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SOCIALIST ACTION
The Democratic and Republican parties are both representatives of the ruling rich – the tiny circle of the ultra-wealthy who control our society by virtue of possessing the wealth we have created over the course of generations. These capitalists and their representatives are constitutionally incapable of offering a solution to the crises created by their system. They can only take more flesh off our hides, imprison and deport more of us, invade yet more countries, and intensify the destruction of our communities and our planet.
Their system is driven by the hunger for profits and organized by the chaos of markets. That which does not produce profits is of no consequence to them. When profit cannot be obtained, wealth will not be put to any use. When they run out of the means to extract profits their whole contraption seizes up or bursts. Socialist Action opposes the right of this tiny minority to rule society. We advocate the democratic rule of the majority organized on the basis of human need instead of profit. We are campaigning in support of a mass united movement of working people to fight for our common needs.
We call for placing the biggest banks and corporations under public ownership through democratic workers committees. This will allow working people to organize the economy in the interests of human need. We can eliminate military spending and massive waste in other sectors like marketing, bureaucracy, redundancy, and speculation. We can create full employment and shorten our work hours while increasing pay. We can reorganize the economy to rapidly slow the climate crisis by reducing world carbon emissions by 90% in a matter of years. Working people at the helm can do all this and much more.
Get Out Of The Military
Peace-Out "You can get out of the military as a conscientious objector, even if you enlisted... Here's how"
For more, see Military Draft
War on Terror?
"...war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms" (Howard Zinn. "Why War Fails." The Progressive, Nov. 2006: 14-15).
No Free Market in US
"We do not have free market capitalism in America; we have crony capitalism" (David Kupfer. "[Interview with] Robert F. Kennedy Jr." The Progressive, Nov. 2006: 33-36).
Capitalism is a disease of society
""Capitalism is a social cancer," he argued. "It is the disease of society"...
"His magnum opus was the Ecology of Freedom (1982). "The domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human," he wrote. "The long-term solution to the ecological crises is a fundamental shift in how we organise society, a new politics based on face-to-face democracy, neighborhood assemblies and 'the dissolution of hierarchy'"....more
Lack of Patriotism
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." - Hermann Goering in Nuremberg where he was found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.
Mad As Hell About
Paying For the War?
Just raise your deductions so that you are having nothing taken out of your paycheck. It will deny the government money for the year and you earn the interest. Or, see one of these websites:
Peace Tax Fund
Peace Tax Return
The Property Party
"I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party--the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democratic and the other is Republican" (David Barsamian. "Gore Vidal." The Progressive, August 2006: 36). [more]
US Profligate
"If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us" (Ben Blanchard, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061024/ts_nm/environment_wwf_planet_dc&printer=1, 10/25/06). [more]
Bush
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." (H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)). [more]
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (George Orwell). [More]
The European Dream
"The European Dream emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power" [more]
The Patriot Act
"William Safire.. defined the first Patriot Act as a presidential effort to seize dictatorial control" (Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Stories, 39). [more]
The Funeral Industry
Morticians are "merchants of a rather grubby order (13)... they have... perpetrate[d] a huge, macabre, and expensive practical joke on the American public (The American Way of Death Revisited, 14) [more]
9/11
"If U.S. intelligence agencies did not see the attack coming it was because they were told not to look.. the Bush administration blocked key investigations into allegations that top Saudi Arabian royals and some members of the bin Laden family, not just Osama, funded and supported Al-Quaeda and other terrorist organizations" (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, 92). [more]
Christopher Columbus
"Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass" (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong 60). [more].
The Politics of Fear
"Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer recently extolled a BBC film by Adam Curtis titled The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear. The three-hour documentary argues that the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy htat has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians"--mainly [U.S.] Administration neocons seeking to consolidate their power. The documentary does not deny that there are radical Islamic terrorist groups; but Curtis told Katrina vanden Heuvel that "the terrify-sleeper cells across the world is largely a fantasy"... He said America "has become trapped by that fear." The film was well received in England, but US networks have turned it down" ("The Documentary They Won't Show." The Nation, Feb. 21, 2005: 8). [ more on terrorism].
9/11 Result of Our Actions
"...Ward Churchill, a prof at the University of Colorado... making the simple point... that "if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned"
"That piece was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens... Churchill wrote recently, "it is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center... converted the Trade Center itself into a 'legitimate' target"...
"...infamous bombing of the Amariya civilian shelter in Baghdad in January 1991, with 400 deaths, almost all women and children, all subsequently identified and named by the Iraqis. To this day the US government says it was an OK target.
"Churchill concludes, "If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these 'standards' when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them... According to Pentagon logic, [they] were simply part of the collateral damage...
"Why should Churchill apologize for anything? Is it a crime to say that chickens can come home to roost and that the way to protect American lives from terrorism is to respect international law?" (Alexander Cockburn. "Ward Churchill and the Mad Dogs of the Right." The Nation, Feb. 21, 2005: 9).
SUVs and Hummers
"For the truly self-centered person who cares nothing about hurting other people in crashes, obscuring other drivers' views of the road, making smog worse and contributing to global warming... such drivers need to be aware that they are not improving their own safety, and must endure the aggravation of driving a vehicle that is harder to drive and harder to park than a car" (Keith Bradsher. High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, p. 449). [more]
The REAL Agenda of ProLife
"...both Merck and GlaxoSmithKline recently announced that they have conducted successful trials of vaccines that protect against the human papilloma virus. HPV is not only an incredibly widespread sexually transmitted infection but is responsible for at least 70 percent of cases of cervical cancer...
"The Christian right doesn't like the sound of this vaccine at all. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful," Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, "because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex"...
"What is it with these right wing Christians? Faced with a choice between sex and death, they choose death every time... Ah, Christian compassion! Christian sadism, more likely...
"As they flex their political muscle, right-wing Christians increasingly reveal their condescending view of women as moral children who need to be kept in line sexually by fear. That's why antichoicers will never answer the call of prochoicers to join them in reducing abortions by making birth control more widely available: They want it to be LESS available. Their real interest goes way beyond protecting fetuses--it's in keeping sex tied to reproduction to keep woemn in their place. If preventing abortion was what they cared about, they'd be giving birth control and emergency contraception away on street corners instead of supporting pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions and hospitals that don't tell rape victims about the existence of EC" (Katha Pollitt. "Virginity or death!" The Nation, May 30, 2005: 9).
The REAL Purpose of Torture
"The fear is even thicker among Muslims in the United States where the Patriot Act gives police the power to seize the records of any mosque, school, library or community group on mere suspicion of terrorist links. When this intense surveillance is paired with the ever-present threat of torture, the message is clear: You are being watched, your neighbor may be a spy, the government can find out anything about you. If you misstep, you could disappear onto a plane bound for Syria, or into "the deep dark hole that is Guantanamo Bay"...
"This is torture's true purpose: to terrorize--not only the people in Guantanamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more important, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist--the individual prisoner's will and the collective will...
"Yet despite this body of knowledge, torture continues to be debated in the United States as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information, not an instrument of state terror. But there's a problem: No one claims that torture is an effective interrogation tool--least of all the people who practice it. Torture "doesn't work. There are better ways to deal with captives," CIA director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 16. And a recently declassified memo written by an FBI official in Guantanamo states that extreme coercion produced "nothing more than what FBI got using simple investigative techniques." The Army's own interrogation field manual states that forece "can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."
"And yet the abuses keep on coming..." (Naomi Klein. "Torture's dirty secret: It works." The Nation, May 30, 2005: 10).
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