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The U.S. Congress Legislates Genocide Of The Mind
By Jeff
Knaebel
11/17/07 "ICH"
-- - Introduction. There are two mutually exclusive means
of livelihood. One is to work and earn from production and
exchange. This has been called the “economic means.” The
second is to seize the labor product of others through force and
violence. This has been called the “political means.”
Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer defined the State as the
Organization of the Political Means. It is the systemization of
the predatory process within a given territory.
·
“There are two distinct
classes of men… those who pay taxes, and those who receive and
live upon taxes.” ~ Thomas Paine
·
“The State enjoys a
monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the
power to define the extent of its authority.” ~ Butler
Shaffer, 17 March 2006
·
“You get the same order
of criminality from any State to which you give power to
exercise it.” ~ Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune
“Thought Crimes,” HR
1955 Passed With 404 Votes.
Submit, Ye Citizens, Silently to
State Murder.
.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955,
titled the
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
of 2007.
The full text is available at
www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=110-1955. It was
passed with 404 votes in favor.
A close reading within an
historical context – keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act
and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential
Executive Orders, pursuant to which the government has engaged
in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as
detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and
torture – leads me to the following conclusions:
·
This is a “Thought Crime”
bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.
·
It specifically targets the
civilian population of the United States.
·
It defines “Violent
Radicalization” as promoting any belief system that the
government considers to be extremist.
·
“Homegrown Terrorism” and
“Violent Radicalization” are defined as thought crimes.
·
Since the bill does not
provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it
will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to
be.
A few extracts of the Bill are
presented below to show you its tone or “flavor.”
“(2)
VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means
the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system…
to advance political, religious, or social change.”
SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.
“(3) The Internet has aided in
facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based
violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United
States by providing access to broad and constant streams of
terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”
“(6) The potential rise of self
radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be
easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law
enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and
local solutions.”
Section 899D of the bill
establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and
Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an
institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland
Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought
criminals.
THIS LEGISLATION ENDS THE POSSIBILITY OF A CULTURE OF
REASON.
It is an attempt at
legislative lobotomy of conscience. It aims to eviscerate
ethical sensibilities of an entire culture.
Having usurped the
power of war and peace, life and death, the Corporatocracy now
bludgeons even the thought of speaking for conscience. This is
State murder of the mind.
It is just too
awesomely obscene for words. It exceeds not only the scope of my
vocabulary, but my imagination as well.
The minions and hired agents
of politicians are free to murder, rape and pillage on
government hire using our money, but to imagine alternatives to
them and the degraded, psychopathic political “leaders” who
design and perpetrate these atrocities is legislated as a
thought crime!
This is the legislated,
politically promulgated end of man as a thinking, self-directed
being. Surely this must be the outer limit of “positive law,”
that is, statutory laws passed by “Lawmakers.”
It further entrenches the
Power Elite as separate from and above their “subjects.” It
clearly demonstrates the paranoid delusions of the
Establishment, pursuant to which it legislates a massive defense
mechanism to protect itself from the populace that it
subjugates.
I use these terms
deliberately, because the so-called freedom of the vote has
turned out to be a big con game. It is only the “freedom” to
choose one set of thieves over the other. The blue suits or the
red suits… all of them manufactured suits of the corporations.
Following in the train of this
legislation will doubtless be internal travel documents, body
tracking by subcutaneous RFID chips, neighborhood snoops and
spies, rewards granted for turning in politically incorrect
thought criminals, mass civilian detention centers – in short,
the whole totalitarian control mechanism that we associate with
the SS, KGB and other code words of criminal regimes. There
will be “re-programming / rehabilitation” centers to correct
errant free thinkers.
The infrastructure for this –
especially mental conditioning – is essentially already in
place. We have become accustomed to birth certificate (the
government’s initial warehouse receipt), driving license, social
security number, business and professional licensing, the
Corporate Warfare State control of media, and recently
announced, Google’s navigation to your house by keying telephone
number into the web. Take note that the Department of Homeland
Security already has more than 750,000 persons on its watch
list.
For a glimpse of past as prologue, read Solzhenitsyn.
Who Will Be Thought
Police and Under What Standards?
Who will define radical
thought, and by what standards? For example, how about the
reported millions who believe that 911 was an inside job, citing
a mass of evidence from eye witnesses, physicists, engineers,
and recorded statements such as “We pulled it,” essentially a
confession by the building’s owner of the planned demolition of
Building 7?
Will the writings of John
Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The
Secret History of the American Empire be thought crimes?
Will this very essay be a thought crime?
