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What We Can And Must Do
By Bev Conover
Editor & Publisher
Online Journal
1-6-4


People constantly ask us for solutions to the nightmare we find ourselves in, as if we could wave a magic wand and make it disappear. There is no magic wand. There is only resolve, commitment, risk and hard work.

Collectively, we the people hold the power. But holding the power means nothing if you don't exercise it and it is the exercising of it that the Bush regime and the corporations are bent on preventing you from doing. And by not exercising it, you not only are acquiescing in your own enslavement, but in whatever evil they are bent on perpetrating.

We have a bogus president who used bogus attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to declare a bogus war on terrorism, and who has rained down death and destruction on two sovereign nations - Afghanistan and Iraq - for bogus reasons. If you let him, his corporate cohorts or even his possible replacement get away with this, they will rain death and destruction down on us and more sovereign nations for more bogus reasons.

We must take Stan Goff's sage advice and immediately draw a line in the sand - and that line is the demand that our troops be brought home now!

The operative word is demand. To be sure, we'll hear excuses - whether they come from Bush, his successor or the Democrats who support illegal wars in the quest for empire - as to why this cannot be done. But we must hold to that demand as the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era did, until we arouse enough Americans to the evil being perpetrated in our name for the benefit of the corporations who want to profit from grabbing other peoples' fossil fuels and rebuilding the infrastructure we destroy, and for the benefit of their political hacks who dream of a global American empire. Profit and empire is what it is all about. This is what the lives of our troops, British troops and the troops of the handful of other nations Bush has bribed and bullied into joining his "coalition of the willing" are being sacrificed for, along with the lives of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis.

Peak oil and gas are staring us in our faces, folks. And these monsters in Washington and the boardrooms have no intention of sharing what is left of these precious energy resources with the rest of the world. Rather than admit the bleak future we are facing and instituting conservation measures to stave off that fateful day, they will kill and pillage to satisfy their and our gluttonous appetite for fossil fuels. Their only conservation effort is in figuring out how to rid the planet of several billion people in a way that most won't notice, while encouraging women to have babies that will serve as cannon fodder for their endless wars. Meanwhile, they will continue to brainwash people into believing that either God or science will provide alternative forms of energy to keep the engines of commerce turning. Not to worry, just keep shopping.

Crazy, you say? Our government wouldn't do that to us? That's what a number of so-called progressives said about Sept. 11, 2001. Yet, the neoconservatives had the audacity to publicly post a call for a "new Pearl Harbor" (see Rebuilding America's Defenses, Sept. 2000). And didn't the Bushies, many Congress critters and the corporate media jump on the "new Pearl Harbor" theme in the wake of 9/11? Didn't the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during John F. Kennedy's tenure, come up with a plan, code named Operation Northwoods, for perpetrating seemingly "terrorist" attacks on US soil and blaming them on the Cubans in order to con Americans into going to war against Cuba? Luckily, the Kennedy administration said no and JFK denied Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer another term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Nope, "our" government wouldn't do that to us. But it is "our" government that on the one hand is the world's biggest drug dealer, while on the other hand incarcerates petty drug pushers and users. The CIA uses illicit drug profits to finance all manner of madness, so is it surprising that after being told that the Taliban had curbed opium production in Afghanistan, that opium production is at an all-time high (forgive the pun) now that the US has "liberated" that country? Kind of neat, eh? Neater still are the private fortunes some of America's "best" families made by selling opium to the Chinese (and you thought that was all a British enterprise).

Now do you still think that "our" government wouldn't encourage and even coerce women to produce cannon fodder for the coming wars, and even use religious fundamentalists as cover in attempting to outlaw abortions and even trying to do away with contraceptives?

Are you foolish enough to believe that the trashing of our constitution, all the color-coded "terror" alerts, and all the "security" nonsense are really meant to keep us free and safer? Can you not see that this is nothing more than laying the groundwork for the next 9/11 the Bushies may pull in their desperation to hold on to their power and solidify their dictatorship? Did Bush not say several times that things would be easier if this were a dictatorship and he were the dictator? Has General Tommy Franks, now retired, not warned you that in the wake of another 9/11 the constitution (what is left of it) would be no more?

There is no tyrannical regime in history that matches the reach and weaponry of the bloody Bush II regime. So either we - for our sake and the world's - get rid of it or it will get rid of us. There is no place to hide.

Here is what we can and must do:

1. Our top priority is to retake control of our voting methods in order to have honest elections. The e-voting system is so compromised that we must demand paper ballots for the 2004 elections.

2. We must replace Bush, even though it is unlikely we will get much more than a slightly kinder approach to either the needs of Americans or in our dealings with the rest of the world.

3. We need a House and a Senate that serves the best interests of the people, not the corporations or the White House. If that means replacing 435 House members and the one-third of the Senate up for reelection this year, so be it.

4. We must form small community groups to wake up as many as possible of our aspartamed, fluoridated, chlorined, overvaccinated, overmedicated, brainwashed fellow Americans as possible. Go door-to-door, hold meet-ups, invite your friends and neighbors in for coffee, call them on the phone, print out factual information from the web and pass it out. Some may reject you along with what you have to say, but don't let that discourage you from carrying on.

5. Learn to distinguish which among the online publications and webcasts are truly laboring in your behalf and start to really support them financially, rather than giving your money to those that exist for self-aggrandizement with the hope of making money and those who are being financed by so-called progressive foundations that are merely covers for the same sources that are funding the neocons. News gathering takes money. Reporters have to eat, too. And there are many good reporters out there that would jump at a chance to do honest reporting. Yet, many online publishers and webcasters rock along on shoestrings - unable to pay themselves for the long hours they put in, much less pay anyone else - crossing their fingers that enough comes in to pay their monthly bills. How long would you work without pay? Yet, they do it because they believe that America needs an alternative to the corporate media.

6. Organize and resist in every way you can. Boycott your corporate enemies. Stay away from public gatherings where your person and belongings may be searched - not out of fear but because you will not subject yourself to such humiliation or be confronted by police armed with automatic rifles and wearing Darth Vader suits.

7. Hit them in the pocketbook in every possible way. This economy now depends on consumer spending to stay afloat. Let's sink it by spending as little as possible to bring the corporations to their knees. Things can't get much worse for the average working stiff than they are now. So the faster we bring it all down, the faster things will improve.

8. In groups of two and three, pay weekly visits to your Congress critters' local offices to politely demand that Bush and his regime be impeached. Also send letters to their Washington offices, but be polite while being firm in your demand. Do likewise in demanding that our troops be brought home now.

The power is yours, use it! Show the world that the Bush regime and its corporate buddies neither represent America nor speak for all Americans. Let the world know that we will not stoop to even wiping our shoes on these greedy and murderous monsters.

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