Thursday, May 31, 2007

From Empire to Ecstacy

In the 1980s a lot of 30 and 40 something baby boomer libertarians, progressives and "hippies" were dreaming about and trying to create an alternative society, as so intensely envisioned since the late 1960s. Unfortunately, many of these dreams got lost in the go-go economic years of the 1990s and the terror-obsessed first decade of the 21st century. However, as baby boomer libertarians, progressives and hippies retire we find ourselves with more time on our hands, with lots of money -- or much less than we expected, and the prospect of another 20-30 years on an increasingly unstable planet. Perhaps enough of our generation will reject merely sucking younger generations dry through social security and medicare and will return to envisioning a new future. And even act on such a vision!
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Check out my article FROM EMPIRE TO ECSTACY, originally printed in the "green"-oriented publication IN CONTEXT. The article was written in response to a request for “new stories” that might replace the old, self-destructive ones humanity now tells, and reshape human consciousness as we enter the “Planetary Age”. "The New Story" (IC#12) Winter 1985/86 edition. (Also in CarolMoore.Net/Articles/) While it definitely needs some updating, reading it still gives me goose pimples. Just the brief introduction below.
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I envision two possible stories that future generations may tell about the transition from the Age of Empire to the Planetary Age. One is a sad story, a story of chaos, dissolution and destruction, of environmental and human exhaustion, followed by a long, labored rebirth of a new planetary culture. The other is an ecstatic story of a new planetary culture quickly coalescing in the first days of chaos, before dissolution and destruction exhausts the earth and the human spirit. Believing with hope and determination that we are not fated to suffer the sad story but that we will create an ecstatic story, it is such a story - looking back from our future - that I will tell.
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Article subsections include: The Age of Empire; the New Vision; Increasing Chaos; the Transition; The Planetary Age: the Age of Ecstasy.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Cindy Sheehan's Gone: Another Loud Female Activist Bites the Dust

On Saturday, May 26 Cindy Sheehan put out on DemocraticUnderground.Com site a letter - reproduced here - that she was quitting the Democratic Party because of her disgust over their caving in on Iraq war funding. She got so much hate mail, it convinced her she had had enough of activism! So on May 28 she issued a letter quitting activism. As she points out below, being an outspoken female activist willing to criticize problems within a movement is a tough job, especially when you are going in to debt to do it.
Photo of Cindy, me and Rachel Corrie poster at White House from summer of 2006.
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Cindy writes in part: I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called "Face" of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such "liberal blogs" as the Democratic Underground. Being called an "attention whore" and being told "good riddance" are some of the more milder rebukes.
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...when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."
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.... I have spent every available cent I got from the money a "grateful" country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.
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....I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
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Cindy, yo comprendo!! Though the problem is not just divisions, but powerful individuals committed to getting away with morally and even legally dubious behavior. In the last seven years I've constantly been in trouble for criticizing movement "powers that be." Criticizing those who encouraged young people, even teenagers, to smash things at demos and fight with cops; criticizing street fighting as an activist strategy; criticizing men who harass women and get into physical fights with other peace activists; daring to continue to criticize the state of Israel and the Israel Lobby when men told me to shut up; criticizing machismo, anglo and latino, straight, gay and bisexual; and most recently for criticizing men who joke with their male buddies about cheating on their wives with other men or visiting Asian child sex rings. I mean when people only have a problem with my criticizing those who make or laugh at such jokes, you KNOW you are in the wrong group!
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So, Cindy, I'm pretty disgusted too.
Of course, I'll never quit activism! But I am trying to move away from working with people whose behavior is a constant reminder of human (especially male) failings. I'm tired of being a masochist and trying to change those behaviors while remaining in the company of those practicing them! It just puts me in a really bad mood all the time!
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Of course, I have been saying I'd quit such foolishness for 30 years!

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Now that I'm getting into my declining years, however, I am trying to re-focus on how to change human consciousness so more of us are willing to stand up against these oppressive behaviors -- or even refuse to engage in them! Dang, why can't we just all pop a pill and let all the craziness drop away?

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Oh, that's right, that route is illegal. What if drugs really could help liberate people? If people we're TOO liberated after all they'd stop voting, stop paying taxes and secede from the union. Of course, the way the U.S. government is going perfectly straight people are getting more willing to think about those options.
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It occurs to me suddenly, maybe freedom is the greatest form of psychological therapy there is?? No authorities to be angry and frustrated at; no male chauvinists capable of forcing their economic, psychological and physical will on you. Only opportunities to explore and free people to love!
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When Cindy gets bored with her long rest, maybe she'll hook up with the radical decentralist secessionist movement for true human psychological and political LIBERTY.

Monday, May 28, 2007

For Dem Cavers: Certificate of Ownership for War in Iraq - and Warranty Too!!

