Satygraha (Truth Force) vs. the so called non-lethal weapons

[Jim Hackett II]

Satygraha (Truth Force) vs. the so called non-lethal weapons

I think of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. for that matter. Junior deserved his Nobel Peace Prize. He knew satygraha for what it was. His faith was not the faith of the so-called fundamentalist of this age. It was not from the corporate evangelism of Billy Graham and the Rockefeller money; his faith did NOT get on TV that way.


He lived his faith a little closer to home and hearts than the collection plates. He lived devotionals not rituals. He fought the enemy.
The same enemy in different guise of today. In this age of surveillance, the enemy is more invasive but the same old shit still stinks. I doubt anyone can now imagine that projects like Co-Intell and Chaos ended in '75. If ended as testified, then they were replaced-extended with other operations.


The more the Empire plays reactionary games with dissidents, the more I fear this nation will have to learn again that satygraha will defeat the oppressors. It is an already fought fight. A proven issue as Martin King and Gandhi knew.
America has some hell to pay to the people, it's own people, WeThePeople. As well as many indigenous peoples around the world and many non-indigenous peoples (whatever that is).


As the German people had to pay a price for hosting the fascist's last empire, AmeriKKKa will too. It is a job only WeThePeople can do to make America right. That is the price and that is where Martin King's satygraha re-enters the tale.


When and if change requires WeThePeople to once again resort to civil disobedience it will be something more important than any manifesto or mission statement. A civil war can be stopped as in the old U.S.S.R. when one Major of the red army decided he was not going to fire on his own working class people. Facing the Gulag for being true to his internal moral compass and true to satygraha as he saw it.


I would hope cooler heads would prevail before it came to that for some field grade American officer.


But I am mostly Irish and I don't believe in cooler heads prevailing in a conflict. I've been wrong before and figure it is sure to happen again before I die.

[Charles Drago]

For what it's worth, Jim, I'll share with you the 2013 postscript I recently wrote for an essay I originally composed in 1996.

POSTCRIPT 2013

My re-evaluation of this work some 17 years after its initial publication has been deeply enriched by the historical scholarship and spiritual insights of James W. Douglass.

Today I blanch at my earlier bellicose imagery and attitudes. I have committed myself to the study Satyagraha and the non-violent resistance that "truth force" inspires.

Let's see how long that lasts. For I am an imperfect human being. I cannot claim the right to be thought of as a satyagrahi. Far from it. My blood still boils, my fists still clench, and my righteous indignation still prompts me to savage verbally not only the enemy, but even some well-meaning individuals who, through their arrogance and/or ignorance, cloud all-important issues relating to our shared quests for truth and justice for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and for the millions collaterally damaged by his assassins.

Listen to me. I'm still at it. "Arrogance ... ignorance ... "

Physician, heal thyself.

In that spirit, I take this opportunity to forswear vengeance and the bloodlust that drives it, and to devote my energies currently focused on deep political inquiry to the non-violent pursuit of justice and the truth from which it shall emerge.

My original idea for the creation of the previously referenced government-run JFK assassination Truth and Amnesty Commission may have become timely again. For details, please see John Kelin's overview at:

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.bac...nesty.html

Until then, I remind you of the truth: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in this case who does not conclude that a criminal conspiracy resulted in the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

Peace.

[Jim Hackett II]

Not having the eloquence that you show so often.....I do what I can.

Astute this:

"Let's see how long that lasts. For I am an imperfect human being. I cannot claim the right to be thought of as a satyagrahi. Far from it. My blood still boils, my fists still clench, and my righteous indignation still prompts me to savage verbally not only the enemy, but even some well-meaning individuals who, through their arrogance and/or ignorance, cloud all-important issues relating to our shared quests for truth and justice for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and for the millions collaterally damaged by his assassins.

Listen to me. I'm still at it. "Arrogance ... ignorance ... "

Physician, heal thyself."

Sure I still feel the wrath rise and the fists clinch. And I be guilty of this event too....

"my righteous indignation still prompts me to savage verbally not only the enemy, but even some well-meaning individuals who, through their arrogance and/or ignorance, cloud all-important issues relating to our shared quests for truth and justice for John Fitzgerald Kennedy and for the millions collaterally damaged by his assassins."

If I didn't care I suppose I wouldn't know the angst that leads to the above reaction. No excuse.

To be receptive to Satygraha, I find it better to shed the anger. Akin to antimatter and matter. Just my own observation of myself and most folks I know.

Anyway I know the Confuseum has no effective weapon against Satygraha. The whole vast Empire has no answer to Satygraha. It only knows force and fascist reactions to Satygraha.

I have a poor feeling about the Empire's reaction to the people's gathering at the Knoll @ 12:30 the 22nd.
Dammit, the People - WeThePeople already proved once that there is no means to oppose Satygraha by force.

The Empire's weapons for "crowd control" are changed, Satygraha has not. Oppression and Active Repression didn't work in the past, it only delayed the confrontation between People and Empire.

Kent and Jackson State state sponsored murder as well as "rioters" killed in confrontations across the nation didn't stop change.
Opposition to the War didn't stop, demands for inner city improvement and reversing social wrongs didn't stop.
Even the active assassinations of Black Panthers did not pour oil on the troubled waters.

All these things flew in opposition to Satygraha but couldn't stop it. Events of repression only escalated the level of confrontation on both sides.

The first time I heard of the Panthers was Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver arming the repressed folks of Oakland and taking films of the police in action in their own neighborhood. And then I learned of breakfast programs for the poor people of all colors.
But the Empire decided the leaders had to die. Too much self preservation and Satygraha in that group to allow it to go on growing.

