Democrats: Time to Stand Up to Obama! No War on Syria!

I'm glad to see Warren and McGovern putting up resistance to a US attack on Syria, but I cringe to see them conceding - with no good evidence, against all reason and logic, and ignoring the evidence that the "rebels" were responsible for the gas attack in April - that the Assad regime was responsible for those poison gas attacks and needs to be held accountable.

I guess they just don't dare call out President Obama.

We have a week to stop the Obama Administration  from making an awful mistake with disastrous consequences, for Syria, the Middle East and perhaps the US and the world, a mistake that will probably cost the lives of thousands of American servicemen and women before the smoke clears, and that is opposed by a broad majority of the American people.

We need to speak plainly.  President Obama and Senator Kerry are lying to us. They intend to plunge us into a new war of aggression, based on their lies. This is no different from what the Bush Administration did in Iraq.

The members of President Obama's Party need to say so.  They need to stand up to him and tell him loud and clear that he's run out of free passes.  

We, the American people, Independent, Republican and Democrat, Black brown and white, young and old, native born and immigrant, prosperous and poor, have repeatedly said "no" to the pollsters.

Now we have a week  to come together and send Obama a a mighty shout of "NO!!!" that he can't ignore!

Revolution Day 2

As a result of my publishing about Revolution Day I have been made aware of a group of historians and history students in Worcester who have met about the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774 recently, including a meeting with Ray Raphael.  Reportedly some are excited about the project but no one is able to take the lead.  Let me know and I'll put you in touch with them.

Email Chris at WorcesterUnemployed@gmail.com

Revolution Day, Sept. 6: Occupy the Revolution!

Another year has gone by, and there will be no celebration of Revolution Day on Sept. 6, 2013.  Which is a shame, because the people really need that story!

Will there be a celebration on the 240'th anniversary of the Worcester Revolution, on Sept. 6 2014?  That may depend on you!

You can read the story in The First American Revolution, before Lexington and Concord, Ray Raphael, The New Press, New York, 2002.

You might want to  read this book:

#  If you love history and don't know about the Massachusetts Revolution of 1774;
#  If you've ever wondered why the American Revolution, our Revolution, looked so different from everyone else's revolutions;
#  If the story that the Revolution was a war never made sense to you;
#  If the story that our Revolution was led by leading citizens - by merchants and bankers and guild-masters - ever puzzled or troubled you;
#  If the story that our Revolution was a conspiracy hatched in back rooms and attics ever troubled you;
#  If the story that the Minutemen were an armed conspiracy, that they rose up on call to overthrow the government and make a revolution, ever troubled you;
#  If you thought that the biggest thing that happened in Worcester during the Revolution was that George Washington slept here, and you'd love to find out different;
#  If it ever troubled you that almost no one from outside Massachusetts has ever heard of Worcester -  the second-largest city in New England - or even knows how to pronounce it, and you'd like to see it put back on the map;
#  Or even if you're just tired of always hearing about what happened in Boston in 1774 and 1775, and are curious about what was going on in the rest of the state.

This book is important not just for history buffs, but for all of us, and never more so than now.

People live out of their stories, and we need this story, now.  And the official story we were taught about the American Revolution is seriously holding us back and leading us astray in dangerous ways.

Our economy and political system continue to collapse.  The level of corruption in high places continues to explode, indeed it has become the system.  Ever more of our wealth gets poured into foreign wars. The destruction of our environment accelerates and grows ever more outrageous. The great banks and corporations continue their leveraged buyout of our cities and towns, our homes and schools, as they suck the real economy dry.  The government becomes ever more intrusive and controlling, and speaking the truth has become a crime - even treason!

The people are watching these things, and the conviction has grown in the hearts of millions that we need a revolution.  But what does that mean?  What is a revolution?  Most people go to "peasants with pitchforks", "storming the Bastille", or rising up in gun in hand to fight the tyrants, and then back away.  If a revolution is a war, who can blame them?

But the Revolution we learned about, the one whose images flash in our minds, wasn't the actual revolution!  That official story starts with the Revolutionary War, the war to defend the revolution, that began with the British attempt to re-take its lost province of Massachusetts by force.  That story leaves out the revolution itself!