Military Familes Speak Out, Iraq Veterans against the War and Veterans for Peace have come up with Certificates of Ownership for War in Iraq - and a Warranty too! You can print and mail them to your least favorite representatives. See the MFSO link for more readable versions and more info. We have to keep the pressure on congress on Iraq, not to mention wind up efforts to stop war on Iran which are going very poorly. But don't get me started...

Friday, May 25, 2007

Rosie's Gone: Another Loud Female Pundit Bites the Dust

After a Wednesday, May 23rd blow up with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O'Donnell decided to take an early leave from ABC's morning talk show "The View," which she was supposed to leave in June.
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I confess I was not a big Rosie fan until the last few months when she really started speaking out against Bush administration crimes. Before that I found her just too loud and obnoxious!
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Of course, the truth is that even in this day and age, just about any woman who asserts her opinion in the face of male criticism (and that might be just one man) generally is considered loud and obnoxious. Two years ago there was quite a debate about why there were so many fewer female oped and opinion writers than male ones.
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The bottom line - the women got so much more hostility, mostly from men, than male did pundits, that they quickly withdrew from the fray. (They also felt they had to get everything perfect to avoid attacks on minor errors that often would be ignored if men made them.)
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Three particulary enlighting articles on this topic are:
Female Pundits Could Use Help With Hate Mail (Women's Enews); Invisible Women (The Nation), Writing Women Into a Corner (The Washington Post).
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Given the attacks most opinionated women face, you have to be arrogant, self-centered and thick-skinned to be a woman pundit. I have found that to be true even on libertarian and "progressive" email discussion lists! On most of the lists I am on, I am just about the only female poster! I get insulted all the time for daring to confidantly opine on whatever topic. But enjoy giving back what I get. Which, of course, means that I am "hard to get along with." All the women who just don't post, or disappear after the first attack, of course, are very "easy to get along with"! Or else they just aren't as masochistic as I am!
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Of course, the problem is that constantly being attacked and having to defend yourself can put you in a permanent bad mood! But then some of us think that's better than taking the abuse and being depressed!
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The only women allowed to be obnoxious are right wing female radio talk show hosts who defend male privilege, and some "black bloc" anarchist women when they fiercely defend the right of their men to smash things and fight with the cops. Occasionally they latter will even claim that right for themselves!
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Well, we'll see if ABC replaces Rosie with Roseanne, per my previous blog entry
. Roseanne is just a tad more reserved in her approach than Rosie. ABC would be smart to do it because there are millions of women (and men) who enjoy a funny woman who asserts her points -- she's such a novelty!
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If you want to check out a great blog from an opinionated peace activist woman blogger, see Jane Stillwell's blog jpstillwater.blogspot.com. (Yes, some peacenik males complain that she gets "too much" attention for her punditry!) A grandmother who turns a great phrase, she recently got her way paid by a publication to blog from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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While as a libertarian I may not always agree with her opinions and prescriptions, especially economic, I love her moxie. Some entries during the last year include:
Palestine, Iraq & sibling rivalry: The psychology of civil war & some probate advice; The world's youngest profession: The sociology of a child prostitute village in India; "Lost" and "September 11": A tale of two rigged plane crashes?; OMG! I just interviewed Sean Penn!; Not fact-based enough: Why GWB won't be hired as an embedded reporter in Iraq; Getting ready for Burning Man: It's like getting ready for Armegeddon!; Millennium Challenge coincidence: The war on Iraq began with war games too.
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One of my projects is to start finding and contacting female bloggers with moxie as part of my new radical decentralist secessionist feminist organizing initiative. Will report how things develop.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Bird Poops on Bush - And Every One Reports it Like That!

Dang, I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to Bush's press conference playing on television as I did my thing online today. Luckily, more alert reporters did!
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Bird Poop As Political Commentary
Truthdig, CA - 1 hour ago President George W. Bush was busy praising embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a press conference on Thursday when a bold sparrow swooped ...
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A sign from the heavens?
MSNBC - 2 hours ago There is so much control a president and his handlers can have during a Rose Garden press conference. Today, while President Bush was asked about the ...
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Yup, MSNBC news rubs it in too.
And MSNBC's Keith Olbermann is having lots of fun with the poop incident - and the fact Bush kept reminding reporters THEIR children would die when the evil terrorists come over here, if we leave Iraq without "winning."
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Yes, the universe is speaking to Bush, through one tiny spec of its consciousness. But it's unlikely Bush is listening. Well, little birds, try again!! (Hmmm, can they get me under the Patriot Act for sending vivid psychic images to the birds of Washington, DC???)

