Totalitarian systems always begin by rewriting the law

The slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH used in the image are taken from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Justice, Freedom, Peace

Donna Brazile: Stand for justice, march for freedom, work for peace

quote by Donna Brazile,
image by @redglitterx, based on work by Piet Mondrian

When peaceful revolution becomes impossible

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable
John F Kennedy

When I read this, I always think the that this quote should read “those who make peaceful reSolution impossible…” but this is only version of the quote I can find.

To me, this means, when you squash all avenues for people to express grievances, when you strip away a communities or persons rights, and give them no recourse to address imbalances in justice, those feelings of injustice won’t go away. They might be crushed for a moment, but they will end up exploding in revolution that in unstoppable.

Unfortunately, with the fight for animal rights, those who are the most vulnerable, are also those with no voice. It is up to people to take up the fight on their behalf.

The peaceful revolution (or the peaceful resolution) has been made impossible, activists are being locked in prisons and raided by the police and law enforcement agencies through out the world.

So, why are these some animal rights activists who insist on fighting for “peace” and pretending they are fighting for animal rights?

Why are so many animal rights activists not angry about the way animals are being treated, they express no outrage, no anger, no desire to fight… instead they are “correcting the behaviour” of other animal rights activists.

The peaceful revolution has been crushed not only by the State, the law, the animal abusing industries who profit from exploitation, brutality and cruelty – the peaceful revolution has been roadblocked by others who call themselves Animal Rights Activists, yet talk only about peace and not animal liberation.

The peaceful revolution is impossible, that leaves one alternative….

Pacifism or Animal Liberation: Which Do You Value More?

The audio on this video is a tiny little bit unclear in parts, but this is a message worth hearing, both meaningful and entertaining.

Derrick Jensen, talking about violence, non-violence, pacifism, love as techniques for activists.

When white, conservative, middle-class activists use “a Gandhi shield” which is “say the words Gandhi-Martin Luther King-Dali Lama again and again as fast as they can”, Jensen suggests that these people have never experienced violence.

Right now there is a wars raging against animals, earth and people – a holocaust against animals and the ecocide against the planet, and the slaughter of people all over the world, how will non-violence stop these wars?

For people to promote Non-Violence as their only response to the war against all life on the planet, then perhaps it is because violence – the use or opposition – is a theoretical abstract concept and not part of their every day reality.

Jensen talks about how people might confront Direct Action activists with trite non-violence sayings, and he presents responses that challenge these “non-violence” beliefs.

Jensen makes some thought-provoking points in response to people who say “violence has never achieved anything”, and maybe, if they truly believe that, they should take a look around at the state of the world and see how much of that has been caused by, and is the result of, violence.

It all comes down to what you are an activist for – if you are a peace activist, then the use of violence would repudiate your message.

However, there are activists fighting to save the lives of animals, save the earth from complete destruction or save people from being exploited in the name of the dollar. And when these people begin to say, “sorry, I can’t fight for you, I’m fighting for Non-violence. I am placing my belief in Non-violence above your right to life”, maybe it is time to re-examine these tactics used to achieve liberation.

There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence — against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences at this day at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate. Interview in 1961.
— Nelson Mandela

Sidebar: Makes a reference to the powerful impact of a Mama Grizzly, long before Sarah Palin took on that symbolism.

Feedback welcome.

Noam Chomsky: Non-violent Resistance

Noam Chomsky

Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That’s pretty obvious. You can’t have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case…

Chronicles of Dissent, December 13, 1989

UK Counter Insurgency Operations Doctrine 2007

One person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist.

This original document first published on Wikileaks details the UK response to insurgents, in various places, including in Northern Ireland. It covers strategy and operations.

It provides an insight into how people within the government of United Kingdom think about those they are now calling “insurgents”.

Another name for Insurgency could be rebellion, anarchy, mutiny, revolution, sedition, irregular warfare, guerrilla war, the resistance. Depending on your perspective.

The quote accompanying this document is from Capt Sir B Liddell Hart’s 1944 ‘Thoughts On War’

“If you wish for peace understand war, particularly the guerrilla and subversive forms of war”

The oppressed always knows the oppressor better than vice versa, if you wish for change understand those in who have power. Learn how the other side thinks.

For the full article: UK Counter Insurgency Operations Doctrine 2007

Feedback welcome.

Steal This Book! (hippy civil disobedience)

Abbie Hoffman: What we needed was a revolution!

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. Abbie Hoffman, Tikkun Magazine (July-August 1989)

Written by Abbie Hoffman in 1970, “Steal This Book!” written in the spirit of overthrowing the system or at least the apathy, has chapters on how to get by with little money, making weapons of self defence, how to get a free buffalo, underground media, guerrilla broadcasting, demonstrations, first aid for street fighters and establlishing an underground identity.

Steal This Book is, in a way, a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika. It preaches jailbreak. It shows you where exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls. The first section-SURVIVE!-lays out a potential action program for our new Nation. The chapter headings spell out the demands for a free society. A community where the technology produces goods and services for whoever needs them, come who may. It calls on the Robin Hoods of Santa Barbara Forest to steal from the robber barons who own the castles of capitalism. It implies that the reader already is “ideologically set,” in that he understands corporate feudalism as the only robbery worthy of being called “crime,” for it is committed against the people as a whole. Whether the ways it describes to rip-off shit are legal or illegal is irrelevant. The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order. Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
ABBIE HOFFMAN – Steal This Book

For more, the entire book can be found here – http://tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html – read, learn, improvise, being inspired to over throw the complacency and apathy in Western Society.

Feedback welcome.