File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2003/anarchy-list.0308, message 15


Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 01:48:29 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-mutualaid.org>
Subject: Lady Liberty Shot in the Foot...Again


Lady Liberty Shot in the Foot...Again
by Jim Donahue • Thursday August 07, 2003 12:36 PM

Another defender of freedom has been silenced.

On 4 August 2003, 20-year old Sherman Austin, the founder of the Raise 
the Fist anarchist news/direct action/informational website was 
sentenced to one year in prison for providing links on the 
California-based website to pages that detail how to create explosives. 
The prosecutor in the case recommended four months in prison as an 
appropriate sentence, but the judge thought otherwise, and opted for the 
more severe punishment, and also a $2000 fine (despite there having been 
no monetary damage caused to anyone by Austin‘s actions). In addition, 
when Austin is released, he will be forbidden from using computers 
except upon the approval of the government.

This will likely mean the end of RaisetheFist.com, unless it changes 
hands. The goal of the U.S. “Justice” system in this case is obviously 
not to protect the public from home-made explosives, as there is still 
an easily accessible wealth of information on how to make them on the 
internet, but to shut down Sherman Austin’s website—for different reasons.

While the official charges against Austin relate to providing 
information detrimental to public safety, RaisetheFist.com’s propagation 
of anarchism is undoubtedly the primary target of the government in 
persecuting him. An ideology that places the benefit of society and of 
each individual in it above the interests of the wealthy elite—in fact, 
which seeks to eliminate the latter so that the former may thrive—has no 
place in Amerika, the purported land of the free. A somewhat interactive 
informational outlet that not only promotes that ideology but provides 
information on the injustices of the current order—murder, theft, abuse, 
and a host of other crimes against the people—simply cannot be permitted 
to function.

After all, it is the wealthy elite who own the government, so we should 
always expect that those who point out the injustices of the few against 
the people, in addition to those who try to promulgate a way of life 
that would fix such problems and a multitude of others, will be put down 
like dogs as soon as their message becomes loud enough to attract 
attention. Furthermore, the entire idea of anarchism, each time such 
persecution is carried out, is defamed by the government and in the 
press, by proclaiming that that ideology is at the heart of the "crimes" 
of the people being persecuted.

Ask any average member of Amerikan society what he or she knows of 
anarchism, and the most common answer will have something to do with the 
Anarchist Cookbook, which is a bomb-making and subversive activities 
manual that has as much to do with the anarchist ideology as it does 
with cooking. At best, the Cookbook can be linked to anarchism by being 
described as a “direct action preparation manual,” a label which would 
only apply to a select few sections of the book, and to a select few 
instances of direct action. Yet this is what the Amerikan public knows 
of anarchism.

They have no understanding of the humanitarian philosophy from which 
anarchism arises, of the benefits it places on the table from which all 
of mankind may partake. No, anarchism in the Amerikan mind, and in the 
minds of countless others who are oppressed by governmental rule, is at 
worst a reign of chaos, or at best (to those who briefly study the 
wealth-distribution end of it) a society in which the lazy thrive as 
much as the hard-working. It cannot be denied that the former may be 
true of the initial introduction of anarchism—the hyperactivity and 
excitedness of the slaves whose bonds have been suddenly broken—but it 
is by no stretch of the imagination its defining point, just as Amerikan 
politics are not defined by their origins of rebellion, violent and 
destructive direct action, and guerilla war.

And the notion that, under anarchism, the lazy would thrive on the backs 
of the hard-working is laughable. Such a condition already exists in 
Amerikan society (and in countless others), and is sanctioned and 
protected by the two-faced government, which has developed complicated 
pretenses that create the illusion of working toward the benefit of the 
people, while the wealth of those same people is carted off to the 
lavish mansions of the wealthy elite under the protection of the “law.” 
These wealthy elite, who hardly can claim to have toiled more than a few 
hours here and there, are the people who walk away with the products of 
the people’s labor. The pittance paid to the workers is but a sliver of 
the fruits of their labor, while slothful individuals at the top of the 
chain of command are able to, and often do, take the lion's share.

Of course, labor conditions and wages in Amerika have improved over the 
past several decades, but the situation is still very much in favor of 
the rich, and is conducive to a society in which the lazy not only live 
on the backs of the hard-working, but enslave them to do their bidding. 
Can any better be expected of a nation whose government is operated, for 
the most part, by millionaires and politicians with extensive 
relationships to industrial and commercial interests? Can any real 
justice be expected when the controllers of the electric chairs, the gas 
chambers, and the toxic needles are primarily acting to protect their 
own interests and the interests of the handful of people who own the 
vast majority of the nation’s wealth? The answer to both is an obvious 
and resounding “NO!”