Dems Cave on Iraq, DUH!!! Jews Against the War Speak Out

Even though I'm on a peace network legislative list with dozens of posts detailing hour by hour attempts to pressure congress to get us out of Iraq, it's hard to believe that the military-industrial- media-Israel lobby controlled congress will get us out of Iraq. It would take the whole Iraqi government rising up and kicking the U.S. out and/or massive failure that even Bush has to admit. However, it's more likely Bush will invade Iran and make matters worse if necessary to avoid withdrawal. After all, if it all leads to ARMAGEDDON, that must be "god's plan" for G.W. - and the world!
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Keith Olbermann does a great rant on the betrayal of the voters. The fact that he is still there and hasn't been driven out by some sort of Bush administration threats against the network's license is pretty amazing. I keep wondering what General Electric's (owner of the station) ulterior motive is? To bring on 5 more Olbermanns if they don't get their military contracts renewed? Or could it be that there actually is one network owned by people who put the interests of protecting Americans before that of protecting a certain Middle East colonialist state?
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Which reminds me that a new coalition of Jewish leaders -- from Orthodox to Conservative to Reform to Reconstructionist to Renewal -- has arisen. Calling themselves Jews Against the War, they just issued a petition with 1000 signatures urging an end to the Iraq War - and more importantly, no war against Iran, something actively promoted by AIPAC.
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According to the press release: A recent Gallup poll indicated that fully 77% of American Jews think the Iraq War was a mistake, compared with just 52% of the general American public. This disparity between the poll results versus the relative lack of an active and vocal Jewish effort to oppose the war was integral to the organization’s initial creation.
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The Petition states, in part, “...the invasion of Iraq was not just and…the continued occupation extends this injustice...the “permission” to prosecute this war was gained under false pretenses by our president, and that the goals of the war were ill-considered, unrealistic, and poorly planned...we believe it is the moral responsibility of the current administration to end this war! We ask that Congress set hard and fast limits on the ability of the President to expand this war or to extend it further in a military action against Iran.”
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Thank heavens the vast majority of Jews who put justice and peace first are starting to organize to rebel against the tiny but wealthy and powerful minority of rabidly pro-Zionist Jews that can only be described as religious/ethnic supremacists. One of the latter said to me as he was getting out of his limousine at the
last AIPAC conference which DC activists protested: "There's nothing you can do! We have all the money!" Talk about living up the most negative stereotypes. It's worse than me on a raging radical feminist rant - but don't get me started!!

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

The War on Drugs Is a War on Consciousness

I watched the funny video Weed Fields of Afghanistan made by a group of American soldiers in Afghanistan who come across a huge field of 5 foot tall marijuana plants. Later the soldiers set the footage to "Afroman's" popular "weed song" Because I Got High, including explicitly stating crude lyrics merely mouthed in the original.