What about Operation
Northwoods, pursuant to which the Joint Chiefs of the United
States planned for innocent people to be shot on American
streets, for boats carrying passengers to be sunk on the high
seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched within the
country, and for other depraved acts conceived in the minds of
government-hired psychopaths? Previously top secret documents
about this were released on 18 November 1997 and can be
researched at
www.wikipedia.org. Evidently, members of the Establishment
will be permitted to engage in thought crime.
Soon enough, we will all be
killing each other, and the statement of Mohandas Gandhi will be
borne out: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
Will thinking about cleansing
the national soul of our atrocities – of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu
Gharib, the advanced plans underway to nuke Iran, the crimes of
Blackwater murders, the government’s domestic coercion and
violence – be “Thought Crimes?”
Will it be thought crime to
conceive of a domestic Truth and Reconciliation Commission
pursuant to which high government officials are brought to book
for crimes against humanity?
Will it be “radicalization” to
think of alternatives to a government of, by, and for the
Corporatocracy, which accumulates its vast wealth through the
blood money of endless war?
What about imagination-consideration of a non-coercive society
of free individuals acting in voluntary cooperation, what is
commonly referred to as anarchy?
Would Thomas Jefferson be
liable for saying, “Whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or abolish it …”
Will it be radical to conceive
of preventing the Cheney-Bush cabal from launching WWIII and the
incineration of earth through a false flag operation against
Iran?
Would the likes of Mohandas
Gandhi be jailed for saying, as he did, “Civil disobedience
becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless and
corrupt.”
WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR
THE ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT
BECAUSE WE PAY FOR IT
It has taken me too many years
– and too much income tax – to come to the awful realization
that these “public servants” are only hired mouthpieces and
puppets of the Money Powers who operate behind the scenes to
orchestrate war, to coordinate the Military Industrial Complex,
the Homeland Security Complex, the NGO Help-The-Poor Complex,
the “Third World Corporate Development” Complex. In short, the
Exploitation Complex.
The roaring inside me is about
the self-disgust at living by the whims of Nice Government Men
and their intellectual and financial pimps – men who, for just
one example, can force starvation upon Indian farmers by their
money printing press maneuvers to save their own hides from the
overreach of blind greed. Men like those in Goldman Sachs who
have the power to bail out their own companies and pay billions
in bonuses while manipulating currencies such that basic food
staples become priced out of reach of the rural Indian poor.
Let our excuse for the sorry
state in which we find ourselves be not ignorance, for history
is quite clear to those who would study. I quote founding
father James Madison, “History records that money changers
have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent
means possible, to maintain their control over governments, by
controlling money and its issuance.”
A more honest excuse would be
our own greed and laziness. The quick buck. Buy now, pay
later. If you want to stop the war, quit taxes.
Statement of
Conscientious Objection
HR 1955 as recently passed by
the House of Representatives is in effect a Thought Crime
Prevention Bill. This action simply stops my mind. It cannot be
absorbed. This ultimate Police State freezes my imagination.
This newest version of
draconian legislation on thought control is where Jeff Knaebel
says enough is enough. Speaking truth to Power, I say – I am
not your puppet. I declare my self-ownership. Come and get me
if you wish. If you wish to own my body, you will have to
imprison it. I am breaking the paper chains by which I have
allowed you to enslave me.
You see, it is all a mind
game. The government is powerless before our non-cooperation.
Of course, although an abstraction, it is a heavily armed
abstraction. I suggest that nonviolent civil disobedience has
proven to be the most effective method of regaining control of
our lives. There would be significant loss of life, but much
less than with an armed struggle. It has succeeded many times,
in many places.
Our thoughts arise from within
us, not from or through someone else. It is not possible for
someone else to come between us and our minds.
Is murder an act that involves
the human conscience? Can any other hear the voice of my inner
conscience? Then, how can any such other claim the power to
“represent” me in choosing to kill? How can such other
“represent” me in determining which of my thoughts is criminal?
To say, or even to imply, that
these people “represent” me cannot be described as an
obscenity. It is an absurdity. Really, I should laugh. Instead
it generates a roaring inside me – the inner roar of a man who
would be free.
Earlier Voices of
Dissent
The following draws upon three
writers of the mid 19th Century – Wendell Phillips,
Lysander Spooner and Herbert Spencer.
Spooner.
The right of rebelling against what I think a bad government is
as much my right as it is anyone’s. It is nothing but tyranny
to require of me an oath to support the constitution, as a
condition for my being allowed the ordinary privilege of getting
my living in the way I choose.
Phillips. The act of voting serves to delegate authority
to an agent, and what one does by an agent, he does himself.
Every voter, therefore, is bound to see, before voting, whether
he could himself honestly swear to support the constitution.
