Barlow Says: Stop What You're Doing and Call Your Reps NOW!

Look up your Rep's fax and phone numbers here.

John Perry Barlow sent this out today...

If you have opened this e-mail today, Thursday, October 10, stop
reading it right now.

Drop your mouse and grab your phone.

Call the offices of your senators and representatives and tell them how you feel about their willingness to give "President" Bush blanket authorization to make war whenever and however he feels like it, renewable indefinitely. They may vote to do so as early as this evening.

He also cited this really cool quote from Mark Twain:

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9

(Thanks, Cory)

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r107:6:./temp/~r107TB8tOV::
oct 4 byrd

Begin forwarded message:

From: John Perry Barlow barlow@eff.org
Date: Thu Oct 10, 2002 12:17:18 PM US/Pacific
To: John Perry Barlow barlow@eff.org
Subject: (SPAM?) [E-S] BarlowFriendz 8.6: Please, Folks, Call The
Capital Today!

^

(o)

/_ _\
--------- B a R L o W F R i e N D Z
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A continuing series of occasional outbursts to about 1052 of my
dearest friends. Please let me know if you wish to be removed from
this list. But you'll miss some great parties if you do...

Also, if this broadcast feels as spammish to you as it obviously is, I
hope you remember that individual responses generally elicit personal
replies. And whether or not I have time to write back, I always read
your replies with careful delight.
------------------------------ ------------------- --------

CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES. NOW.

If you have opened this e-mail today, Thursday, October 10, stop
reading it right now.

Drop your mouse and grab your phone.

Call the offices of your senators and representatives and tell them
how you feel about their willingness to give "President" Bush blanket
authorization to make war whenever and however he feels like it,
renewable indefinitely. They may vote to do so as early as this
evening.

This is nuts, folks. Good Ol' Dubya has the brains of a cocker
spaniel, but unlike a cocker spaniel, he has nuclear weapons. Not to
mention the masculine insecurities of a Houston frat jock working on
his second six pack. Not to mention the conscience-anaesthetizing
belief that God is on his side.

Worse, he has in the background some very bright people whose almost
autistic capacity for compassion would make Stalin look like the Dalai
Lama.

It was Stalin who said, "The death of one person is a tragedy. The
death of a million people is a statistic." Dick Cheney, whom I've know
quite well since 1976, is perfectly capable of thinking something like
that. It's no small wonder that he has a heart condition. For years,
his heart has been crying out for the attention of the HAL 9000 in his
head.

Dick wants to impose the Pax Americana upon the world. By force. He
wants to disarm Irag for the same reasons that Caeser wanted to disarm
Gaul. The reason he isn't, like George Bush I, concerned about what
sort of government would replace Saddam's is because *we* would govern
Iraq for the indefinite future. As we now govern Afghanistan and will,
according to his plan, come to govern the entire oil-producing portion
of the Islamic world.

But Rome ruled by fear, not moral example. They crucified a lot more
people than Jesus Christ. They had no more interest in the well-being
of their subjects than do the architects of Pax Americana, which was
first designed by Cheney and Wolfowitz at the end of Bush I.

This concept was buffed up and re-codified in September 2000. It took
the form of a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses, which
was released then by an outfit called The Project for the New American
Century. You may find this document at
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.

After you've called DC, I strongly recommend that you read it. Like
all great authoritarian literature, it produces in the reader a
perfect combination of boredom and terror.

One of its authors, Yale's Donald Kagen, gave us a foretasted flavor
of our Imperial ruling style when he said recently, "People worry a
lot about how the Arab street is going to react [to the invasion of
Iraq]. Well, I see that the Arab street has gotten very, very quiet
since we started blowing things up."

This is not the quiet of tranquillity. This is the smoldering quiet of
rage.

We have the military force to blow a lot of things up. But if that is
how the Pax is to be maintained, it will be a pox on America's soul.
For most of our history, we have led by moral rather than military
force. Are we ready to forsake that tradition?

