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we are in great need of reality in our time
a generation rages: don't vote don't pay taxes defy the police burn your
money puncture tires upheaval destroy the whole culture let go of the past
shit on everything rather than the sterile power clean machine eat less
wear less work less do nothing that does not contribute directly to great
transformation poetry break every law to pieces break up the sidewalks walk
on the earth find another life take your children out of school make flags
into flour sacks destroy all government the wasting of time stop the
time-clocks strike strike strike holy terror into our hearts reverse
peristalsis drive out the money changers stampede the banks ban them bombs
and the whole thing of it dismantle stare dissolve grow fins fly focus feed
exude light from the eyes beauty from the ears night exultation is one of
the roads to salvation pound crack scream oggle wallow fuck creep crawl
retch suck open the roof to the rain open the lungs the blood the cells to
the plants high five fingered cannabis bright coca the languid poppy the
secrets of the cactus the magic formulae of the earth are our chemical
warfare against the killers recreate everything dislocate the brain which
kills right and left revoke the pitiless modern mind lengthen this list
with all variety of action until every sentient being eats right and left
breaks the love barrier and sheds his anger his sexual revenge sexual
revenge on everything
lick it all
begin again
Julian Beck's *The Life of the Theatre: the relation of the artist to the struggle
of the people* (New York: Limelight Editions, 1972).
Meditation on Action. 1967.
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A quote from the recent issue of *Fifth Estate* [4632 Second Ave., Detroit,
MI 48201 USA]--from E.B. Maple's excellent article on Somalia:
"Anarchy isn't a political movement like socialism which seeks
administrative control of people's lives after some distant event. While
it similarly looks to a revolution in the future, anarchy also implies a
set of ethics and values we apply to our daily lives whether there are
millions of us in a movement, as in the 1930s in Spain, or just a solitary
individual resisting the demands of the state to register for the draft.
Whether revolution or ruin awaits us, we still have to live out our lives.
it is better to do so in the tradition of the men and women who sought a
different world than to mimic a model citizen, the cheerful robot, the
lover of Big Brother."
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"Self-theory is the body of critical thought you construct for your own use.
You construct it and use it when you make an analysis of why your life is the
way it is, why the world is the way it is... You build your self-theory when
you develop a theory of practice - a theory of how to get what you desire for
your life...
"Those who assume (usually unconsciously) the impossibility of realizing their
life's desires, and of thus fighting for _themselves_, usually end up fighting
for an ideal or cause instead (i.e. the illusion of self-activity or
self-practice). Those who know that this is the acceptance of alienation will
now know that all ideals and causes are _ideologies_.
"Whenever a system of ideas is structured with an abstraction at the centre -
assigning a role or duties to you for its sake - this system is an ideology. An
ideology is a system of false consciousness in which you no longer function as
the subject in your relation to the world.
"The various forms of ideology are all structured around different
abstractions, yet they all serve the interests of a dominant (or aspiring
dominant) class by giving you a sense of purpose in you sacrifice, suffering
and submission...
"In accepting ideologies we accept an inversion of subject and object; things
take on a human power and will, while human beings have their place as things.
Ideology is upside down theory."
"Revolutionary Self-Theory: a beginners manual"
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"Conscientious objection is objection not merely to military service but to all
the demands and obligations imposed by our society: to taxes, to vaccination,
to compulsory schooling etc." - Jaques Ellul
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It is not enough for a handful of experts to attempt the solution of a problem,
to solve it and then to apply it. The restriction of knowledge to an elite group
destroys the spirit of society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment."
-- Albert Einstein
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"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome
nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I
hate them!" --Albert Einstein
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"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth who refuse military service."
-- Albert Einstein
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"Nationalism is an infantile disease" - Albert Einstein.
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"The shadow of force, embedded in the law, stands behind every act of
government, and in the end every government relies on soldiers and police
to enFORCE its will. This ever-present and necessary threat of official
violence in society helps keep the system operating, making ordinary
business contracts enforceable, reducing crime, providing machinery for
the peaceful settlement of disputes. In this paradoxical sense, it is the
veiled threat of violence that helps make daily life nonviolent."
-Alvin Toffler _Powershift_ 1990
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In the hands of a people whose education has been willfully neglected,
the ballot is a cunning swindle benefitting only the united barons of
industry, trade, and propety."
-Daniel Guerin
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Freedom, 24th December 1949:
"In the issue of Freedom for 26th November we reported on the seizures of
land by the peasants of Sicily and Southern Italy, which have since spread,
even as far as the Po valley in the north. The Italian peasants have invaded
the land after every war since the days of the Punic Wars of 264-164 B.C.,
and the present occupations are the culmination of a continuous series of
sporadic and isolated seizures which have taken place since the last war.
