Defence is such a noble word. A good Public Relations word to cover up its proven use in the service of the Imperial Power – the acquisition of something that isn’t yours.
50,000 civilised years of developed language, organisation and sustainable development wiped out by greed, robbery, murder and Global catastrophe. We keep on dying, they keep on living, we keep on existing, surviving on laughter and lying to take away the pain of remembering. 2,600 years. 150 short generations of greed undermining peace. Civilisations? Defined as vast, centralised hierarchies that rob and enslave the people by force. Another definition is a System of Division, Privilege and Dispossession.
Pre-history shows humankind organised within a gentilic system where there was no motivation for division and every reason to co-operate in peace. Civilisation and the competition and War that it breeds appears to be, in the absence of a clear view of our pre-history, our human nature, our only human nature, the way things have always been. This lie is sustained through the continual efforts, right through to the present day to exterminate all the evidence of prior forms of human existence.
Competition for resources measures out exactly equal gain for the winner as loss for the loser. There is no progress, only continual robbery back and forth across 150 generations of slogging it out for gain and profit. Witness the Planet, poorer than ever. Why do people call it progress?
Co-operation, justice and genuine progress are available by problem solving – the greatest social, economic and political gift. The problem is that the obvious and practical solutions are blocked by Interests. The rich and privileged do not want to enter discussions about redistribution, about giving it back.
Government is only an inner circle that wields apparent power. “If voting changed anything they’d abolish it” and often do. Police, Courts, Church, Media are other diversions. To run things, the citizen must escape from this vacuous inner ring and move to the outer circle of power – the owners of the weaponry and the capital – our capital.
If I act purely by peaceful means to take what is mine, and I use a gun solely as a means of defence, only to stop someone attempting to kill me, am I a terrorist? The French Resistance armed themselves to kill occupying Nazis. Were the French Resistance not terrorists?
Organised weaponry for the pursuit of justice. Ireland won most of its country back by 1923, but it took a revolution. Ireland is in the process of winning the rest of its country back and that took a terrorist war to win a Government removed from Westminster, at Stormont. Finally, when the cause is recognised as just then, and only then, may we call terrorists freedom fighters.
If a Government are unable to listen to reason, they demonstrate that they will eventually listen to force. This, after all, is their prescription for us as well.
But then, the biggest insult of all. The Imperialist accuses the man who wishes to be free of Imperialism of being a Terrorist. But I’ve got a pen in my hand, they’ve got a gun in theirs.
Some people refuse to believe the lie of freedom and democracy, so then they’re shown the real truth of greed. “Free” in American terms means free to steal, free to exploit, free from legitimate local claims to sovereignty. Free to wipe out the local population, free to subvert national sovereignty, free to arm who they like, free to take what they like, free to act as they wish. Free to turn a country into a prison, a cemetery, a mud flat.
On the other hand, “free” in local terms means free from foreign domination, free to do with their own country as they wish, free to use local resources to meet local needs. Free to be social democrats, socialists, communists. If someone is a communist, it does not give an American soldier the right to murder them. It remains a crime of Murder and the murderer is no less of a criminal because he found a label other than “human” for his victim.
Did the Americans ever apologise to the Vietnamese? Did they ever pay reparations or remove their unexploded bombs? We should talk to the Generals about that apology and to the owners of capital who funded their adventure, but there are unimportant people just doing their job by standing in our way.