Besides, I believe the strategy of coerced Islamic pacification will
backfire hideously. Those quiet Arab streets will produce a virulent
bloom of young men who have nothing to lose and Paradise to gain.

As we learned on September 11, it doesn't take a nation state to
threaten us, nor does it take a nation state to create genuine weapons
of mass destruction. A pencil sized stick of Cesium 137, which can be
easily acquired at any food irradiation facility, could, with 10
pounds of dynamite wrapped around it, deliver a lethal dose of
radiation to everyone in Lower Manhattan.

Modern technology greatly favors the underdog. As a purely practical
matter - never mind the moral questions - do we want to be the
perpetual Overdog in a world like that?

Pax Americana may slouch out of the Capital tonight and head off to
Baghdad to be born. If it is, we will make America safe for SUV's. And
almost nothing else.

Call your senators and representative. Now.

We contained the Soviet Union for 57 years. We've contained Iraq for
11 years. However dishonest or barbaric or conniving Saddam's
government, they have provided us with precisely zero identifiable
threat since 1991. We can go on containing them for a long time. With
proper intelligence - which may be hard for us to muster - we could
probably neutralize them as well and do so without "collateral damage"
(our pleasant phrase for killing innocent bystanders).

But, as a nation, we no longer seem to think there are Moslem
innocents. We are systematically dehumanizing them. I beg you not to
do this. Do not turn the Islamic world into statistics instead of
human beings like yourselves. Following one of my previous missives on
this subject, I received some astonishingly bigoted replies. One
former BarlowFriend said, essentially, "kill them all, let Allah sort
'em out."

I make faint defense for either the cultural or political practices of
the Middle East. I've spent time there. It's pretty awful, at least by
my standards. Egypt is a place so broken that it makes Mexico look
like France. But the people, even the ones who hated everything I
stood for, were incredibly sweet to me.

However bad their governments may be, however narrowing their
ideology, each of them is, like you, another mask that God wears. They
laugh, they love, they toss their babies in the air with as much
affection as you toss yours.

There are many babies in Iraq who will likely soon be tossed into mass
graves, assuming there's a recognizable body to toss. There are many
adults in Iraq who have done nothing to you who will die horrible
deaths simply because their leader, whom they hate as much as we do,
just might possibly someday become able to do something bad to us.

These are real human beings. Very few of them mean you any harm. Even
their leader, who probably does mean you harm, is smart enough to know
better than to inflict it.

Imagine them, not as millions, but one person at a time. Grace them
with actual faces. Look into their deep, dark eyes. Are you still
ready to kill them? Do you have reason enough?

Call your senators and representatives. Now.

It's probably too late. Even Tom Daschle has caved. But if we lose
today, we can begin to organize the long struggle that will be
necessary to save America and the world from Pax Americana. And you
might as well begin your new career as a political activist with a
phone call today. You'd do well to get into the habit.

With bleak heart,

Barlow

P.S. Please scroll down to my current .sig quote. It's timely.

--

*************************************************************
John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident
Co-Founder & Vice Chairman, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Berkman Fellow, Harvard Law School

Home(stead) Page: http://www.eff.org/~barlow

Call me anywhere, anytime: 800/654-4322

Fax me anywhere, anytime: 603/215-1529

Current Cell Phone: 646/286-8176 (GSM)

Alternative (Inactive) Cell Phone: 917/863-2037 (AT&T)

**************************************************************

Barlow in Meatspace Now: New York City! (Until 10/12) 212/965-1991

(Provisional) Trajectory from Here: Salt Lake City (10/12-15) -
Steamboat Springs, CO (10/15-16) - Pinedale, Wyoming (10/17-20) -
Eugene, OR (10/21-22) - Down the West Coast (10/22-24) - San
Francisco (10/24-28) - LA (10/28-31) - Las Vegas (11/1-2) - Salt
Lake City (11/3) - New York City (11/4-5) - London (11/6-9) -
Pinehurst, NC (11/9-12) - New York City...

**************************************************************

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the
nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by
convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the
better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

-- Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch.9

Posted by Lisa at October 10, 2002 03:44 PM | TrackBack