Everything is Shit

I would like to welcome EiS’s first outside writer, who goes by the nom de plume of HASHASSIN. Be advised, he is strong of opinion yet able to express himself rather well (when he wants to), as he demonstrated today in his first post, titled “Rage Rage Rage!”. No milquetoast, HASHASSIN combines intelligence with the wild indiscipline of youth — something that is sorely needed around here. I look forward to reading many more of his posts.

A good friend of ours (Noam Chomsky) said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II that every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on would have been hung to death and shot - and this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations, way beyond elections, way beyond every four years of pulling levers, way beyond that. Because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive - and that’s not a system that changes every four years, it’s a system that we have to break down, generation after generation after generation after generation after generation… Wake up. 

— Zack de la Rocha 

Zack De la Rocha is well-known as the frontman for the band Rage Against the Machine, as well as for his vigilance as a political advocate, and for inciting fundamental change against the status quo. He is one of the most popular, visible champions of human rights and political causes around the world, most notably his public protest of Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther Party activist, and for supporting the Zapatista revolutionary movement in Chiapas, Mexico.

Zack de La Rocha first captured my attention at a 2000 concert, where he spoke the following words:

So who went out and joined us for the Democratic National Convention? I’ve never seen so many fucking cops in my life. It’s like everybody knows that everybody went out there; the only thing we were out there to do is express how much we hate both the Democrats and Republicans because they sold this fucking country out. And by expressing our rights to resist, what do they do? They open fire on the crowd. I don’t care what fucking television station said the violence was caused by the people at the concert; those motherfuckers unloaded on this crowd. And I think it’s ridiculous considering, you know, none of us had rubber bullets; none of us hadM16s; none of us had billy clubs; none of us had face shields. All we had was our fists, our voices, our microphones, our guitars, our drums, our timbales and whatnot. And anytime we get beaten in the streets for protesting, we take it to the court system, and the court system don’t wanna hear it. Look what happened to Amadou Diallo in New York. They shot that brother 41 times and let all four officers go. It’s time for a new type of action in this country.

 From his website, I found this statement:

Without just cause or reason, without legal or moral justification, and without a thread of proof that Iraq directly threatens the security of the United States, the Bush administration has headed to war. As I am writing this, bombs are raining upon the defenseless civilians of Baghdad in a continuation of a policy that has already claimed the lives of over 1 million innocent Iraqi people. People just like us who want  democracy but find themselves cornered by a dictator on one side, naked U.S. aggression on another, and the oil beneath their country; for which it appears they are to be massacred.

Lies, sanctions, and cruise missiles have never created a free and just society. Only everyday people can do that, which is why I’m joining the millions world wide who have stood up to oppose the Bush administration’s attempt to expand the U.S. empire at the expense of human rights at home and abroad… I hope it not only makes us think, but also inspires us to act and raise our voices.

So I call on you as fellow American citizens to uphold and exercise your most impressive attribute – free-thought. If you get one person to start thinking, to do their own research, to expose the truth behind the status quo, they can take that discovered truth and share it with their friends and family, who can spread it from there to their friends and family, and so on to all our friends and families. Prove the strength of Americans as free-thinkers by your actions, by starting the train of free thought yourself.

One day all Americans will wake up, and not have to worry about what the future holds. We can live our lives as we deserve to live them – FREE, free from tyranny, free from oppression.

Let’s spread that around the world, instead of some petroleum-driven, total devastation, oppressive, run-away war machine, raping and pillaging the earth, disguised as “democratic-freedom fighters”. 

I clearly remember the days of my youth when people were proud to be Americans. How could we let that slip away? Look around you, at the current loss of our freedoms — our rights. Read the Patriot Act. We call this democracy? Read the Military Commissions Act. You call this conservatism? Look at the photos of Abu Ghraib. You call this – humanity?

Is it possible, just possible, that my countrymen will stop doing an incompetent impersonation of the SS and allow me to have pride in my nation again? Is that possibility only a dream?

Sorry if I’m being negative — or as Americans used to say, blunt. On the other hand, there’s no hidden agenda here.