Spooner. There can be no law but natural law. No human
enactments can overturn the natural and inalienable rights to
life, liberty and property. Legitimate governments must rest on
consent. This contract cannot lawfully authorize government to
destroy or take from men their natural rights, for natural
rights are inalienable, and can no more be surrendered to
government – which is but an association of individuals – than
to a single individual. A majority, however large, cannot agree
to a contract that violates the natural rights of any person
whatsoever. Such a contract is unlawful void, and has no moral
sanction.
Spooner. The right forcibly to resist unjust law is
inalienable. The constant fear of an uprising by the people is
the only thing that keeps rulers from becoming tyrannical. The
right and physical power of the people to resist injustice are
the only real securities that any people can have for their
liberties.
Spooner. The whole American revolution turned upon, and
in theory established, the right of each and every man, at his
discretion, to release himself from the support of the
government under which he lived. This principle was asserted
as a natural right of all men, at all times, and under all
circumstances.
Spooner. A man’s natural rights are his own, against the
whole world. Any infringement of them is a crime, whether
committed by one man or by millions – whether committed by one
man calling himself a robber (or any other name indicating his
true character), or by millions calling themselves a government.
THIS IS MY PLACE OF
“LIVE FREE OR DIE.”
One cannot deal with this
except to speak out and be willing to put his life on the line.
One must resist this legislation and this government, or else
surrender his humanity and become a dead thing.
This is the place where the
soles of my feet meet the path of Liberty. This is where Jeff
Knaebel refuses to renew his “permission to live” identification
documents pursuant to which Big Brother tracks him like an owned
domestic animal. Any situation in which I am not free to leave
means that my presence is by coercion or threat of coercion.
If one cannot leave some
“place” except by permission of the “owners” (passport), then he
is a slave. To learn more about issues of expatriation and “man
without a country,” visit my website at
www.statelessfreedom.org.
I have chosen loneliness, insecurity, and occasional bouts of
fear over the guilt of blood on my hands from payment of taxes
to finance murder.
My body is not the property of
the U.S. Government. I will challenge the U.S. Government for
ownership of my body, with my body itself. My mind will be
forever free.
I was never the property even of my biological father, leave
aside the absurdly stupid abstract concept of Nations — bounded
by arbitrary lines drawn on maps — across which opposing armies
of blood relations gun down the other.
I did not ask for US citizenship, and I will not accept its
rules even if forced upon me. Suppose my birth
under the system of Pol Pot or Idi Amin and their killing
fields. Does this birth require me to uphold a regime of
murder? Then, why would my birth in USA require me to uphold
the murdering regime of Cheney-Bush?
Any situation in which I am
not free to leave means that my presence is by coercion or
threat of coercion. If I cannot leave some “place” except by
permission of the “owners” (passport), then I am a slave.
The US State does not own the
land called America, and it does not own anybody who was born
there or lives there.
No bureaucrat has the right to
define who I am — and the murder of which other person I may be
forced to finance — by his stamp upon some arbitrary piece of
paper. I served the USA in Vietnam during that unconscionable
war. I was too young, ignorant and public school brainwashed to
know better. And even at that, had they not a grip on me by
paper chain of birth certificate, SSN and draft card, I would
never have served.
I belong to none, other than
Almighty Creation.
I claim my freedom to respect
the lives of others, as I would be respected. Freedom to do no
harm, and to eschew violence. Freedom to express compassion in
action. Freedom to support life. Freedom not to finance
murder.
No other can hear the voice of
my conscience, let alone “represent” it, or speak for it. My
conscience will be muffled by no person and by no law. Nor will
I ever knowingly aggress against another.
Right to Ignore the
State
Herbert
Spencer. Right to Ignore the State: Even in its most
equitable form, it is impossible for government to dissociate
itself from evil. Unless the right to ignore the sate is
recognized, its acts must be essentially criminal.
The State is an organization that controls territory through
force of arms. It claims ownership of all property and even
ownership of its citizen’s lives.
The laws of States are not about ethics, but about the
application of political power to control their subjects and to
make them perform in ways which serve political interests.
It is self evident that if I ignore the State, relinquishing
its protection and refusing to pay for its support, I in no way
infringe upon the liberty of others, for I am passive and not
aggressive. It is equally self evident that one cannot be
compelled to continue support of a political corporation without
breach of moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of
taxes, which is a taking of property against the person’s will,
and thus an infringement upon his rights.
A person cannot be coerced into political combination without
breach of the law of equal freedom. However, he can withdraw
from it without committing any such breach, and he has therefore
a right to withdraw.
