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3. What are the conditions necessary for this project to work?
For there to be deep systemic change, including but not limited to what
I call “regime change” in Washington DC, three determinants
must be in play. The presence of these provide the necessary environment
for either a non-violent (preferably) or violent revolution.
There must be . . .
• Sufficient numbers of people oppressed and exploited, producing
…
• Non-negotiable demands for redressing the injustice and abuse,
coupled with …
• An effective mechanism or path for removing the oppressors from
power.
Two of those requirements (1,3) already exist, though at this stage
somewhat beneath the surface, submerged by a lot of intense propaganda
and distraction. The frustration, anger, sense of being shafted by the
system exists in spades. Mechanisms are also there. The conditions are
ripe. We just need to organize and act.
What has been lacking is the second item, a coherent, cogent ultimatum
or set of ultimatums, which codifies the abuse and injustice endemic
to US government regimes of both parties. The demand for economic justice
and an end to hyper-militarization and the insanity of endless war is
at the core of the Peace Dividend proposal. It is a formulation of what
I call an “ultimate ultimatum”—a non-negotiable, paradigm-shifting,
game-changing demand. Its fulfillment will set the U.S. on a completely
different trajectory, one that would eliminate the horrible suffering
of war, and the onerous price citizens now pay for military adventurism,
a trajectory that embraces a whole new set of priorities which would
deal with the real threats to our stability. Refusal to fulfill the
demand will result in a massive insurrection in one form or another.
4. How do you expect to reach all the pertinent candidates for
national office?
There already are many who want to run for office on a peace platform.
This last election, we got 110 candidates (13) to sign the Contract
For American Renewal (14).
The success of the Peace Dividend electoral strategy depends on creating
a groundswell of public support, inaugurating a firestorm of public
outrage over the theft of our tax dollars under false pretenses and
used to prosecute fraudulent wars with exorbitantly expensive military
junk, in order to police the whole planet simply for profit. When “We
want our money back!” becomes viral, truly progressive politicians
who want to work for a peaceful future will run under the Peace Dividend
banner. Why? Because it is right, and it will guarantee victory for
decent politicians who have been locked out by the warmongering establishment
– both political parties, the media, the Deep State (Pentagon
and CIA). Running as a Peace Dividend candidate opens the door for a
productive political career. The key is public awareness, a public unified
by the Peace Dividend concept.
5. How can this project really be implemented?
1) Every active peace and progressive organization could make the Peace
Dividend concept a centerpiece of their publications, public appearances,
protests, rallies, every effort to message the public. This doesn’t
mean they abandon what they now do. It means that the Peace Dividend
is given equal billing. This project is completely compatible with and
relevant to, for example: Black Lives Matter, Fight For 15, End Citizens
United, immigration reform, even free university and college. Endless
war destroys prospects for ending corruption and having a functioning,
representative democracy. Peace organizations should especially get
involved (such as): World Without War, Black Alliance For Peace, Code
Pink, Black Agenda Report, Popular Resistance, US Labor Against The
War, Veterans For Peace, War Resisters League, the Ron Paul Institute
for Peace and Prosperity, Peace Action.
2) High-profile public figures – especially elected politicians
– must be convinced that promoting the Peace Dividend concept
is in their own and everyone’s best interest. It will unify efforts
for a more just, humane, peaceful world under one “peace progressive”
banner. Politicians who come to mind include: Bernie Sanders, Tulsi
Gabbard, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rand Paul, and Barbara Lee. Public
figures who are not in elected office and who have spoken out on behalf
of peace are easier to identify: Robert Scheer, Chris Hedges, Ralph
Nader, Noam Chomsky, Tom Engelhardt, Glen Ford, Cynthia McKinney, Amy
Goodman, Dennis Kucinich, Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Medea Benjamin,
Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka, Paul Street, Abby Martin, Jimmy Dore, Oliver
Stone, Ray McGovern, John Wight, Finian Cunningham, David Swanson, Gareth
Porter, Henry Giroux, Paul Craig Roberts, Lee Camp, Cornell West, Richard
Wolff, Ann Wright, Ron Paul, Jessie Ventura, Cindy Sheehan, Ron Kovic
and more.
6. What do you say to critics who reject the idea as “impossible”
or “pie in the sky”?