It immediately reminded me WHY marijuana is illegal. Smoking marijuana can cause soldiers to get a new perspective on their actions, rebel against authority and lose interest in war! Remember Vietnam?
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Maybe Middle East ganja weed is a contributing factor not mentioned in a May 2007 story buzzing about the Internet. Written by "Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers" it is entitled: Rebellion By US Forces In Iraq Prompts ‘Rapid’ Pentagon Crackdown. It reads in part:
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Reports from Russian Military Analysts are describing what they term as a ‘rapidly declining will-to-fight” among American Soldiers fighting in Iraq, with the greatest concern being placed upon US Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division who reportedly this past week refused orders to ‘take to field’ against their Iraqi insurgent enemies...prompted by an Iraqi insurgent attack upon their fellow Soldiers wherein 4 of their comrades were killed and 3 captured by the enemy forces...The concerns of the US Soldiers in Iraq, that they do not have the resources they need to fight their enemy...Adding to the growing rebellion by these US Soldiers against their War Leaders was the Pentagons recent orders extending the tours of their forces in their war zones...Unlike their counterparts in the Vietnam War, however, present day US Soldiers had begun to communicate their rebellious feelings against their War Leaders through the use of the Internet, to include posting thousands of videos and blogs which ran counter to the ‘positive’ message of the war being given by the United States media organs....This will no longer be the case as the Pentagon, in a ‘rapid’ response to the growing rebellion of its Soldiers fighting the United States wars, has immediately denied Internet access for all its fighting forces in an attempt to bring them back under ‘control’.
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Of course, we know psychoactive drugs can be abused to encourage soldiers to kill. Hitler kept his soldiers pumped up on methamphetamines. And the Arabic-origin word "assassins" refers to the "hashish" supplied to Muslim secret order members to encourage them to kill the Christian Crusades rampaging through Muslim Palestine in the 12th century.
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Nevertheless, in western culture of the last 40 years -- and this IS the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love -- psychoactive drugs have been identified overwhelmingly with the desire to expand and heighten consciousness, evolve consciously, reject the status quo and create a new reality. Just what this blog is all about! (Unfortunately it is written only with the aid of the legal psychoactive caffeine.)
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Anyway, as I write in my 1998 article "The War on Drugs Is a War on Consciousness":
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I believe that a prime motivation of those waging the current "war on drugs" is to discredit and destroy any" counterculture" before it becomes the dominant culture. Religious fundamentalists have not forgotten the religious upheavals of the 1960s when millions of young people, often after using marijuana and other psychedelics, reading Timothy Leary or Alan Watts, or listening to "psychedelic" music by the Beatles or the Jefferson Airplane, rejected Christianity and Judaism. Even ministers, priests, nuns and rabbis abandoned their callings! Consciousness, altered consciousness, and higher consciousness rather than obedience, duty, and sacrifice became the prime concern of the new spirituality.
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The response of Catholic, conservative and fundamentalist religious groups was to feverishly expand their efforts to enforce more fundamentalist views among their members and to gain greater political influence. While fundamentalists have lost many battles over abortion, prayer and pornography, they have found the government a willing ally in the "war on drugs". For just as drugs, the counterculture and "consciousness" undermine faith in hierarchical religious authority, so do they undermine faith in political authority.
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John Lennon's "IMAGINE", an anthem of the counter culture, asks us to imagine "no religion" and "no countries". Lennon, a drug use advocate, was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian, a former fan, who knew how subversive and powerful this message is. In 1990, on Lennon's 50th birthday radio stations worldwide played "IMAGINE" simultaneously to a billion people. All heard Yoko Ono say, "The dream we dream alone is just a dream, but the dream we dream together is reality." The message is that we are not subjects of an authoritarian god or even natural law, but that we consciously co-create reality. Implied is the possibility of a diversity of realities.
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Despite the crackdown on drug use, the belief that consciousness is not only the purpose, but perhaps even the very nature, of reality has spread through writings and practices of "new physics" aficionados, humanistic psychologists, and the new age, eastern religion, wiccan, and eco-spirituality movements. Their millions of advocates still lack a coherent and motivating philosophical synthesis or organizational focus. And while many of these individuals have used drugs, and still do, decriminalization of drugs is not yet a major focus of their thought or action. .
However, as the horrors of the drug war mount and the injustices spread to all of us, the uneasy feeling that there is some hidden agenda behind the "war on drugs" grows among more aware and conscious individuals. Some of these agendas are scapegoating drug users for larger ills, excuses for racial repression and expanding government power, an outlet for militarism, and the desire of tobacco and liquor producers to squash potential competition.
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However, a prime hidden agenda remains the suppression of an alternate religious view -- that consciousness is the nature and purpose of reality, that humans freely create their realities. Because psychoactive drugs are a means of quickly and effectively initiating individuals into this view they must be suppressed -- even if it means punishment, incarceration and death for hundreds of thousands of people. But such is the nature of all religious wars.
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Go to the link to see excerpts from the books INTOXICATION THE "FOURTH DRIVE" by Dr. Ronald K. Siegel; THE NATURAL MIND - An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness by Dr. Andrew Weil; and FOOD OF THE GODS by Terence McKenna.
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Groups currently working hard to end the war on drugs and give us access to one more gateway to higher consciousness include Tim Leary's site which lives on despite his death, Terrance McKennaLand,
Lycaeum psychoactive drug information, NORML, Marijuana Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, November.Org and StopTheDrugWar.Org.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Rosie O'Donnell Loves Ron Paul - Eric Dondero Doesn't

