[Sosfbay-discuss] opener for the General Assembly, March 6-7?

[spencerg]

Hello:


The Santa Clara Green meeting last Wednesday included a request for 
suggestions for a 3-5 minute opening performance for the General 
Assembly, March 6-7. If you don't find something better, I can volunteer 
to read a piece I just drafted on "Liberty and Justice for All"; copied 
below. I just timed it at 4:23. (I can also send it to you in MS Word or 
Adobe Acrobat PDF format, with footnote.)


Comments?


Best Wishes,
Spencer

###############################

Liberty and Justice for All


Spencer Graves



/I pledge allegiance to /

/liberty and justice for all./



The US Pledge of Allegiance is these 9 words of commitment with 22 words 
of Marketing hype: “the flag of the United States of America and to the 
republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with” 
Marketing hype.

The primary opponents of liberty and justice for all are elites whose 
power and status is threatened by limits on their use of terror to 
oppress the bottom 99 percent of humanity. I know of no enemies of the 
United States other than ones we have earned by opposing liberty and 
justice for all. If you know an exception, I want to see your evidence 
and compare is with other sources such as identified in footnotes to 
this essay.

We can win the “War on Terror” almost overnight by making “liberty and 
justice for all” the primary feature of US foreign policy, terminating 
US support for state terror.

For example, without US troops in Saudi Arabia, the suicide mass murders 
of September 11, 2001, would almost certainly not have occurred. We know 
this from multiple sources. First, 15 of the 19 suicide mass murderers 
of September 11, 2001 were Saudis, and the other 4 were from neighboring 
Islamic countries.^1 <#sdfootnote1sym> Second, Al Qaeda listed US troops 
in Saudi Arabia with US support of Israel as its primary complaints.^2 
<#sdfootnote2sym> Third, the best available research on suicide terror 
in different countries with different religions has identified three 
elements common to the vast majority of suicide terror attacks: (1) a 
foreign occupation (2) by a democracy (3) of a different religion.^3 
<#sdfootnote3sym>

The US currently has an appallingly weak and counterproductive foreign 
policy and approach to fighting terrorism: Our refusal to support 
liberty and justice for all is manufacturing enemies faster than we can 
neutralize them.^4 <#sdfootnote4sym>

Just say “No” to state terror. Remove US troops from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, 
Afghanistan, Pakistan and every other nation where people are not free 
to express themselves and assemble peacefully. Declassify all US 
government secrets concerning US support for police and military 
supplies, training, and covert action in opposition to democracy.

We must deal with the world as it is, not as the advocates of “political 
realism” pretend. US foreign policy since its founding has primarily 
supported US international business interests. There is no other 
substantive domestic constituency for foreign policy,^5 
<#sdfootnote5sym> and official misconduct in this area is routinely 
unreported or distorted to paint the black white and the white black.^6 
<#sdfootnote6sym>

There are no non-state terrorist organizations capable of threatening 
the internal security of the US. The only way Al Qaeda or any similar 
organization can win is if we manufacture recruits for them by denying 
liberty and justice for all, as Britain did for Washington during the 
American Revolution. During the Cold War, the USSR was big and capable 
of seriously damaging the US if they chose to attack. That's not 
currently true of non-state terrorist organizations.


Why are we afraid of mice?


The next time you stand in a security screening line, remember that the 
US is no longer the land of the brave and the home of the free but the 
land of the fearful and cowardly.

We should just say “No” to state terror and commit ourselves to liberty 
and justice for all, not just as Marketing hype.



www.prodsyse.com

1 
<#sdfootnote1anc>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks#Attackers_and_their_motivation

2 <#sdfootnote2anc>ibid.

3 <#sdfootnote3anc>Robert A. Pape (2005) /Dying to Win /(Random House). 
See also Mia Bloom (2005) /Dying to Kill /(Columbia U. Pr.).

4 <#sdfootnote4anc>Chalmers Johnson (2000) /Blowback /(Henry Holt) 
virtually predicted 9/11 as the consequences of US support for state 
terror around the world, though did not identify Al Qaeda. The “War on 
Terror” is merely the latest Marketing wrapper for US support for state 
terror internationally, which dates in US history at least President 
Washington's decision to send US tax money to slave owners in Haiti, 
then St. Domingue to suppress a 1791 slave rebellion 
(www.iacenter.org/haiti/ impact.htm). Its continuation from the late 
19th century to the present is documented in Chalmers Johnson (2004) 
/The Sorrows of Empire /(Metropolitan) and William Blum (2004) /Killing 
Hope/, updated ed. (Common Courage Pr.).

5 <#sdfootnote5anc>Robert Kagan (2006) /Dangerous Nation /(Knopf). An 
exception of foreign policy supporting primarily the wealthy was policy 
towards Native Americans before their land was incorporated into the US.

6 <#sdfootnote6anc>Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky (1988) 
/Manufacturing Consent /(Pantheon), esp. ch. 2, which document show the 
murder of one Polish priest in 1984 received the same volume of coverage 
in the US media as the murders of 100 church people in Latin America, 
whose repressive governments received security supplies and training 
from the US.

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Operating Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567