Central America)
Other nations that have experienced American meddling also continue to resent it. For evidence, just go to Congo, Somalia, Egypt, either Korea or the Philippines (an American colony for half a century). Even Canada, which has never suffered hyphenated Americans (which may help it avoid anything worse from its neighbor than ignoration and disdain) is perpetually critical of the United States.
Asians seem to be more pragmatic and business like with the US. Vietnam which lost about 5 million of its people to America's military seems to harbor little hostility towards its old foe. It helps that Vietnam has not had any subsequent reason to fear direct violence from the US. And they have no US military bases. In the Philippines, America was considered far too friendly to the kleptocratic and ruthless Ferdinand Marcos. In every country with American bases, any outrage by American servicemen-the rape of a Japanese child, the running over of two South Korean girls, the severing of an Italian cable-car's wires-tends to strengthen latent hostility.
The vigor of anti-American feeling varies even among peoples who seem to have no good reason for less anti-Americanism. The Japanese defeated in war, Tokyo fire-bombed, Hiroshima and Nagasaki irradiated with atomic bombs - seem far more pro-American than South Koreans. The mere fact of being a great power ready to intervene (in, say, Kosovo) is enough to make enemies. And the US no longer knows how to buy or bully its way out this wellspring of hate. (Many hates)
Why, Anyway, Should America Care if a Bunch of Foreigners dislike it, or affect to?
As a military and economic power without rival, it should not be too worried. Yet America needs the co-operation of other governments if it is to conduct trade, combat drugs, reduce pollution and fight terrorism. Moreover, Mr. Bush is now committed to spreading "freedom" across the Middle East, indeed across the world. If foreigners, disillusioned with America, believe this is merely a hypocritical justification for getting rid of regimes he dislikes, the task may be harder.
The Shining city loses its luster. This may reflect the greater cynicism of the worldwide audience 40 years on. But the polls suggest it also has something to do with Mr. GW Bush. Polls find that opposition to Mr. Bush is stronger than anti-Americanism in general, and that the particular had contributed to the general. Asked how Mr. Bush's election had affected their views of the American people, 42% said it had made them feel worse towards Americans.
It is accompanied by another view, increasingly common among pundits, which holds that America is losing its allure as a model society. Whereas much of the rest of the world once looked to the United States as a beacon, it is argued, non-Americans are now turning away. Democrats in Europe and elsewhere who once thought religiosity, a belief in capital punishment and rank hostility to the United Nations were intermittent or diminishing features of the United States now see them as rising and perhaps permanent. Such feelings have been fortified by Mr. Bush's doctrine of preventive war, Guantanamo, opposition to the world criminal court and a host of other international agreements. One way or another, it is said, people are turning off America, not so much to hate it as to look for other examples to follow-even Europe's. If true, that could be even more insulting to Americans than the rise in the familiar anti-Americanism of yesteryear.
The American right likes to accuse its foes of "anti-Americanism". Most of its targets are foreigners. But, from the right's point of view, there are plenty of un-American leftists at home too. Conservative congressmen labour over laws to prevent leftists from burning the American flag. Conservative talk-show hosts are forever uncovering anti-Americanism at Harvard or on National Public Radio (both disgustingly centrist from an international view). And conservative activists are forever shouting at liberals: "Why don't you move to France?" Many foreigners might assume that charges of un-American behavior went out with Joe McCarthy. Fresh examples occur or else are cooked up as needed. The right foamed at the mouth over Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, when it discovered (belatedly) that he had written an article on the day after September 11th that described the victims of the atrocity as "little Eichmanns". ("true enough, they were civilians of a sort," the Boulder professor had opined, "But innocent? Gimme a break.")
Then the right foamed about Eason Jordan, CNN'S chief news executive, who told a group of bigwigs at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the American army was deliberately targeting journalists to kill them; he denies he said this, but admits he left the wrong impression. Mr. Jordan was probably just sucking up to a group of glamorous foreigners rather than expressing any deeply held philosophy, has now re-signed. Mr. Churchill, being an academic, still has a job. Is domestic anti-Americanism really a doctrine that pervades the American left, as conservatives charge? Or is it an eccentric phenomenon blown out of proportion by a vicious conservative attack-machine?