2008 libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul did an outstanding job of promoting military non-interventionism in the Fox TV South Carolina debate, even better than he did in the MSNBC debate. (Both debates can be seen on Ron Paul's YouTube page.)
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Paul made it clear that U.S. interventionism in the Middle East had resulted in blow back. He only talked about 10 years of bombing and sanctions against Iraq and didn't get around to talking about 60 years of supporting Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, 55 years of aggression against Iranians, or the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for 10 years before the September 11 attacks.
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As you can imagine, right wingers went nuts, accusing Paul of "blaming America" and saying "America deserved to be attacked." Scott Horton on AntiWar.com did a good job of clearing up what Paul did and did not say to counter the twisting of his words.
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Paul did such a great job that Rosie O'Donnell and other members of ABC television's morning talk show "The View" were debating his statements fiercely, with three women supporting him and one woman attacking him - using over and over the absurd one word argument, "TERRORISM!!!" See all ten Youtube minutes.
I myself have a history with Ron Paul since 1987, when he was out of congressional office and ran for and won the Libertarian Party nomination in 1987. His main competition was Lakota (American Indian) activist Russell Means. Like the many other pro-choicers in the party, I was annoyed that Paul initially misrepresented his position on abortion, saying he thought it should be a state matter after "viability." But as we learned from a book he had written on the topic, to him viability meant conception and he wanted a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion that the states would enforce!
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So a few of us formed the still existing Pro-Choice Libertarians and through organizing persistence got him to promise not to talk about abortion at all. (See my photo at left from way back when.) We tracked all his clippings (in those pre-news.google days), and except for a couple minor slips we caught from perusing the clipping service articles, he evidently kept his word.
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Of course, since those purest libertarian days Paul has slipped into a number of statist positions, including supporting constitutional amendments to outlaw flag burning and curtail the rights of children born in this country to illegal immigrants. However, he has remained a staunch non-interventionist, like Dennis Kucinich, his liberal Democratic counter part who also is running for president. In fact, he's a lot stauncher than some of the so-called libertarians infecting the Libertarian Party now a days!
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One warmonger to respond to Ron Paul's statements was Paul's former congressional campaign manager Eric Dondero who now fulminates daily about fighting "Islamofacist" terrorists on a variety of forums. He declared he's running against Paul for congress in his home district in 2008, unless Paul resigns or another republican stands up against him. See RightPundit, RedState.Com, and this blog.
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Dondero was Ron Paul's travel aide when Paul was running for the Libertarian Party nomination, ran his 1996 congressional campaign where Paul re-took his seat, and worked for a time in Paul's congressional office. I can say from personal experience that Dondero is a sleazy little operative, quick to insult and smear others with lies. So I thought a lot better of Paul when I heard he had ended their alliance.
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The most persistent unpleasant rumor whispered around about Dondero himself was that he allegedly "beat his wife." He introduced me to her at the 1987 libertarian convention and she definitely had the kind of sad sack, always wary demeanor of a woman who expected a whack in the head momentarily. They later divorced.
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I therefore was quite suspicious when I read Dondero's claim on a libertarian discussion group in November of 2006 that his NEW wife had been mugged three times. Two paragraphs from the post will make his boorish style of argumentation quite clear:
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Yup, I'm a bigot alright. Married to a Chinese woman. Been all around the world; 30 countries on 5 continents. Speak 15 to 20 languages. Have had more Mexican and Filipina girlfriends than you can shake a stick at.
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My wife has been mugged three times (!!!) in the last three years in Houston. Once where they put a gun to her head. All because she's Asian. And illegals and others here in Houston prey on Asians, cause they think they've "got money."
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After the posting I replied on the discussion group, referring to the 1987 rumors, and wondering if Dondero's current wife really had been mugged or if the injuries came from someone a little closer to home. Dondero promptly dropped off the discussion group. It has been estimated that as many as 3 million women a year are assaulted by their significant others. That sounds low to me!
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I also noted at the time
some men may prefer to date immigrant women. First, many come from countries where deference to abusive males is still prevalent. Second, tenuous immigrant status makes them less likely to report physical assaults to police and/or are more easily intimidated by threats a man will press false charges against them. No wonder so many American men import "mail order brides." If the rumors and impressions are true and Eric's American born wife finally got up the gumption to call police on him, it would make sense he then turned to foreign born women. While arrests may not always prove searchable on one of the many Internet background search services, convictions usually are.
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I guess Eric was still mad at me on February 13, 2007 when he responded to my request he stop sending me his demented emails by ranting about my "pussy." When I responded to another mass mailing with the phrase "nut job," he responded suggesting I give him a "blow job." I'm sure Paul's conservative Texas district is dying to have someone like Eric Dondero represent them - NOT! At my leisure I'll send some of his supporters the emails, complete with headers.
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Unfortunately, these kinds of abusive males are everywhere, even in the peace movement. But don't get me started on patriarchal peaceniks! A subject for another day!!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Who's The Daddy??

The three month debate over who was the father of deceased actress Anna Nicole Smith's son - the sweet tempered Larry Birkhead or the nefarious Howard K. Smith - was finally ended with a DNA test proving Birkhead the father. However, before DNA testing such questions often would remain unresolved, leading to lifelong speculation and amusement for gossips. Love and procreation is something that even the strictest patriarchal systems cannot always control.
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The other day I was watching Katherine Hepburn's 1936 historical drama "Mary Queen of Scotts" about the 16th century Scottish queen Mary I who was beheaded in 1587 for alleged treason by the "virgin" Queen Elizabeth I. In this historically accurate story, Mary's husband Lord Darnley (top portrait) accuses her Italian secretary David Rizzio (second portrait) of fathering her child James, the next king of Scotland. Darnley and other nobles, fed up with this allegation, as well as Rizzio's alleged interference in Scottish affairs, stab Rizzio to death in front of Mary in 1566.
Despite the killing of the mother and alleged father, Mary's son James VI of Scotland would go on to become James I, King of England after the death of Elizabeth. (See his rather revealing portrait left; others also suggest a swarthy parentage.) However, the rumors about Rizzio fathering him continued though his life. Jonathan Baldo writes: "At a personal level, too, James was pursued by his past: for instance, rumors that he was the son of his mother's Italian secretary David Rizzio, not of Lord Darnley, were revived by Presbyterian ministers living in exile in England following his attempts to overthrow Presbyterianism in Scotland."
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This factoid also is missing in the relevant biographies on Wikipedia (that ultimate source for all things factual - NOT!). Look at the portraits and you decide who's the daddy.
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Another interesting case is that of Alan Hale Sr. (top photo) - a comic fellow so often sidekick to Errol Flynn and other 1930s and '40s stars. He allegedly adopted his son Alan Hale Jr (bottom photo), most famously of the old "Gilligan's Island" television show. Hale Jr. looks amazingly like Hale Sr. I first learned of all this when Turner Classic Movies was showing a series of Hale Sr's films and noted the adoption and the uncanny resemblance between the two.
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Wikipedia also ignores this fact, and the only reference I found on line was a New York Times article reading: "One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living." More photos of both of them here.
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This would assumedly be a case where Hale fathered the child either through a romantic dalliance or an early surrogate mother effort and his wife consented to adopt. Or Hale might have adopted the illegitimate child of one of his near relatives. In those days such celebrity adoptions were far more private than today because it was more necessary to hide the "shame" of the man and woman.
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In our less shameless days when women are more likely to do as they please when it comes to child-bearing, tabloids can make millions off celebrities private lives. And so can the celebrities! And then there are the people who go on the Jerry Springer show to hear the results of their DNA tests and make sure the world knows who's the daddy!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Israel Lobby Latest Outrages