My reply is two-fold:
1) Something is impossible until it’s not. Human flight, artificial
intelligence, a mentally-compromised, corrupt reality show TV celebrity
as the President of the United States, come immediately to mind. All
impossible. Laughable. Until they weren’t.
2) What’s truly “pie in the sky” is thinking that
the people who directly and enormously profit from war will listen to
our pretty please appeals for a kinder, gentler world. These folks only
care about money and power. They don’t care who else has to suffer
or die for their wealth and preeminence. That includes both the targets
of their military aggression “over there”, and us. We’re
all collateral damage to the empire builders. Peace activists say many
of the right things. But the people who need to listen and act –
those who make the decisions about war and peace – are not listening.
So we have to replace the decision-makers—those who we elect to
represent us but who do the bidding of their puppeteers—with ones
who will listen to everyday citizens and then work for us. This will
either occur through a massive electoral uprising, or a massive bloody
revolution. One or the other is inevitable, unless we destroy ourselves
in the meantime in a nuclear holocaust.
7. What do you say to peace groups that are active in various projects
and think they don’t have time or energy for another?
Current strategies for ending war and promoting peace are not working.
We are going backwards. We have more war, greater prospects for yet
more war, massive militarization of our society and economy. We need
different arguments.
All current “arguments” for peace are valid for those who
agree with their premises and logic. Unfortunately, our moral arguments
are vulnerable to being twisted. The public is misled with lies, manipulated
and confused by the masters of prevarication and spin. Not only humans
but truth and reason become casualties of war.
A classic example is R2P Responsibility To Protect (15). The counter-argument
is bad people over there are doing bad things. So we need to bomb those
countries, kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians, to stop the
bad people from killing innocent civilians, or us! For an even more
surreal experience, look at the religious version of this tortured logic.
Thou shalt not kill. True, but we’re killing bad people to keep
them from killing good people – that would be U.S. citizens, of
course – and God is such a wise and perceptive God that he blesses
our killing and will reward us for doing good as his chosen people.
How is this different than the Muslim terrorist belief that their cause
is so just that if they strap explosives to their chests and blow themselves
up in a crowded street market to kill bad people that they will be rewarded
with eternal salvation?
The budgetary argument about having so many problems at home that we
need to cut military spending and put that money to work for us has
the counter-argument: Well, that’s true, but if we don’t
defend our country, there won’t be any schools, roads, and bridges.
The bad guys will vaporize us in a nuclear fireball. That’s why
we need to spend $1.5 trillion more on nuclear arms, and put more bases
all over the world to control everybody and everything.
The logic of the Peace Dividend refund is so basic and visceral it can’t
be distorted. “You've been conned! OUR money has been stolen to
fight fraudulent wars. WE deserve a refund!” And as we struggle
for that reparation, the insane war system can be stopped in its tracks.
The public is frustrated, unhappy, and many are desperate. They know
the government and mass media lie. The public is ripe for our calling
out the fraud. They already know about the mind-boggling waste of the
military, the F-35s that can’t fly in the rain and asphyxiate
the pilots. They know the system is rigged. Many voted for Trump, because
he said a lot of the things on the campaign trail they wanted. Yet their
trust was once again misplaced.
Whatever we do to promote peace, the big challenge is getting the public
to pay attention. People are busy and distractions are many. They don’t
want traditional answers. That is the beauty of the Peace Dividend idea.
It’s fresh! It could start a peace “buzz” in the public!
It could even make headlines, which our current peace efforts do not.
8. Let’s say hypothetically that you get a candidate contract,
that you get enough congressional votes for the peace dividend. You
still have the president veto.
1) Think back to your high school civics class and take note of this
fundamental constitutional asymmetry: Congress can impeach the President,
but the President can’t impeach Congress.
2) A movement of this scale must include the election of a peace-friendly,
or better yet a Peace Dividend Refund-committed president.
9. Let’s say you get the president to sign the dividend
contract, you still have a capitalist system with a military empire
fortress. You say you want real reform and peace. Why do you think The
Establishment is going to let you (the majority) get away with that?
Reform is a polite, unintimidating term. The Peace Dividend Project
is radical reform, a gateway for deep systemic change, even revolution
peaceful or otherwise, all abhorrent to The Establishment.