Ray Raphael has uncovered and written a first installment on the story of the Massachusetts Revolution, a revolution that looked much more like Occupy than like the Tea Party or the militia movements!  If you're a historian, there is certainly much more to do!  The revolution of 1774 happened in every part of Massachusetts.  Perhaps in every part of New England.  Much of the story still lies buried and undiscovered in town archives, one-room museums and family albums, waiting to be woven together into a larger narrative.

And we, the American people, need that story!  We really need that story!  We need it to be the new American Story, the tale we tell each other about that critical juncture, the Revolution, that shaped who we are and how we got here.  We need that story to help guide us into our future!

And we need someone who loves history and understands it's importance to step forward and organize a celebration for Sept. 6, 2014, the 240th anniversary of the Worcester Revolution.  It's none too soon to start that work now!

Every part of Massachusetts could be involved in this commemoration, not just Worcester.  And every part has its own special day, when the local citizens stood up to the British-imposed dictatorship of General Gage and shut it down!

Can you take the lead?  Yes you.  You found your way to this blog and you're reading this.  Does it call to you?  Does it feel really important to you?

Could you make the time for it if you had to?

One person who has the time, energy and will and who understands or senses its importance can make this happen.

Or, maybe it won't happen, because you didn't do it!  It could have happened last year or the year before or the year before that, but it didn't.  The time was ripe, but no one stepped up to make it happen.

I can't.  My plate is full.  But I'll be delighted to support a volunteer to take the lead, and glad to hook you up with the people I know who have an interest.  Ray Raphael will be delighted too I'm sure!

And I'll be thrilled to join you on that day, Sept. 6, 2014, when the first crowd comes together around this event since maybe 1830 or 1840, and We the People start to take our story back and celebrate it!

Whose City?  Our City?

Whose State?  Our State!

Whose Country?  Our Country!

Whose Revolution?  Our Revolution!

 

Roll back the Sequester! Break the "Golden Handcuffs" and speak out!

Re: Head Start cuts will devastate kids

By Dianne Williamson

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130901/COLUMN01/309019950

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Thanks for your column, Dianne.  Spot on.

These heartless Sequesters - automatic across-the-board cuts to the Federal budget - will hit and hurt almost everyone at one point or another.  Schools, highways, police and fire protection, local, state or Federal, almost everything will take one trim after another.  For some, the poor and people in trouble - it will be devastating.  For the rest of us, it's death by 1000 cuts.

The Sequester was passed by Congress to "force itself" to reach a compromise around deficit reduction.

Read: force itself to cut and/or privatize Social Security and Medicare, two of the most sound and successful - and popular - programs the Federal Government has.

The Big Money boys dream of being able to get ahold of those funds and milk them.  As the rest of the economy continues to sink into a tired puddle, thanks in part to idiocies like the Sequester, their hunger for any remaining streams of revenue they can capture becomes ever more urgent.

Everyone who is being or knows they will be hit by the Sequester needs to get together in one big "De-sequestration" movement, demanding NO MORE CUTS!  ROLL IT BACK!

That's probably everyone who is reading this comment, if you really stop and take count of everything you rely on or are counting on government for.

The people who have the clearest up-close view of what these cuts are doing are the "social service providers" who work in the many public, semi-public and grant-funded agencies and programs providing vital services.  They need to speak out!

It's time for you to challenge the rules that bar you from participating in politics, the "golden handcuffs" that keep you silent.  Time to stop watching helplessly as our civil society collapses around us.  Because what is happening is so very wrong, and laws that keep you from speaking out about it are so wrong!

You - the social service providers, including directors and administrators - need to be leading this De-Sequestration movement!  If enough of you speak out together, the laws will bend!

Syria: Amazing Moment, Opportunity - and Danger!

The headline reads: 

Obama seeking congressional OK for Syria action

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130831/NEWS/308319761

……………………………...

This is actually pretty amazing, and a great gift - not a change of heart, but rather an opening created by the pressure of worldwide opposition to an open US attack on Syria!  I can't recall any other instance where popular revulsion has actually forced a delay to a war!

That gives us a week to organize a huge "No!" that Congress can't ignore! 

Obama, who had committed to an attack on Syria this weekend, was seriously in a corner, With Congress demanding a voice, the UN backing away, the British Parliament voting to reject military action, France's Holande promising to put the issue to the Chamber of Deputies, Even the Arab League is jumping ship.  All this was driven by widespread opposition to war among the US public, and by a global wave of popular revulsion at what is widely seen as a war of terror against the Syrian people and nation. 