The Israel Lobby has been in fine fettle this month, misrepresenting why a pro-Palestinian conference changed its venue, insisting on putting hypocritical and even racist posters up on Washington, DC metros, and trying to drive Professor of Political Theory Norman Finklestein from his job.
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Even gossip that Senator Chuck Hagel (who dares to defend Palestinian rights from time to time) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who admitted he didn't give a damn about Israel when he first ran for Mayor) might team up and run as third party candidates did not faze them. Not that anyone should think if elected the Military-Industrial-Media-Israel lobbies would allow any quasi-non-interventionist to have any kind of "humble foreign policy" -- you know like the one George W. promised us during his 2000 run for President.
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The Al-Awda ("right of return") National conference felt it necessary to move from its original venue at the University of California, Riverside because organizers opposed allowing members of the Israeli Defense Force to attend events and film participants. Organizers rightly feared that such "evidence" of legal political activity could be used to falsely accuse, imprison or even kill Palestinian associates, friends and relatives in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
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Rabidly Zionist
FrontPage and Dafka articles of course claim Palestinians really wanted to plan terrorist activities. However, having seen these IDF-t-shirt wearing types show up to intimidate Palestinians at an Israel divestment talk where Palestinians spoke, I certainly understand why Al-Awda opted for a private hotel where they could better protect their members from intimidation. See photo I took at that event, and a photo from commercial site selling such t-shirts.
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The World Says No to Israeli Occupation! June 10-11 Mobilization in Washington, DC is putting up a few dozen of these posters inside the metro stations to educate the public. Portrayed is a Palestinian child having to negotiate a tank to get to school.

StandWithUs.Com, a rabid pro-Zionist organization, put up its own advertisements painting Palestinian children as potential terrorists. Of course, the truth is that the Israelis teach their children the Palestinians are inferior and prepare them from an early age to accept compulsory military service where their duties are to keep Arabs safely imprisoned in defacto concentration camps. (Thus the charge the posters are racist.) So it's hardly surprising that some percentage of Palestinians are driven to take up arms to defend themselves from such aggression. Nor is it surprising they encourage their children to commit to the struggle.

What's really sad is that the Israelis have created such conditions for Palestinians that even some of the most committed pacifists consider Palestine to be one of the few instances where the people have a right to engage in armed struggle! The responsibility lies first and foremost on Israel to stop its oppression and withdraw from all land illegally confiscated since 1948.
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People sometimes ask me why I sympathize so much with the Palestinian cause. My top reasons are: that Israel is the only nation with a "Samson Option" of threatening to launch nuclear attacks on Arab, European and even Russian cities if Israel suffers too great of loses in trying to hold on to all the land it has stolen; that if the U.S.'s great ally nukes Russia, Russia will nuke America; that the Israel lobby viciously stifles American citizens' criticism of U.S. aid to Israel and involvement in Israeli wars; that the Iraq war and any Iran war are waged in part for the sake of Israel; that Israelis and supporters hypocritically claim the Nazi genocide against Jews ("The Holocaust") actually excuses ethnic cleansing, shutting millions into defacto concentration camps, long term incarceration of dissidents, and random killings of innocents.
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However, I apply to Israel the same principles I apply to all political entities. They have a right to self-determination and to create their own state on their own private property, as long as they do not force their state on others. Of course, in 1948 the United Nations gave Israel control of a great deal of land they did not genuinely buy or settle and control of a bare minority of people who had no desire to be controlled by them. Israelis then took even more land and drove more than 700,000 people from their lands and homes. See various ideas for Israel-Palestine confederations -- some within a radical decentralist framework -- at
Secession.Net.
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Norman Finkelstein, Professor of Political Theory at DePaul University, is son of survivors of Nazi genocide. He has been exposing the truth about Israel's aggression on the Palestinians, the misuse of anti-Semitism to intimidate those who criticize Israel and its supporters, and those who exploit the Holocaust for political and financial gain. He is currently being attacked by Alan Dershowitz and other supporters of Israeli aggression during tenure proceedings at DePaul University. See the Solidarity page: sign the general Petition; sign the student petition. See more Carlos Latuff creative commons cartoons like Finkelstein standing up to the IDF below.