The right has powerful arguments on its side. The first is that leftists, from the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss to John Walker Lindh (the Marin County-bred "American Taliban"), have been caught doing treasonous things. A radical lawyer, Lynne Stewart, has been convicted of helping a clients, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to contact his supporters – an action that could put her in prison for 20 years. More generally, prominent leftists have indulged in language, which is extremely critical of their country. Back in 1969, Susan Sontag reflected that "it is self-evident that the Reader's Digest and Lawrence Welk and Hilton Hotels are organically connected with the Special Forces napalming villages in Guatemala"; after September 11th, she interpreted the outrage as "an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions." Michael Moore has compared Iraqi insurgents to Minutemen and said modern Americans are the stupidest and greediest people on the face of the Earth. Comrades Sontag and Moore would insist that they were opposed to American foreign policy, not America, but the vast middle classes never read beyond the occasional headline or Fox News update. There is also a private tradition on the American left of rubbishing their countrymen as vulgar morons, especially compared to sophisticated Europeans.
So anti-Americanism does exist on the left, but it is hardly its exclusive preserve. There are plenty of loud-mouth critics of American policy on the right. The American Conservative is as rude about American imperialism and the Iraq war as the Nation –but nobody really accuses Pat Buchanan of anti-American-ism. As for dismissing American culture, Mr. Moore is less acerbic than one of the right's patron saints, H.L. Mencken. The Public Interest and the New Criterion worry about popular culture. Robert Bork thinks America is slouching towards Gomorrah. Pat Robert-son and Jerry Falwell agreed that September 11 was a punishment for America's liberalism on abortion and homosexuality. Was that less anti-American than Ms Sontag?
By the Left, a Quick March
Moreover, the odd thing about the American left (from an international perspective) is how caught up it is in passion for America. It is hard to think of any foreign left-of-centre party that would brandish the flag as often as the Democrats did in last year's election campaign, or that would have made so much of its candidate's warrior past. The American left seems no less convinced that America is a special country. They just have a different view of what makes America special. Liberals think that America has been defined by its commitment to equality of opportunity (hence their worries about cutting inheritance tax); by its commitment to the separation of church and state (hence their worries about faith-based social policy); and by its enthusiasm for human rights (hence their worries about torture). When liberals created People for the American Way, they did not see it as a covert People for the French Way. The real battle-line in the culture wars is not between pro-Americans and anti-Americans; it is between two groups of patriots who have very different ideas about what makes America America (with the regional battle-lines bearing some similarity to those in the civil war).
This carries a warning for two different sorts of people. The first is anti-American foreigners: they should not take clowns like Mr. Moore or Mr. Churchill as typical. Americans are a patriotic bunch –and this patriotism stretches from one end of the political spectrum to the other. The second is the American right. So far, conservatives have played the un-American card extremely well; but when it comes to un-American purges there is always a danger of overreach. A domestic and global overreach builds along with the certainty of more American right wing election victories. Pentagon budget overkill fuels profits and fears everywhere. The American left – especially the academic left - wanders the field confused.
A great benefit to the US with the end of the Cold War (WWIII) was the decline in anti-US propaganda and documentaries (mostly Soviet). The US used to have to worry about public opinion concerning prison growth, murder rates, wide spectrum drug abuse (from kids to the elderly) or its heralded stingy benefits for its own poor, foreign aid scams, covert assassinations, etc. Apparently the now terminal condition of mass absentia and the erosion of historical memory enable the US to propel itself emitting a stain of lies, torture, secret incarcerations and disdain for international law at will or whim,: A Power unto itself.
The reasons that foreigners have to hate the US are also reasons why many Americans may come to see how their government has deceived them and made them the target of the world's jokes and of its bombs.
The first new Pope of the XXIst Century arrives at the most evil of times. With morality beyond mere human debate the only champions visible in the American backyard are Hugo Chavez with his Christian Socialism and the Mayor of Mexico City who may become President while in Jail.
Who would (will?) Jesus vote for Pope?
hasta a la frente - liberacion o casa de monos
espiritud Guevara 23.Apr.2005 01:23
..la estrecha ligazón que existe entre el partido y el ejército; como, en esta lucha, el ejército no es sino una parte del partido dirigente de la lucha; de la estrecha ligazón que existe a su vez entre el ejército y el pueblo; como ejército y pueblo no son sino la misma cosa, lo que una vez mas se ve corroborado en la sintesis maginifica que hiciera Camilo: “El ejército es el pueblo uniformado”. El cuerpo armado, durante la lucha y despues de ella, ha debido adquirir una técnica nueva que le permita superar las nuevas armas del enemigo y rechazar cualquier tipo de ofensiva”.
