New Chautauqua Warrior

Yea, it is a strange militia we bring to the field - rowdy, diverse, violence-averse, and rather evenly divided between greenish youth and greying Sixties types. We sing more than we shoot, dance more than we demolish, argue more than we attack, and as issue groups at least, compete far more than we collaborate. But make no mistake, our resolute insubordination nurtures a sea of fell talent and we are absolutely equal to our task.

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one, This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart,
and sealed with the blood of a host of American martyrs,
but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold
their existence as a nation." - - President James Madison

"We are ruled by Big Business and Big Government as its paid hireling, and we know it. Corporate money is wrecking popular government in the United States. The big corporations and the billionaires have taken daily control of our work, our pay, our housing, our health, our pension funds, our bank and saving deposits, our public lands, our airwaves, our elections and our very government. It's as if American democracy has been bombed. Will we be able to recover ourselves and overcome the bombers? Or will they continue to divide us and will we continue to divide ourselves, according to our wounds and our alarms, until they have taken the country away from us for good?"

"More and more we are living in a world where everything is for sale, where the people no longer can protect human rights, their environment, or their way of life when these values interfere with corporate profits. It comes down, not to regulations, but to power, to who defines what corporations are and what they can do. The challenge is not to eliminate corporations, but for we the people, to take back our sovereignty over them."

"The cold war provided the West the perfect excuse to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants, and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and influence, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.

"And while we did this, a ludicrous notion took root that we are saddled with to this day. It is a notion beloved by conservatives, and, in my country, New Labour alike. It makes siamese twins of Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. It holds to its bosom the conviction that, whatever vast commercial corporations do in the short term, they are ultimately motivated by ethical concerns... And anyone who thinks otherwise is a neo-Communist heretic.

"In the name of this theory, we look on apparently helpless while rainforests are wrecked to the tune of millions of square miles every year, native agricultural communities are systematically deprived of their livelihoods, uprooted and made homeless, protesters are hanged and shot, the loveliest corners of the world are invaded and desecrated, and tropical paradises are turned into rotting wastelands with sprawling, disease-ridden megacities at their center. And of all these crimes of unbridled capitalism, it seemed to me, as I began to cast around for a story to illustrate this argument in my most recent novel, that the pharmaceutical industry offered me the most eloquent example..."

"The FCC allows Murdoch's News Corp. to become the largest media conglomerate in the country... The deal gives Murdoch 33 stations, reaching over 40% of the nation's 100 million households. The merger is in violation of at least 3 of the Federal Communications Commission's own rules. Broadcasters are not allowed to own two of the top four stations in a market; a company cannot own stations that reach more than 35% of the nation's households; and a company cannot own a newspaper and television stations in the same city."

"Sunday morning political talk shows – Meet the Press, The Mclaughlin Group, Face the Nation, This Week – help set the agenda for debate in Washington. Issues concerning corporate power directly impact people’s lives, constitute substantive fodder for political discussion, and are scintillating enough to attract large television audiences. However, this quantitative study demonstrates that the shows avoid addressing issues related to corporate power.

The study found that topics related to corporate power -- the environment, corporate crime, labor, mergers, consumer rights, corporate welfare, national health care, free trade agreements, redlining, blockbusting, multinational capital flight, tort reform, renewable energy, the commercialization of children, etc. -- make up less than 4% of the shows’ discussion topics.

Corporate influence over the networks, the shows and the guests in part explains the remarkable omission of issues related to corporate power. Multinational conglomerates own the networks, major corporations sponsor specific shows, businesses regularly pay celebrity journalist lecture fees, and massive corporations fund the campaigns of the guest newsmakers. "

"I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit. And these pieces of fabricated technological substitutes, being fabricated, patented and owned by corporations, would be the means to implement a level of control and manipulation of the human race such as we cannot now even imagine."

"We believe the Earth has never before faced such large-scale devastations as are being inflicted by handfuls of executives running the largest 1000 or so industrial, financial, health, information, agricultural and other corporations. And not since slavery was legal have the laws of the land been used so shamelessly to violate the democratic principles we hold dear...

"You write of lobbies, special interests, polluters and radical property rights advocates. But the work of these lobbies, polluters and radical advocates -- in Congress and in our communities -- is the work of corporations that manipulate assets beyond our imaginations while hiding behind limited liability, perpetual existence, and our Bill of Rights... This was not supposed to happen."

"There is no alternative but revolution. There is never a day when revolution is not needed. Not anymore. Because there is never a day anymore when millions of us, most of us, are not faced with the loss of our liberties and power, the loss of dignity, the loss of community, the loss of livelihood--the loss, in every sense, of a today worth living and a tomorrow worth caring about..."

The great Islamic activist Hamza Yusuf Hanson distinguishes between two forms of political action. He defines the Arabic word hamas as enthusiastic, but intelligent, anger. Hamoq means uncontrolled, stupid anger...

The important thing about hamas is that, whether or not it is popular, it is comprehensible. People can see immediately what you are doing and why you are doing it. Hamoq, by contrast, leaves its spectators dumbfounded. Hamas may have demolished the McDonald's in Whitehall on May Day 2000, but it would have left the Portuguese restaurant and the souvenir shop beside it intact.

Hamas explains itself. It is a demonstration in both senses of the word: a protest and an exposition of the reasons for that protest.

Humanity's contest with our corporate overlords is the evolutionary equivalent of war.

Humanity's contest with our corporate overlords
is the evolutionary equivalent of war.