Antiwar.Com and Ron Paul Kick Giuliani's Butt

I've been meaning to mention my favorite webpage, visited daily, Antiwar.Com, and Ron Paul's great job making the rest of the Republicans look like fools for supporting the U.S. (imperialist) interventionist policy. Today Justin Raimondo on Antiwar.Com's blog is so great I'll just reproduce it in whole here. If there's one blog you visit everyday besides this one, make it Antiwar.Com's blog.
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Ron Paul vs. Rudy “The Thug” Giuliani
Tuesday, May 15th in
News by Justin Raimondo
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In response to Ron Paul’s reasonable and informed contention that our interventionist foreign policy created the “blowback” that gave rise to Al Qaeda, and 9/11, Rudy Giuliani burbled “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that!”
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Of course he hasn’t heard it: he’s so busy pandering to the worst instincts of
red-state fascists Republicans, calling for a national ID card, and drooling at the thought of torture that he has no time for a reality-based assessment of American foreign policy. That bullying would-be Mafia don, who looks and acts like someone out of “The Sopranos,” demanded that Ron Paul “withdraw his remarks and tell us he didn’t mean it.” Paul’s answer,
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“I believe the CIA is correct when it warns us about blowback. We overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and their taking the hostages was the reaction. This dynamic persists and we ignore it at our risk. They’re not attacking us because we’re rich and free, they’re attacking us because we’re over there.”

In effect: screw you, Rudy!
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As even the dumbos over at FreeRepublic.com acknowledge, Rep. Paul is factually correct. Bin Laden’s fatwa gave his reasons for the attack, and the savaging of Iraq — pre-invasion — is front-and -center..

Saturday, May 12, 2007

"Jericho" Conspiracy vs. World Trade Center Attack 1993

In a November 29, 2007 blog entry I speculated about the "conspiracy theory" behind CBS television drama series Jericho. In this show more than a dozen mysterious nuclear explosions take out major American cities - including Washington D.C. where I live - but since the attack is well short of full blown nuclear war it is assumed of terrorist nature. (It's not explained why the U.S. doesn't strike back at nuclear powers like Russia and China, as it surely would just to show "who's still the man.")
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After watching the episode where food aid pallets dropped from Chinese transport planes, including leaflets from "our Chinese friends," I speculated that it would be an anti-corporate conspiracy theory:
American elites, totally in hock to China, decide to "sell America" to the Chinese for their own benefit. They do so by working with military elites with their own selfish agenda who explode a dozen or so bombs.
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Well, a few weeks back a character working under-cover for a U.S. spy agency revealed the truth to another character: the anarchists, right-wing militias and radical fundamentalist Christians got together and did it!
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Pardon me while I guffaw!
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Sure some Cheney or Wolfowitz or Richard Perle character might pull the strings and rope in a half dozen representatives of each of the three groups, but it's still pretty far fetched. Much as I enveigle against black bloc street violence, gun nuts itching to fight the federal government and radical fundamentalist Christians who want to start an apocalypse to "hurry up god," I wouldn't demonize them by making them the the villains in a drama where they allegedly work together. Of course, neither do I deny that the Fundamentalist Apocalyptic in the White House currently may be waiting for god to direct him to push the button and bring it on!
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What's less far-fetched is one major way the U.S. government has been catching "terrorists" the last few years - finding angry people, sending in personable and effective government provocateurs, and ENTRAPPING them into committing some minor crime, which is the pretext for a major prosecution for criminal conspiracy. And, of course, the government reaps the benefits. See articles about accusations of entrapment in the Toledo Terrorists, the Sears Tower and Liberty City incidents, and now the alleged planned Fort Dix terror attacks.
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In the Jericho story,
the government was supposed to foil the attacks, but the conspirators moved up the deadline so only one nuke was saved. (Buried now in the informant's garage in the middle of Kansas.)
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Shades of the 1993 World Trade Center attack?
When the government gets a real informant in a group self-motivated to commit a terrorist attack, it has been known to screw up. Most notoriously in 1993.
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According to an October 28, 1993 front page
New York Times article the FBI knew well in advance of the plans due to the activities of undercover informant Emad Salem. "Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast."
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Of course, what may be scariest of all, is that I could find no information on the Internet about what I'm quite sure happened next. (Though at my leisure I'll look at my saved articles to confirm it.) The FBI and Salem quarreled over money. He quit, but later went back to work. As I'm sure I remember it: Just in time to drive the truck into the World Trade Center, hurry out, get an eardrum broken by the blast, go to the hospital -- and bill the government later for his care.
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Did I dream this or did this bit of trivia about government irresponsibility go down the memory hole? If anyone reads this and bugs me about it, I'll pull out the articles. I couldn't find the trial transcripts of the convicted co-conspirators online. Hmm, wonder if they are now classified government security information??