Comandante Ernesto
"Che" Guevara
Fuck Gutierrez
Leechio 23.Apr.2005 20:14
That leech Lucio Gutierrez betrayed his people only a week after becoming president. He appeared before at the IMF/WB building in Washington, D.C., and promised that neoliberal "reforms" would continue on course under his presidency. Somebody please kick his ass and don't get suckered by "elections" and shit like that in the future.
(4*GLW) Latin America in revolt: Continent defies USA [just uploaded]
Green Left Weekly 24.Apr.2005 09:49
Green Left Weekly, #624, April 27: Latin America in revolt: Continent defies USA
Green Left Weekly, issue #624, April 27, 2005
Latin America in revolt: Continent defies USA
For over two decades the US has forced neoliberalism — and its accompanying poverty and despair — down Third World throats in order to make the world better for US business. To many, the spreading US economic empire, backed by the point of a gun and a loan, has seemed unassailable. But now, unable to defeat a rag-tag bunch of Iraqi militias, and rapidly losing allies in Latin America, the empire is not looking so strong. [Full article]
ECUADOR: People drive out president
VENEZUELA: Global Encounter discusses popular power
VENEZUELA: The struggle of the CNV workers
VENEZUELA: Visit to Women's Bank project
the fate of populism
omer 25.Apr.2005 13:08
This is what populism is really all about. They become canditates making promises (with a very carefuly planned leftist rethoric) that they are NEVEr going to acomplish and if they do is only in a mediocre way so at least it seems on the surface that they are doing something and leftist people in other parts of the world (especially young activist, those who think they know EVERYTHING beacuse they read a couple of web pages or magazines from the left) sees them as examples of social revolutions. This is the fate of all the populist who in reality don't really know what they are doing I.e: Hugo Chavez Frias.
smell the coffee
Richard Kobzey 31.Jan.2006 05:19
People did not ‘smell the coffee’ on the trains to Auschwitz, because no one was able to broadcast the Furor’s plans.
http://ottawa.indymedia.ca/en/2006/01/2025.shtml
http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/50723/index.php
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2005/10/59263.html
Should the Jews hate political suppression more than anything or anyone? I would think so. It would have been the cruelest experience imaginable to be with thousands of people who had absolutely no power to communicate or conspire to escape, but go to their deaths because of forced silence. When we consider the many historical parallels, it is no wonder that freedom of assembly and speech formed the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
It think any Jewish Senator who would not stand up against Sammy ‘the Fifth’ Scalito’s Confirmation is brain-dead. People came to power during the third Reich, with more media sophistication and manipulation than the negligent Administration that we see in America today, either because Hitler tricked the religious leaders into endorsing him for his religious rhetoric, or they were privy to it and gave him media advice. Whoever was behind that vile mindset had an explicit understanding of the mechanisms of ‘revealed’ religion. The Third Reich could not have risen by any other means than the sly gradual ensnarement of society through media control, suppression, taking control of the courts – and of course, creating scapegoats based on religious reasoning.
The old historical pattern is emerging again. More and more peoples’ rights are being taken away, and they are being pushed into a corner, and only those few brave enough are standing up in rebellion to the strangle hold that ‘revealed’ religion has on democracy. Look at Palestine now, or Iraq, and see how democracy walks a fine line between religious freedom and religious domination, then think why many nations are uncomfortable with the newly elected Hamas Party. I hope that this will finally be the unveiling and the undoing of unfair religious infiltration of the democratic process, and a need for consensus government.
I think deists ought to be on the Supreme Court, because they make much more sense than these ‘professed’ assholes of apostasy. Deists do not claim to be doing some god’s will, but the will of one people under many gods – that is, the right to reason without being slandered by dominant ‘revealed’ religious leaders and cut off from the media.
If people wish to label me, let them call me a deist whistleblower that sees how the big finale of the Fourth Reich will require so-called messiahs who are actually antichrists, and so-called antichrists that are actually true seers devoured by masses of people blindly incited by religious-political media-dominating ringleaders.