The fear of the Empire for it's own people is far reaching and on-going.

I do also have some fear of the evil violence of the Empire. I cannot the second time around the confrontation games allow any Pig to strike me with his "equipment". So Martin's non-violence I fall short of and thereby limit Satygraha in my own life.
I hope there is never another public insurrection today, but the signs are that the Empire prepares for another time of pain for this nation.

However, this is NOT my first rodeo. I've seen and lived both sides of confrontation.

Example One: My company at Camp Pendleton was ordered to guard the San Clemente estate of RMNixon before he resigned the same summer.
Do not be fooled into thinking active duty troops will not or cannot be deployed tactically against WeThePeople. The ammo was in the back of the 6 X 6 - 2 1/2 ton trucks we drove to the perimeter. Many hundreds of rounds for our 7.62 M60s left in the truck with the M-60s themselves with more hundreds of 5.56 rounds for the Matty Mattel junk M-16A1s in our hands unloaded.

Thanks God no confrontation beyond yelling came of it.
My internal feelings were sympathy for the protests. I wanted to see RMNixon in federal prison with his compadres too.
But my duty if I must would have been duty not choice. The mob would have been stopped if they threatened the Gyrenes and the "Pacific White House".

I know the lie of the National Guard trying to tell me they were afraid of demonstrators armed with rocks.
In an unarmed environment if I carry an M1 Garand as the Ohio Guard did, I would fear nothing from the unarmed.

Example Two:
Satygraha can be FUN as ALL get out too.
In 1996 as a punk right wing (GOP) fascist was running for reelection to the US House,
he pushed the reduction of the minimum wage law to garner Corporate and wealthy fascists' donations to his campaign I suppose.

A group of activists (peaceful ones) got a broom and played limbo in the hall outside his campaign office on a day when he was in his home district.
Our chant was "How Low Can You Go?"
A public hallway in a public building.
The fascist candidate was pissed,
and yes we left after we made our point and some paper reporters/photographers arrived for documentation.
We left when told we had to or be "detained" if we stayed.
The BPD were quite civil and openly laughing at our guerrilla theater (thanks for the template Abby). It worked well.

Many laughs were gained the point was made and exposed in the newspaper. The punk was reelected but did not carry the votes in our precincts where the exposure was published.

The Elite as far as I have seen have no reaction to confrontation with Satygraha except hatred and wished for violence against the "protestors".

The fascists above actually thought the BPD was automatically going to beat the "disruptors" and evict by violence the people when no violence was required.
We laughed at the fascists and the police laughed at the fascists too.
That moment was worth the efforts.

Satygraha is its' own reward.

[Lauren Johnson]

Until then, I remind you of the truth: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in this case who does not conclude that a criminal conspiracy resulted in the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

I have always been troubled by this phrasing. It tends to place the imagined offender in the positions of a false choice between being called stupid or guilty of participation in the murder of the JFK. It glosses over degrees of complicity. It ignores that most people who deny that JFK was murdered by "criminal conspiracy" are themselves the victims of decades of mind control. Further, it does not take into account that there are those who believe in a version of "criminal conspiracy" that is itself a cover-up and therefore by your definition are complicit. Finally, as you are attempting to practice satygraha, it strikes me as being unkind and that by its very phrasing is self-defeating.

May I suggest a re-do?

[Charles Drago]

Until then, I remind you of the truth: Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence in this case who does not conclude that a criminal conspiracy resulted in the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy is cognitively impaired and/or complicit in the crime.

I have always been troubled by this phrasing. It tends to place the imagined offender in the positions of a false choice between being called stupid or guilty of participation in the murder of the JFK. It glosses over degrees of complicity. It ignores that most people who deny that JFK was murdered by "criminal conspiracy" are themselves the victims of decades of mind control. Further, it does not take into account that there are those who believe in a version of "criminal conspiracy" that is itself a cover-up and therefore by your definition are complicit. Finally, as you are attempting to practice satygraha, it strikes me as being unkind and that by its very phrasing is self-defeating.

May I suggest a re-do?

You may.

I decline.

May I suggest that you undertake a reading more sensitive to nuance and subtext?

For your edification:

1. Begin with "Anyone with reasonable access to the evidence ... " Those who do not enjoy such access are not necessarily "stupid." Rather, they are, to varying degrees, simply uninformed or under-informed. This "stupid" business is wholly in your mind and nowhere to be found in my construction.

2. Nowhere do I speak of "belief" in anything. Nor do I qualify "criminal conspiracy" beyond its literal meaning. One step at a time.

3. Kindness and unkindness are matters of intent (writer's) and interpretation (readers').

4. My phrasing is intentionally confrontational in service to my prime subtext: The time for reasonable debate of the conspiracy/LN positions is long past. To prolong the faux debate is to prolong the hegemony and security of the Sponsors (and their heirs) of JFK's murder. Debate is precisely what they want us to do, ad infinitum. Our obligation to "those who do not enjoy such access" is not to show them both sides of an long-settled argument, but rather to educate them -- to demonstrate the truth of conspiracy.

One step at a time.

5. You are quite right to point out that millions have been victimized by the manipulators of perception. In my Introduction to Evica's A Certain Arrogance I noted that as our struggle continues, we often are "tempted to argue that the realities of war often require an honorable combatant to mimic, for a limited period and with noble intent, the darker designs of an evil foe." From the perspective of the satyagrahi as I'm able to comprehend it, such behavior is unacceptable.

So perhaps the notion of de-programming the victims -- an act of kindness to be sure -- would be consistent with the principles of satyagraha.

And the effort to effect such de-programming directs my words which are so troubling to you.