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Cartoon: AIPAC versus Peace Activists on Iran

Below is a cartoon by the well known Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff dramatizing the Israel Lobby's interference in U.S. foreign police. Israel and its U.S. lobby, including its leading force the American Israel Political Affairs Committee [AIPAC], have been lobby for war against Iran since before the Iraq war.
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See
StopIranWar YahooGroup Professor Gary Leupp wrote in Counterpunch in February in an article entitled "An American Strike on Iran is Essential for Our Existence"- AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran: ...the American Israel Political Action Committee is the main political force urging---indeed, demanding---U.S. action. Now, as Israeli calls for a U.S. attack on Iran become more shrill by the day, AIPAC recognizes that the American people profoundly distrust Vice President Cheney and the nest of neocon liars he has sheltered...We are perhaps arriving at a critical point in the history of the powerful Lobby, including its capacity to intimidate honest, critically reasoning people who do not embrace its fears, prejudices and preoccupations.
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Yet in April, AIPAC bullied the house and senate into removing from Iraq funding bills any requirements President Bush receive congressional funding for war against Iran. described in an April 23, 2007 David Corn article Trying to Stay Out of Iran in The Nation: In a recent speech AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr said that legislation restricting Bush's options would be "a sign of weakness." Asked if he can point to a political fight lost by AIPAC recently, Representative Larson replied, "Not to my recollection."

The cartoon can be used on web pages or in publications with the following copyright info. This work is "Creative Commons" Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License. For more information and other examples of Latuff's cartoons see: http://latuff2.deviantart.com/

Satyagraha vs. "Keeping Your Mouth Shut"

The sign in the photo reads: "Our babies are not your cannon fodder." Needless to say, the woman holding it was a popular subject of photographers at the 2006 Mother's Day peace protest in Lafayette Park.
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The Bush administration wishes this woman and all of us activists would keep our mouths shut about war and violence. At some point they may have to declare martial law to shut us up, lock us out, reject, marginalize and discredit us - especially should they bomb Iran. But we will, of course, fight back, speaking our truth, nonviolently.
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See photos and videos of DC Activists asserting their truth and refusing to shut up.
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"Satyagraha" means “truth force”-- asserting what is true no matter how much the powers that be, in the larger world or in our smaller social or political circles, forbid it and even rage against it, saying KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. Satyagraha means it's better to speak your truth, even clumbsily or angrily, than be silent. It is different from duragraha which is protest with insufficient attempt to reach a deeper level of truth or touch the conscience of the opponent!
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FIGHTING PATRIARCHY
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Thinking more about my my new email address, fightpatriarchy@carolmoore.net. Some people think my former one - "endviolence" - means "keep quiet" and "never criticize." So I adopted something more appropriate to Gandhian principles - don't be afraid to fight!
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What is war and militarism but organized violence that allows those with a patriarchal mindset to conquer and hold reluctant territories and achieve economic and political dominance?
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Mother's Day in the U.S. actually was started by Julia Ward Howe who organized a Mother's Day march for peace and disarmament in Boston after the Civil War. Increasingly feminists are using the day to remind women to fight the patriarchal institutions of war and militarism.
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One facet of patriarchal militarism is the renewal in the U.S. of mostly male street violence (aka "black bloc diversity of tactics") that developed after the "battle of Seattle" of 1999. The strategy admitted by some at the time was: at big nonviolent protests provoke police through property destruction and throwing things at police so that they will riot against nonviolent activists, thus "radicalizing liberals." That innocents, especially women with small children, were most likely to be hurt by such violence was a concern mocked by these "street fighters." While activists have mellowed since the September 11 attack, the street fighting ideology still infects small segments of progressive movements.
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Worse, its existence makes it easy for police provocateurs posing as activists to provoke police to violence. Some claim this is just what happened during the May 1, 2007 MacArthur Park Los Angeles police riot against immigrants. See my blog entry below.
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Because I was upset about the way so many nonviolent activists were bullied into keeping quiet about their opposition to street violence, a couple years back I wrote an e-book called THE RETURN OF STREET FIGHTING MAN. I'll be turning into a publishing-on-demand book and a video soon.
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PROTECTING WOMEN AND CHILDREN
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I certainly believe women must be encouraged to speak up when it comes to protecting the welfare and lives of women and children, in street protests and in interpersonal affairs. We must speak up even if that means some popular or powerful men must be embarrassed. You can't build true solidarity by silencing those who speak out to protect women and children.
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I continue to promote a nonviolent, anti-militarist radical decentralist and secessionist revolution. See my article on the interconnection of nonviolence and radical political decentralism. Or my site WhatWouldGandhiDo.Net.
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And my article Woman v. the Nation State about how women and children especially would benefit from such a society. At the end of the article is a letter from then-MS. Magazine editor Robin Morgan stating that many feminists agreed with me!
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See my site Secession.Net. It would be great if women led such a decentralist revolution, making sure it was a nonviolent one. We don't need another civil war, but between the right wing militias, left wing street fighters and military and police, we might get one!
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It's probably not yet time to start a radical decentralist feminist secessionist network, but maybe some day!