The Politics of a Deist
To my dying day, I will give my blood, sweat and tears – sell my very soul - to see the tax-exempt foundation ripped out from beneath the zealots of so-called ‘revealed’ religion - zealots like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or John Hagee. They are Zionist fools who would fool others into going to see a destructible man in a destructible temple saying that he is the messiah. They confuse the archetypical ‘temple’ of human media and ‘the veil’ of suppression with some manmade structure where Christ himself warned, “Go not Forth”.
Trough feeders, who swindle big bucks from the very people that their tongues mislead and oppress, buy airtime so that they can spew more hatred and cause vicious deaths. It makes my blood boil when I think about their propaganda, and how it causes violent deaths like that of the sweet young man Matthew Shepard.
Falwell and Robertson, those obvious false prophets, then hide behind flaws in the First Amendment, saying that it is their right to believe and to speak hatred disguised as ‘good news’. I can imagine that those thugs who killed Matthew Shepard did so rationalizing ‘Fag, sinner, scapegoat – who cares because the courts do not seem to’. I am sure it was nothing like, ‘He is the son of a Supreme Court Justice – we will get slaughtered’.
I am very proud of Matthews’s parents for speaking out against the Death Penalty. I am glad to see that instead of going to sleep – nighty-night – Matthew’s killers can haul their little Asses down to the machine shop and make ‘license plates’ until they rot, or else write something that would inspire peace among humankind - like Tookie Williams did. I will refrain from going on about the innocent people slaughtered by government-sanctioned death, and how I feel that it is the family’s right to decide the fate of their loved one’s killers. Again, those nasty preachers who stir up controversy with the abortion issue, are so quick to turn to the death penalty with their eye for an eye rhetoric, while ignoring the fact that the death penalty is the ultimate act of not forgiving and failed atonement.
I am a deist who sees the two-spirit being as a very important transition to the perfection of human spiritual development, and their oppressors as agents of evil, who trample scapegoats while biblically ‘justifying’ their cause (i.e. Hitler) as ‘God’s will’.
I cannot encourage or forbid abortion, nor leave it to the courts to decide, because they are merely comprised of flawed beings that are no more capable of judging Jane Doe that the rest of us humanoids. Abortion is exactly that – an issue of individual judgment – not collective prohibition imposed by those who will hand such decisions to a Vatican-guaranteed five-out-of-nine Supreme Court decision. Do you know what happened to the Liberal-Democrat Catholic JFK? Be sure that Sammy ‘the Fifth’ Alito will keep Pope Benedict XVI very happy in the public eye.
As a deist, I see the spiritual whoredom of so-called ‘revealed’ religion and Caesar’s tax-advantaged, big mouth, troublemakers who divide and spiritually conquer like that dirty old businessman Pat Robertson.
As a deist, I can plainly see organized religion pitted against non-conformists. I would encourage discussion of the policies of those who would forbid this discussion, and analyze the ‘revealed’ religious root of that forbiddance.
Christ had seen martyrs in his day. He very well knew when to back off and head for cover like an illuminati. The crucifixion whether or not, still strongly symbolizes suppression. Several years later, along came the Apostle Paul. He was an atrocity from birth to death, and ironically, if it were not for his convoluted writings the Christian Church would not have been as divided up as it has. Our modern world makes it quite evident that Paul planted the seeds of division among Christ’s subordinates. If you get into a doctrinal debate with a person from another branch of Christianity, you will find all doctrinal controversies entirely based upon Paul’s writings. I am sure the same sort of thing happened with Islam, because I doubt any people in their right minds would give birth to such obvious peace-defying deviations that we see today.
[As a deist who respects the covered-up and obviously hidden story of Christ’s true mission, I probably should not have even insulted those mentioned, but sometimes it takes a concrete example to make a point. Then again, if truth is insulting, so be it – lies are deadly.]
~ Forward the Judgment
The true perverts in democracy are those who act in defiance of their deist forefathers by using intimidation for subordination, rather than being open to reasonable discussion. They would have individual whistle blowers paranoid of government spies and the absolute power of the president to abduct and hold people for years without a fair hearing, but they will not have time to enact their projected theory because people already ‘smell the coffee’.