In fact, as Prime Minister de Gasperi admitted last week, by the end of 1947
375,000 acres had already been occupied, and for the period 1946-49 the total
is 600,000 acres".
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"My country is the world and my religion is to do good."
-Thomas Paine
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No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression.
If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses,
they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and hopes,
the loves and hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement
is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it
lacks one of the most distinct marks of a popular revolutionary
movement; it is a dogma of the few, and not the faith of the multitude.
-James Connolly
Introduction to "Songs of Freedom", 1907
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"What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders,
to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be
compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have
to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which
he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment
onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not
encountered in private life." --Albert Camus, writer, France.
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"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked
why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist"
--Dom Helder Camara
Brazilian Bishop
Nobel Peace Prize nominee
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"Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and
tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper
hand, they have always fallen. Always."
- M.K. Gandhi, Lawyer, philosopher & peace activist.
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"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed
by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing
about them." -- George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945
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"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It
means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not
avowed, autocrats, We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
"You ask for votes for women. What good can votes do when
ten-elevenths of the land of Great Britain belongs to 200,000 and
only one-eleventh to the rest of the 40,000,000? Have your men
with their millions of votes freed themselves from this injustice?
[p.337, Helen Keller, 1911 letter to British suffragist]
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"[Sitting Bull] once told Annie Oakley, another one of the Wild West
Show's stars, that he could not understand how white men could be so
unmindful of their own poor. 'The white man knows how to make everything',
he said, 'but he does not know how to distribute it.'
- from Dee Brown's *Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee*
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All truth passes through three stages.
First it is ridiculed.
Second it is violently opposed.
Third it is accepted as being self-evident.
--Schopenhauer.
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"The events of those years underlined what prisoners
already sensed--that whatever crimes they had committed, the
greatest crimes were being committed by the authorities who
maintained the prisons, by the government of the United
States. The law was being broken daily by the President,
sending bombers to kill, sending men to be killed, outside
the Constitution, outside the "highest law of the land."
State and local officials were violating the civil rights of
black people, which was against the law, and were not being
prosecuted for it.
[p.508, Howard Zinn, in reference to the US prison
rebellions of the late sixties and early seventies]
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"Socialism means democracy. And that means elections, free speech and
press, free political parties and labor unions -- things the Soviet
people don't have.
"In the Soviet Union, power has been centralized in the hands of a
bureaucratic elite. Not only doesn't the Soviet Union deliver
democracy to the Soviet people, but a highly centralized
bureaucratic economy cannot meet even many of their basic economic
needs. Just because the Soviet elites call their system
"socialist" doesn't make it so. After all, they call it
"democratic" too. [E.g. East Gernamy's former name, GDR, German
Democratic Republic --HB].
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"Why of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.
Hermann Goering
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"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever
that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority
of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
--Bertrand Russell, _Marriage and
Morals_, p. 58
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"Highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill
me.... Most of them, I have no doubt, are kindly, law-abiding men who
would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other
hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a
well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it."
-- George Orwell
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"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
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"It [the telephone] will unmake our work. No greater instrument of
counter-revolution and conspiracy can be imagined." ...Stalin
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The Dalai Lama on the Environment:
Peace and the survival of life on earth
as we know it are threatened by human
activities that lack a commitment to
humanitarian values. Destruction of
nature and natural resources results
from ignorance, greed and lack of
respect for the earth's living things.
Our ancestors viewed the earth as
rich and bountiful, which it is. Many peo-
ple in the past also saw nature as inex-
haustibly sustainable, which we know is
the case only if we care for it.
It is not difficult to forgive destruction
in the past that resulted from ignorance.
Today, however, we have access to
more information, and it is essential that
we re-examine ethically what we have
inherited, what we are responsible for,
and what we will pass on to coming
generations.
clearly, this is a pivotal generation.
Global communications is possible, yet
confrontations take place more often
than meaningful dialogue for peace.
Our marvels of science and technol-
ogy are matched, if not outweighed, by
many current tragedies, including
human starvation in some parts of the
world and extinction of other life forms.
Many of earth's habitats, animals and
plants that we know as rare may not be
known at all by future generations. We
have the capability and the responsi-
bility. We must act before it is too late.
[Quoted page 10, GreenPeace magazine March/April 1990 issue]
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The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his
head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him,
was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what
miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared by someone who,
uprooting the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his
fellow men; Beware of listening to this imposter! You are lost if you
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth itself
to no one!
'Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men' (1755)
Jean Jacques Rousseau,
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"I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule
And also ruled I will not be."
-- John Henry Mackay
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