To achieve the ends of the Peace Dividend Project, a clean sweep of those now in positions of political power is required. I call this ‘regime change in Washington DC’. It can be achieved via a massive electoral insurrection, or a massive violent insurrection. I have no way of predicting once we head down this course which one it will be.
Neither the ruling elite nor their corrupt pay-for-play hired guns in official governmental positions of power are going to go along with any of the proposals in the Peace Dividend plan. We, therefore, need to replace all The Establishment lapdogs now in office.
Demanding the Peace Dividend refund and reform agenda is the mechanism by which we truly drain the Washington DC swamp. Either they give us our due or we replace them. We’ll end up replacing them. Granted it will be a helluva fight. But if we can unite the public around this one powerful initiative, we can get rid of the crooks and liars in office.
The new legislators and new president will be bound by contract to
put into law the Peace Dividend refund. This will require further legislation,
which will completely reorient national priorities. The plan impacts
taxation and tax sheltering, subsidies, DoD allocations, control of
the currency, foreign policy, the wars, Wall Street, issuance of currency
and bonds. The weapons industry and corporate autocrats—the ruling
elite—will have to abide by these new laws unless they decide
to unleash a military attack (public or private). That would be a military
coup and would lead to a civil war. While certainly a possibility, that
tragic turn of events is beyond the scope of this discussion.
While enacting the Peace Dividend agenda, the way government does business
and our dealings with the rest of the international community would
be revolutionized such that the real challenges necessary for the continuation
of the human race as a viable species could begin to be solved:
1) Nuclear war and the resulting nuclear winter threatens the survival
of the human species.
2) Climate change threatens civilization and human extinction.
3) Wealth inequality creates massive suffering and social instability.
4) Capitalism is an intrinsically flawed, self-destructive, oppressive
economic system.
Until we replace everyone currently in power, none of these enormous
challenges will be genuinely discussed much less solved. I know the
Peace Dividend proposal is an outrageous, unprecedented, completely
outside-the-box idea. That is entirely intentional. To achieve deep
systemic reform, we cannot paint inside the lines. Those political boundaries
are precisely a reason why we are in the appalling, terrifying mess
we’re in. We must be audacious, relentless and uncompromising.
We are confronting a ruthless enemy, the ruling elite, that confers
us no dignity, no respect, literally no place of importance in a world
they believe is exclusively theirs to do as they see fit. We are expendable,
and if they find us too annoying they will continue to throw us into
the slaughterhouse of war without hesitation or the slightest remorse,
while they sit back and watch their already incomprehensible wealth
accelerate. There’s no room left to be cautious and polite in
this epic struggle for our rightful place in the nation we built with
our blood, sweat and tears.
So the choices are clear:
1) Either it is the Peace Dividend or some equally outrageous assault
on the system or . . .
2) It is a bloody revolution that will destroy the country or . . .
3) We live as slaves to suffer and die under the tyranny of perpetual
war and capitalist exploitation.
We need to choose and we need to choose quickly. Time is running out.
Notes:
1. http://www.literaryvagabond.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Peace-Dividend_Cover_400x600.jpg
and https://www.powells.com/searchresults?keyword=The+Peace+Dividend+by+John+Rachel
2. IMF working papers, May 1, 1995. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2016/12/30/The-Peace-Dividend-Military-Spending-Cuts-and-Economic-Growth-1871
3. http://www.aei.org/scholar/paul-wolfowitz/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski
6. http://peacedividend.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/4.82-Trillion_Peace-Dividend_2016_Graphic.jpg
See Rachel’s 86-page book, Peace Dividend, at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-Dividend-Controversial-Proposal-History/dp/1365386171
7. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf
8. https://www.mintpressnews.com/do-the-math-global-war-on-terror-has-killed-4-million-muslims-or-more/208225/
9. https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/nov/30/why-a-war-on-terrorism-will-generate-yet-more-terrorism
10. https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/1-threat-peace-world-guess-who-its-us
11. http://peacedividend.us/the-peace-dividend/paying-for-the-peace-dividend/
12. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/07/14/the-big-bank-bailout/#4f619d02d83f
13. http://cfar2018.com/the-cfar/cfar-candidates/
14. http://cfar2018.com/the-cfar/the-contract/
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect
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