Wake-up the Protesters
If we were all sitting in the same room, instead of being separated by the time of writing articles then uploading and waiting for responses, I have no doubt that the rest of the people gathered would be opposed to the censorship of the moderator, unless the person speaking is just trying to antagonize the group. We would be much more accountable for what is censored from our discussion.
When it is clearly not the writer’s intention to piss off individuals or make malicious attacks on Indymedia, I consider the moving of an article off an IMC front-page to be censorship.
I believe in the truth of what I write, and if anyone out there fears my philosophy, they would do more for social peace if they would correct it, refine it or ignore it rather than hide it, because it will not go away until a fair hearing is permitted.
Sometimes I submit hours and hours of writing, and you had better believe that I am just as passionately serious about my convictions as the terrorist who keeps facing censorship from the mainstream. I wonder how many would-be terrorists have come to Indymedia, only to have uploads deleted because they could not find the right way to vent their anger or frustration. I am dying to have a dialogue with these angry people especially because of the danger they represent down at the public market, but I am not as much concerned with the dangers that trolls present to intelligent discussion.
We need to find common agreement before we can triumph over our disagreements.
I know that I am not the only contributor who gets very angry after spending several hours writing and editing an article that feels ready for upload, only to have some editor remove it and give it some label, or delete it altogether.
I especially get very frustrated dealing with terrorists and religious fundamentalism, so I devote much of my time trying to talk in their language so that they might learn to think in my language of peace - which has no mystery to it. I cannot avoid speaking without using the ideological or liturgical terms that hold the minds of these people hostage, so if an articles seems to speak what the editor calls ‘religious diatribe’, I would appreciate it if they could just move on and let the readers do the correcting or ignoring - similar to the ‘change the channel’ effect.
I am not asking Indymedia to place an advertisement on CNN saying, come fill up our space with your foolish trolling. All I ask is for careful consideration of what you censor, lest it come back to bite you someday. Just take it easy with censorship, please. I know that trolls get bored quickly when there are no responses, so if you think I am a troll, do not respond – otherwise censorship will just piss me off even more. We are going to have to tolerate trolls and suppressive editors until they see their perilous end.
For many good reasons Indymedia should maintain a censorship-free venue, otherwise they are fooling us into wasting our time here fighting the same forces of suppression that oppress us in the mainstream media.
There is only one logical justification for an editor to delete an article, that is if it warrants government intimidation, but it is the editors’ responsibility to label a backroom category ‘legal heat’, which might spare the liberty or life of unbeknownst individual bloggers we might otherwise count on for future votes.
Furthermore, I am not interested in reading the same old systemic rubbish that accomplishes nothing but reinforcement of fear and incapability. I say it is high time to bring on subject matter that rattles the political cages of the status quo, until they blatantly expose themselves trying to intimidate Indymedia editors into censoring free speech while placing Indymedia into the public spotlight.
It seems that Indymedia will be no more a potent source of information than individual will and anonymous sitting-duck bloggers or corporate media, if they exercise segregation of thought, which only feeds ignorance and spite and systemic status quo rubbish that is so freely regurgitated from Corporate media sources.
Could someone please link here from DC IMC, because the editor will not allow me to place any further uploads. How democratically unfair…
IMC Israel has been very receptive to me, and I will always speak highly of their free standards, but I have nothing nice to say about DC IMC, so I will not bother with them, but link to my articles that are hidden in their archives.
One does not have to be a Christian Zionist to be a friend of Israel. In fact, religious Zionism creates more trouble for Israel and Her nonpartisan peace activists.
Zionism propagates a big race with Islamic fundamentalists for the temple mount in Jerusalem, making many Israelis uneasy, because of inherent racial privileging among co-existing creeds.
The Vatican is waiting for the right moment to send in the pope to mediate and make peace in Israel. They have distanced themselves in silence and now they are poised to win favor with those who will fail to see through Her larger and longer-running plans to win back the power to manipulate national courts, politicians, and nations of people.
Theists antagonize atheists, so atheists antagonize back, while deists stand on safe middle ground - just like the forefathers of the US Constitution who did not intend to make way for rival religious sects to dominate national policy or the courts. Sam Alito will be the fifth Catholic Supreme Court Justice.
See this prediction made on October 27, 2005; it seems about to come true.
Wake Up, You Protestants and Protesters!