Remember Mario Savio?
The current horrors will not be stopped by politicians and/or lawyers.
Those efforts were tried unsuccessfully during the Vietnam era, which
you may be too young to remember. They will never work today despite
wonderful analytical essays, websites, conferences, etc.
Here is a little history from a guy turning 90 this year: There was a "dress rehersal" for Vietnam around 20 years earlier in Korea that somewhat affected my own life. All "civilized" efforts and actions to stop the massive bloodshed in Vietnam failed utterly. Jim Rhodes (Gov. of Ohio, guy whose Sunday NY Times was saved by me where I worked on weekends, who was then State Auditor and spent lots of time chatting with me at the store's soda counter, whom I considered to be a marginally intelligent largely uneducated clod) called out the Ohio National Guard that shot 5 students at Kent State University, where there was only a small anti-war demonstration. Believe it or not, the public was overwhelmingly against the students, not the Guard. The war went on. The famous Peace Symbol was viewed as despicable. Given that atmosphere, how in heck could that war be brought to an end? But it was, and here is how that happened:
College students held military draft cards. When any war protest arose they were happy to support it. Many fled to Canada to avoid being drafted and sent to the jungles of Vietnam. The antiwar protest was a campus centered thing, beginning at the Univ. of Wisconsin, it spread to the large state colleges, and then to Berkeley in CA, Columbia in NYC, and elsewhere. Christian clerics became outspoken protesters, throwing animal blood around a draft board office. People chained themselves to columns of govt. bldgs in DC, riots erupted and violence (against property, not humans) erupted throughout the country.
That is what really ended the war. VIOLENCE AND LOTS OF IT. I left my job, taking earned vacation time, in NYC to return to my college (Ohio State Univ., in Columbus, Ohio), growing a ponytail, and joined the kids. There used to be a photo of me online with a burning police car in the background (maybe it is still there, I might search for it). Of course, nice consertive Americans were horrified and unsupportive. BUT IT STOPPED THE WAR. Here is why:
Every year a bill came up in Congress to fund the war. It was euphemistically titled something like "funding for aid to S. Vietnam". Guess what! When then President Ford sent it back for signing, he was shocked and amazed that the politicians (although compromized as ever) declined to sign it and there was no more money to continue the war. Simple as that.
You might wonder, why did the guys in Congress not sign the bill, as usual? Here is the simple truth: THEY WERE TERRIFIED TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMES IF THEY SIGNED IT. Their hometowns were partially ablaze. We did that. VIOLENCE STOPPED THE BLOODSHED, not philosophy, peace marches, essays (The NY Review of Books had great anti-war articles by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others, most of which the average rioter never read). car signs, T-shirts, etc. Without the VIOLENCE who knows how much further and longer the Pentagon might have gone?
You have the idea. Push www.bigeye.org/internet.htm
We don't need petitions, a vote, more talk, etc. In fact, that just encourages the bastards, letting them know that all is well for them. We need to do the job through online recruitment and positive action regardless of what others think or say. There are enough persons using the internet today that when our program becomes unacceptable to the usual suspects we will have provided the seeds for massive organized resistance. Perhaps violence (against property only) will be unnecessary. However, remember the Vietnam era. Look up the speech by Mario Savio in California. It is applicable again today.
Note: Just so you don't have to look it up, here are Mario's closing remarks:
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
Are YOU going to help us? www.bigeye.org/internet.htm
xxx