By All Means, Spy On Us

Recently, many of my fellow activists here in the Twin Cities were targeted by the FBI in what can only be called a witch hunt, in the most classically political sense of the term.  Eight homes of antiwar, anti-capitalist, and human rights activists were invaded in Minneapolis and Chicago.  Their houses and offices were ransacked, computers and all forms of information storage stolen, and several of them were subpoenaed to testify in a grand jury investigation in Chicago.  The organizations that these people work on behalf of were, among others, the Anti-War Committee, SDS, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Columbia Action Network, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

I'll invite you to guess which of those groups most interested the FBI.  But that's beside the point.  Add to this list the Weather Underground, the USA Communist Party, the Black Panthers, and a few others from history, and you have the exact same witch hunt that was exercised on the American people during the McCarthy era, when communism was the big threat to capitalism.  Today, as was the case back then, the agents come to your home or your office, riffle through your personal belongings like pigs on a truffle hunt, and tell you it all has nothing to do with your personal ideologies and beliefs; that they are doing an investigation that involves "national security".  At least back during the McCarthy era, they didn't lie about it; they just went right at you and tried to figure out if you were a "communist sympathizer".  Today, they have the Department of Homeland Security, a nifty little term the George W. Bush Administration borrowed from the Nazi Party.  And like the Nazi Party, they - and now the Barack Obama Administration - utilize it to conduct searches of people they think might pose some kind of challenge to the ruling elite, regardless of whether or not they can prove a single thing.

These people, and many others we have yet to hear about, are being targeted for one reason only: they represent a growing anti-establishment movement in the United States; one that is quickly becoming larger in number, bolder, and much more organized about which particular American government abuses they choose to go after.  They are labeled terrorists, and are guilty until proven innocent.  They are being charged with "material support of designated foreign terrorist organizations".  It is important to note here that the grand jury has been used by the American government as a tool for political suppression since before the Civil War, so let's not get on our high horses and claim that is some outlandish overreach by our already criminal government.  There is nothing new about this latest effort on behalf of the ruling fascists of America to suppress the public's right to dissent.  What is new about this latest front in the fake war on terror, is that there is nowhere near the rate of political activation today as was present during the McCarthy era, or the uprisings of the 1960s, nor the Progressive Movement of the 1930s.  In fact, the movement we are experiencing today is extremely small in comparison, and is only just starting to gather some steam, partially as a result of the FBI pigs snooping around.

Today, it actually takes FBI raids, illegal wars, illegal wire-tapping, censorship in the mainstream media, rampant chauvinism, the corporate take-over of the Internet, corporate thievery of our common natural resources, the slashing of all programs that work to lift the least among us out of disparity, and a long, long list of other anti-humanitarian measures to even get an anti-establishment movement worth its salt off the ground.  We should all, collectively, as citizens of the American Empire, be disgusted, fed up, and violently radicalized by this point in the game.  We are not, and yet here come the thought police.

While I have the utmost respect for all my fellow warriors in the Anti-War Committee, Socialist Alternative, Freedom Road, SDS, and all the other groups I try to work with, either as an individual, or with Junkyard Empire, I have to say something that they might not necessarily agree with:  The FBI, or any of the other dozen plus major limitless budgeted programs of the United States government, can and will spy on us.  They always have, and they always will.  In fact, I would argue that the FBI just might be most benign of them all.  Again, the Nazi's had nothing on what would become the America of today.  The only difference between them and us is that we are not - as far as I know - systematically executing anyone based solely on race or ethnicity.  Strike that.  I'm pretty sure we are.

The point here is that they will spy on us, no matter what we do.  Nothing we say here on the Internet, in private email, or on any kind of phone, will ever be safe from the snooping eyes and ears of the American secret police state.  And frankly, we know that the mainstream media will go out of their way NOT to cover any of the actions of civil disobedience being done every day in this country, nor will they make any effort whatsoever to represent the radical, leftist, socialist, call it what you want view of the American social and political establishment.  This became evident when such treasures of American dissidence as Daniel Ellsberg, Chris Hedges, and Colleen Rowley were all arrested, along with 120+ others, at a protest against the Afghanistan War in front of the White House on December 16th last year.  Not one single story in the mainstream press.  We are talking about some of the most radical whistle-blowing journalists and activists this country has ever known, all being arrested on the same day, and not a single story about these people protesting a currently escalating war that has already gone on longer than Vietnam.