Yet we continue to permit the existence of, and even support, the 
government which seeks to keep us in chains so that it may suck the very 
blood from our veins. We stand idly by while the wealthy elite exercise 
their power by launching excessively expensive artillery at the poor 
masses of other nations. We do nothing while the poor of our nation are 
sent to occupy the streets of other nations so that the wealthy vampires 
may extend their filthy, dripping fangs into the necks of those nations’ 
poor. We excuse the overt lying of the self-proclaimed leader of our 
nation because he and his interests have such an iron grip on our 
sources of information that we cannot receive the whole story, and thus 
are unable, for the most part, to understand the reason for that 
dishonesty, and that it extends far beyond merely 16 words. We remain 
silent while that “leader” belittles the deaths of our brothers and 
sisters through the hostility of his making, then openly challenges the 
occupied people to strike at them harder, and with more frequency, as if 
the cowardly little cowboy were going to don the soldier‘s equipment and 
head to battle himself.

Perhaps the want for such actions by the greed-enslaved politicians and 
businessmen cannot be helped except through their own will, but the 
people, the deprived masses, have no reason to stand for such behavior. 
While it is true that many of the people have been tricked by the 
war-makers and thieves into believing that their wars are just, there 
are still many of us who know the truth of the situation and should be 
willing to act on it. It is our responsibility to stand up for our 
brethren, at home and afar, against the brutal oppression and war of the 
greedy, violent, unabashed criminals who seek to benefit themselves at 
the expense of everyone else.

The persecution of Sherman Austin is a battle—and one at which the 
people are losing terribly—in the greater class war between the Many and 
the Few. Austin’s sentencing appears to be a great loss, but we, the 
Many, still have the opportunity to use this loss to prepare and recruit 
for future battles. The libertarians, the constitutionalists, the 
socialists, and others who value the little liberty that we have left in 
this fading republic, will no doubt stand tall with us against such 
oppression. We may not be able to save Sherman Austin from a year‘s 
waste in prison, but we may be able to use his fate to prevent the 
condemnation of other innocents to the same, and to promote the values 
of anarchism against the abuse of government.

We have great resources available to us; we only need to discover their 
whereabouts and how to use them. Many well-funded organizations exist 
for the purposes of social and economic justice. Whether or not these 
groups are anarchist in nature does not matter; they are still our 
allies against the oppressive Few. The vast membership numbers of many 
of these organizations is testament to the fact that the people, despite 
their inaction, at least latently support real justice and equality.

It is our responsibility to stir the Many to action, to wake them from 
their complacence and enlighten them to the true nature of their 
oppression. The silencing of dissent, the wars against our brethren, the 
usurpation of the labor of the Many by the Few, all need to be ended, 
but from their ashes needs to grow a better and more prosperous society 
in which such injustices are made impossible rather than commonplace. We 
cannot be content to simply win these small battles; we must use both 
our wins and our losses to not only turn the tides of this war against 
the Few, but to eradicate the battlefield itself, so that the weeds of 
iniquity have no fertile soil in which to plant their roots.

Instead of using the unjust wars of conquest against the Few so that 
they may lose political power, we ought to expose the motives and means 
that are the cause of that conquest, so that the people may understand 
that these actions are based in the foundation of the inordinate wealth 
of the Few. Instead of fighting political persecution on technical legal 
grounds, we ought to take every opportunity to expose the system of 
“law” for the fraud that it has become. Rather than point out the small 
wrongs done to the working classes on a daily basis, we ought to show 
the people that the system of wage-slavery as a whole is wrong, and that 
the small injustices that result from it are but minor symptoms of a 
devastating disease to which the Many hold the cure.

As if the oppression by the Few was not severe enough in earlier times, 
we are entering, in Amerika, an age which may parallel the days of Nazi 
Germany and imperialist Rome in its brutality, war, and oppression, both 
here and around the world. We may only have a short time left to act, 
especially if the crooked cowboy manages to subvert the will of the 
people once again in the upcoming election. Despite actions such as that 
against Sherman Austin, speech is still somewhat free in Amerika, at 
least to the point that those who are cautious enough not to 
inadvertently break oppressive laws can speak their minds and spread 
their ideas without the threat of governmental intervention. We must 
take advantage of the little freedom that the next 16 months can offer 
us, before even that small amount of liberty finds itself in chains.

http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/donahue/donahue1.html

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/08/76135.php


   

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