An obvious implication is that the ethics of government,
originally identical with the ethics of war, must remain akin to
them, and can diverge only as warlike activities and
preparations become less. – End Spencer –
No contract
can be entered by a fresh young child. If my father is a thief,
I don’t have to obey.
I entered no
contract with the United States after reaching the age of
majority because I would not knowingly enter into a contract
with murderers. I obeyed due to coercion.
THE RIGHT OF NONVIOLENCE IS A
UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT
This Requires Conscientious
Objection To Mandatory Citizenship
Great minds
writing in great Universal Charters of mankind have said
violence arises in the mind of man, and that men have right to
life and liberty.
Yet, mankind
continues to institutionalize the most bestial and degraded
aspects of his nature through Sate promulgation of the three
great poisons of greed, hatred and delusion.
These great
charters drawn by great men do not grant a man the right not to
finance the murdering State. This shows to me that these great
men were part of the Political Establishment.
To grant
citizens the Universal Right not to finance war would put them
out of business.
I would not
choose to live in a violent neighborhood where local thugs and
criminals were ruling the neighborhood by force and terrorizing
the populace. I would not choose to associate myself with
murderers. Yet, in the present system of the institutionalized
Corporate Warfare State, we have mass murderers, thieves and
criminals in charge of the future of all life on earth who are
claiming to represent me.
“The idea of
creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to
imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy [a façade of
moral legitimacy], and not expect them to lead to wars,
genocides and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence
we can no longer affords to indulge.” ~ Butler Shaffer, June
2003.
The great job
of Man on this earth is to alleviate suffering. How does
financing the organized crime of the State help?
How did we get here? Break the frame. Get out of the box.
Don’t be bound by the frame the dark forces have made.
It Is Man’s Duty To
Love.
Imagination is
more powerful than knowledge or thinking. By imagination we can
create a new world. But, we must let go of the greed which hold
us bound in shackles. We must move to the freedom of love.
It now must be of the “tough
love” variety. We must see clearly and face bravely the reality
of what we continue to create for ourselves. We must take up
tough ethical positions.
We have proved again and
again, over spans of millennia, that any kind of violent
revolution will only turn the wheel of violence another
revolution, around and around.
If we will but cease to
destroy, we may live. We cannot negotiate with melting
glaciers. Perhaps we can negotiate with the storms of
insatiable greed and desire raging within our own minds.
Perhaps we can come out of our addiction to more, more and
faster, faster.
What is the money calculation
of love? There is no solution at the level of
political economy. Former questions in the realms of philosophy
and abstract ethics have now become questions of survival. We
must reach for a higher psycho-spiritual level.
To issue
from the workshops of Nature, a thing must be worthy of Nature’s
loving care and most painstaking art, exercised with the
patience of billions of years of biological evolution. Should
it not be worthy of my respect, at least? In fact, it is worthy
of my love, and I would not destroy it, nor would I finance a
government to destroy it.
“All works of
life are significant – yea, marvelous, surpassing and
inimitable. Life busies itself not with useless trifles. Men’s
fevers are transmutable. The fever of war may be transmuted
into a fever of peace. The fever of hoarding wealth may be
transmuted into a fever of hoarding love. Such is the alchemy
of the Spirit.” ~ Mirdad
The revolution we must
undertake to save ourselves is a revolution within our own minds
toward loving kindness, truth, and respect for life.
I
maintain that it is the right of any individual person to reject
and renounce a government which violates his moral conscience.
I maintain that it is my personal right, in this very body, here
and now, to ignore the State, and to refuse participation in its
actions which violate humanity and life itself. I also declare
that the same is my intention insofar as refusal to pay direct
tax to any nation-state. There can be no treason if one’s first
loyalty is to humanity and to life itself. Human life is above
Nation-State. Personal conscience and individual moral
sovereignty is above State sovereignty. How can the question of
treason arise when one refuses to murder innocent women and
children? He who claims self ownership can never commit treason
because the State cannot own him. He is not the property of the
State.
“Once it is
conceded that any man or body of men have any right to make laws
of their own invention – and compel other men to obey them –
then every vestige of man’s natural and rightful liberty is
denied.” ~ Lysander Spooner
I have not entered into a
contract granting the United States Government any authority
over my life whatsoever.
To those who would
accept a legislated statutory slavery, I say — may your shackles
bind you without too much pain. May you go quietly into
oblivion, and may you not burden me with the memory that you
ever stood a watch with me on Spaceship Earth.
(If you are interested in
further exploration of personal statelessness, stop by and visit
www.statelessfreedom.org .)
Jeff
Knaebel [send
him mail] is an expatriate American domiciled in India since
1995. He formerly practiced as a registered professional
engineer, having been trained at Cornell Univ. and the Colorado
School of Mines.
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