I leave you with this thought: PLEASE SPY ON US.  I personally welcome the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and all the other operations I don't even know the name of to spy away.  Read every god damned thing all my radical compatriots and I write.  Listen to our conversations too.  Come to our teach-ins and our organizing meetings.  Nothing we say on a phone, or write in a virtual context will ever be the full story.  There will always be events, plans, and actions of civil disobedience that you and your fellow pigs will never know about.  What you should really be afraid of is the reality that the American people are starting to wake up from the slumber you and your armies of capital have somehow lured us into.

We're coming to get you, and we're not gonna stop.  Surrender while you still can.  Your banks and your corporations cannot function without the willing slavery of the American people, and the cognitive dissonance that goes along with it.  The revolution is coming, ready or not.

It's Capitalism, Stupid.

IT'S CAPITALISM, STUPID.

Christopher Robin Cox

     During Bill Clinton's Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush in 1992, he spoke the now infamous words “It's the economy, stupid,” to a gaggle of media all desperate for a new buzz phrase. I even caught myself using it every so often, during some dope-induced debate with other twenty-somethings who, like me, didn't know jack about socioeconomics in the United States. Eighteen years later, it has become clear to me how misleading, and maybe even propagandist, that statement was. But the truth would have made a lot of cherished and charismatic people look buffoonish.
     It is not, nor has it ever been, the economy that leads us to wars of occupation in the Middle East. It is not the economy that makes our government support dictators around the world, even when there are internationally recognized citizen-led movements in opposition to those leaders. It was not the economy that made our CIA go into Central America and wreck havoc that still rages today. It is not the economy that gives us cause to instigate coup d'etats against democratically elected leaders like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, and Correra in Ecuador. It is not the economy that causes us to make budget cuts to the social programs that offer a basic standard of living to the least among us. It was, and has always been, capitalism at the root of these disastrous decisions.
     By definition, the economy is nothing more than the overall collection of inter-related economic production and consumption activities which aid in determining how resources are allocated in a given geographical location. Capitalism is the engine of our economy, and like the proverbial gas-guzzling engine of an oversized American car, the brand of capitalism we are using today is antiquated at best. At worst, it's inhumane and criminal.
     An economic system based primarily on competition as the main determining factor in the distribution of wealth, posses inherent savage inequalities. The artists, writers, thinkers, and all others who care first about their craft, are essentially left in the position of hoping to be in the small minority who “make it”. Along with the craftsman and thinkers, those who have physical or psychological conditions that limit their competitive participation are left behind as well, for they can not possibly turn a profit. Of course, the vicious bulls of capitalism will surely charge on. And they will say, regardless of physical or psychological condition, that every person is free to pursue their heart's content in America.
     Imagine for a moment what would happen if there were to be an open-ended public debate in this country about the real-life characteristics of capitalism, aired freely to all Americans, with participants from all around the world invited. That debate, if done objectively, would lead to a revolutionary change in the way Americans view themselves and their role in humanity. It would also separate out those who are on the side of pure, unfettered competition as the best method of achieving the highest good for the most people, versus those who are on the side of first providing for the least among us; a distinction that ought to be made in a country that posses the largest separation between rich and poor in the industrialized world.

Capitalism, along with its inherent misconceptions, is the most counter-revolutionary and conservative force in America. In the words of Andy Grove, ex-CEO of Intel, “The goal of the new capitalism is to shoot the wounded.” The American people are lying upon the ground in anguish, and it is the boot heel of capitalism that is keeping them there. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the best system that has been tried. It is the system that is most preferred among the world's most corrupt and powerful elite.
     Hitler was a capitalist. He called it "National Socialism.” In Nazi Germany, the means of production was solely owned by private corporations and individuals, who ultimately had to answer to the Nazi Party. This is not an assertion that the American government resembles the Nazi Party of World War II Germany; it is one that points out the simple truth that the engine driving the American economy is exactly the same as that which drove the economy of Nazi Germany.

     To Mr. Clinton I say, it's capitalism, stupid. What we need in America is a lot less of Bill Clinton's entertaining, but misguided concepts, and a lot more debate about the soul of America, and what we stand for as a people. The engine of our economy needs to be methodically dismantled, piece by piece, so that it can be rebuilt by the people.