Obama's job was to deliver the American public for this war, or at least to legitimize it.  It looks as though his inner circle has given him more time to pull it off.  Since Congress has never failed to support starting a war, no matter how unnecessary, Obama and his handlers may feel safe with waiting a week for their war.  But that gives us a week to organize a huge resounding NO from the people, and translate it into a NO Vote in Congress!  

This is not a left/right or Red/Blue issue. Opposition to this war cuts across all party and ideology lines.  So reach out to everyone!

And let's let our Rep. Jim McGovern, who's stepped way out front on this, that we've got his back! 

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One warning on that however: By conceding Syrian government guilt in the gas attack - without good evidence and against all logic, the anti-war Democrats in Congressare leaving the door open for something even more terrible to happen.  

If the gas attack was done (as seems likely) by some party that wants the US to attack Syria, and if Congress now fails to authorize that attack, the perps will know that if they can set off Sarin bombs in New York or Paris, the Obama Administration will blame Syria and launch the war without further ado, and Congress, having already conceded Assad's guilt, will be unable to resist.

Our Representatives and Senators need to stand on the ground that 

a) there is no good proof that the Assad government is guilty of the gassing; and 

b) even if it's proven, bombing Syria is still a terrible idea.  

Claim "a" could put them in the position of calling Obama a "non-truth teller", and he is sadly the leader of their (and my) Party.  But saving our country from what could quickly turn into a terrible disaster may require nothing less!

Syria War Fever

People, Get a grip!  Those blobs of protoplasm behind our eyes are our brains.  Our own brains.  We still own them. Now is the time to re-claim and use them!

We don't really know who did what in Syria, do we?  Yet listening to the pronouncements and threats of presidents and officials, it's so easy to get swept up in feelings of certainty and righteousness, unity and power!  Even the most anti-war Democrats, as usual, are conceding that Assad is guilty of this terrible crime, and are trying to guide or slow the flood while being swept away in it!

It's like we've been injected with a drug, like we're high on war fever, a herd mentality. It feels good, exciting, something maybe we've been missing.  All our worries about our lives get pushed aside, like we're at at a great Red Sox game, roaring together, and shame on anyone rooting for the Yankees!

But how is that different from a giant organized lynch mob?

Somebody did something terrible, someone has to pay for it, and our fearless leaders (who may or may not have had something to do with it) have declared the verdict and the sentence and are prepared to carry out the execution, all without a shred of real evidence.

All we have to do is give them cover by joining in the baying mob.

All we have to do is surrender our brains.  And then spend the next ten years making excuses for our part in what happened - which will be at best 100 times worse than that gas attack!

Or we can shake ourselves out of it now, start challenging all those implanted thoughts, messages, cues and impulses that are driving us toward the cliff together, and re-occupy our brains!

Whose brains?  Our brains!

Syria War Powers Debate

This war powers debate again reveals the shredding of the left-right polarization of America as enshrined in the Democratic and Republican Parties.  There is a huge top-bottom divide that has not been captured or embraced by the Democrats, and a growing divide between supporters and opponents of the Empire that cuts right across party lines.  At moments like this we can see glimpses of a grand realignment of American politics, of the American people, struggling to be born, 

But to successfully stand up to the globalists and Empire Builders we will have to our minds from their manipulations - and War and Terror are their strongest cards.

-Q wrote "It takes a Democratic President to actually stand up for what our great country stands for giving the most vulnerable amongst us throughout the world a glimmer of hope......reagan/bush offered nothing but abandonment and death...."  

Stirring words, but the time is past for "... a glimmer of hope."  We can't live on glimmers.  And the last Democratic presidents who actually tried to go beyond that glimmer thing and challenge the empire builders, Kennedy and Carter, were destroyed for it.

What is keeping us divided and impotent is the control the spin-masters have over the words, ideas and facts we use.  This debate over Syria is a case in point.

There is strong evidence that the "rebels" had the means to carry out this gas attack and indeed have done it before.  Logically, the only reason anyone would do this now is to provoke a US attack.  Yet we let the likes of Kerry pronounce guilt on Assad and then debate what our response should be. 

If we let these warmongers and their shills define reality, if we limit our debate to the "facts" they feed us - such as this verdict against Syria - we will not be able to find solid ground on which to stand and we'll get swept into new disasters.  

To regain our place as a free and sovereign people we must free our minds and emotions from their control.