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Eight Years of Snazzy Signs, Nifty Slogans and Weekend Vigils Doesn't Hack It.

Message Rafe Pilgrim
(Note: My good and honorable friend, a dedicated and hard working advocate for peace and decent governance, for years a weekly demonstrator and pamphleteer, now is bent upon further exposing the 9-11 treachery with the idea that it will finally spark the citizens to demand peace and decent governance. This is my response to his conviction.)
Compadre:
9-11 is, of course, a treacherous historical fraud, perhaps contrived, but at the very least used as the excuse, the lie for what followed, that is the slaughter of a million-plus people, a national atrocity perhaps worse than the slaughter of America's indigenous peoples. We know this.
Your proposition appears to be that we should further expose this, that it could be the key for turning the tide against the war and sparking reform in the government. I fully agree in your ultimate objective. My issue relates to the how.
The peace movement is composed of some very fine people, some habitual hobbyists, and even a few exploiters who use it to elevate their personal situation, and who are self-immunized to criticism however constructive. This amorphous group, the good, the bad and the exploitative, has been doing its thing for seven or eight years, marching with signs, handing out pamphlets, holding meetings and writing in organs that very few others than ourselves read. And all of this has not worked for eight years. That's too long! It is time to do something different. Time to do something that makes an actual difference to stop the war and get to decent governance. Yet more of the same old idealistic shtick doesn't hack it!
We don't need more process, more signs, street corner vigils, more pamphlets. We need more action. The treacherous gang we are up against is not threatened by information, not by morality, fairness, truth and such, but only by actions that threaten their power and surface their cowardice.
Who is our enemy? A government of fraudulently "elected representatives" who persist to their own advantage. A sample of their monolithic self-serving interest was the recent senate vote --eight years after 9-11 -- to further support the War of Lies by a bi-partisan senate margin of 93 to 1 !
And that's where we are after eight years of signs, vigils and pamphlets! One lone vote in the senate !
I spent nine years in military intelligence. The mission of military intelligence is very simple and straightforward:Know your enemy. The question this begs of us is: Do we know our enemy? And the corollary is: Knowing our enemy, what can we do to counter its treacherous intentions?
A short summary of who our enemy is: As previously stated, our very own incumbent government, consisting of a president and vice president (both of which were fraudulently elected successively in 2000 and 2004) and also a so-called House of Representatives (which has bi-partisanly supported every budget for the War of Lies for eight years) and a Senate (which recently supported the War of Lies' budget by a vote of 93-1). These two institutions are reinforced by a large standing army stationed in 130 foreign countries as well as a domestic component to "protect" us against "civic disruption."Beyond the military there are the contracted soldiery of such as Blackwater, now Xe, and others, and an institutionalized civil service which, among other things, includes fourteen or fifteen so-called intelligence agencies which have proceduralized torture and other activities that cannot be revealed in order again to "protect" us. Next there are the Weapons business, as well as Big Pharma, Big Agri, Medibiz, et al who funnel billions upon billions into the coffers of our "elected" representatives to buy the government misbehavior that makes them prosper. Big money also owns and controls the major media with government complicity, a force which beggars our signs and pamphlets to wretched impotence. And then there is an electorate that consists of bionic and unreachable, moronic self-styled "patriots" who cannot and will not be swayed by any evidence or truth beyond their senseless emotionality, and then the biggest enemy of them all: an inert electorate which will not bestir itself in the face of however gross the treachery, nor even for its very own self-interest.
But: You and I already knew all this, didn't we? And it's really no secret that millions of others also know about all this. So, the issue that remains is what are we going to do that can possibly change this sorry state of affairs?
The truth -- or enough of the partially revealed truth -- is already known about 9-11. Will more signs and pamphlets actually catalyze the necessary changes to stop the prosperous (for some, including the government) war and magically present us with decent governance? Not a chance. Not a chance. Just ask the American Society of Architects and Engineers who from their prominent platform scientifically drilled holes in this particular bit of treachery years ago.
Compadre, I know that your intentions are good and honorable. You can also be assured that I respect them, and in fact I share them. That's one truth. Another truth is that our methods and institutions have not proved to be successful after eight years of struggle. We have emphasized truth, virtue, signs and pamphlets -- all to no honest actual advantage. It is time to try something else, something that can possibly reveal our treacherous masters for the cowards they are and to transform their behavior into doing the right thing for their own best interest, their own interest being the only thing they are capable to comprehend. We need, in short, to scare them into some semblance of decency.
After eight years, providence will offer us just so much more time to do our duty. If we fail, then other forces will prevail, those forces being (a) yet more rigid and enduring institutionalized treachery, or (b) revolution. No reasonable and merciful person would leap to embrace either of these alternatives and the horrors they presage.
I support a third option: Massive Passive and Enduring Presence at the Steps of Power.
This option lays aside the feckless signage and pamphlets and rejects violence while providing the attention, focus, publicity, sympathy, example of sacrifice and determination of our rightful cause, and more than anything else presents a threat to the powermeisters that their treachery may turn against them. Yes, "threat" is an ugly word, but it is the only force that will influence them to do other than pursue their own treacherous self-interest at our expense and humanity's.
In conclusion, after eight years of however noble endeavor which has gained us no real advantage against the treachery other than to display our own morality, I would vote to concentrate our energies and determination upon galvanizing the collection of a million-plus determined citizens on the Mall and there to remain (yes, weeks, months, whatever) until we have the Peace and are assured of decent governance.
I hope to see you there, Compadre, with a million others. It appears to be our last hope against more treachery and more bloodshed.
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Rafe Pilgrim, after "a life largely wasted on hard honest work," found himself a jungle of turkey oak, scrub pine and giant palmettos up a dirt road running east of Crystal River, Florida, which neither school busses nor the U.S. Postal Service dare (more...)
 
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