You always have a choice.

[jtuck004]

From his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude

Etienne de La Boetie - written around 1552-53
(There are several Google links to this, at least a couple different translations.)

"Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of our revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves? You sow your crops in order that he may ravage them, you install and furnish your homes to give him goods to pillage; you rear your daughters that he may gratify his lust; you bring up your children in order that he may confer upon them the greatest privilege he knows---to be led into his battles, to be delivered to butchery, to be made the servants of his greed and the instruments of his vengeance; you yield your bodies unto hard labor in order that he may indulge in his delights and wallow in his filthy pleasures; you weaken yourselves in order to make him the stronger and the mightier to hold you in check. From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces ..."

So in matters of liberation from whatever chains that bind you, when you want the situtation to change, refrain from violence, but take the legs from under the behemoth.

You are the power of those who would take from your life. You. Want it to stop? Stop supporting them. Use your power for your own good, and that of your families, your cities.

Yeah it's hard, but what does the alternative gain you?

[niyad]

1. thank you

[Javaman]

2. Choice is an illusion.

however, some illusions are better than others.

[socialist_n_TN]

3. KInd of like.........

What if they threw a war and nobody came?

What if the capitalists put up jobs and nobody worked? What if they occupied the factories and stores, but didn't work? What if they worked on their own for their own self and not the owners?

That last would show EXACTLY how useful the owners actually are.

[jtuck004]

4. "What if they worked on their own for their own self..."

There is plenty of evidence that people can own their own corporations, work cooperatively, and thrive in the face of the coporations who place profits above people. You and I both know that.

The real job is opening a window in the minds of those who have been beholden to Mr. Charlie for so long. Instead people march in the streets, begging, demanding that Mr. Charlie change his ways, give a little sugar back. They seem to think that is the task.

Until we forge a counterinsurgency movement that co-opts the resources and educates the people we are still playing by our opponents rules.