- It's time to break the sick relationship that we have
with the Robber Class and do something about it!
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- They can only rob us, if we allow them to.
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- # Myth One - America Is The Greatest Nation
In The Universe!
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- # Myth Two - Elections Matter
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- # Myth Three - There's A Huge Difference Between
Democrats And Republicans
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- # Myth Four - It Is Noble To Kill And Die In
Robber Class Wars
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- # Myth Five - The Federal Reserve Cares About
You
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- # Myth Six - It's A Privilege To Pay Income
Taxes
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- # Myth Seven - Housing, Health Care And Education
Are Privileges, Too
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- # Myth Eight - America has a Free Press
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- # Myth Nine - The Environment, Who Needs
it?
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- # Myth Ten - 19 Muslims With Box Cutters Did
9-11
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- See full text of article below
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- Cindy Sheehan Takes On The Robber Class
- By Bob Fitrakis
- The Free Press
- 7-15-9
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- The United States has produced several mythic historical
figures Paul Bunyan, John Henry and the like but our actual
prophetic peace activists are actually far more interesting. People like
Eugene Victor Debs, Emma Goldman, and in our present day, Cindy Sheehan.
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- Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and
the Case for Revolution places Sheehan firmly in the pantheon of progressive
heroes. Myth America is an online book by Sheehan geared towards destroying
the military industrial and security industrial complex that killed her
son Casey in the corrupt war in Iraq.
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- Sheehan is calling for re-localization and the uncoupling
of the "robbed class" from the war profiteers and new high-tech
robber barons that are flourishing under globalization. The beauty of Sheehan's
work, directly echoing the speeches and writings of Debs, is its sheer
bluntness.
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- I interviewed her for freepress.org, and she began by
pointing out that "the last month or so in Iraq does not show that
the war is winding down, and that part of Obama's plan to withdraw from
the cities in Iraq simply involved redefining the border of the city."
She termed the so-called withdrawal "painfully slow."
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- "The peace movement has been co-opted by the Democratic
Party," Sheehan said, while on her way to a national gathering of
peace activists in Pittsburgh on July 10. She ran a Congressional campaign
in the Democratic primary last year against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
and raised the issue of Pelosi being aware of the practices of torture
and waterboarding.
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- Sheehan favors the appointment of an independent special
prosecutor to look into the issues of torture and war crimes in Iraq. She
is well aware that if you begin digging up facts concerning the practices
of the Bush administration following 911, you're going to "pull up
some Democratic skeletons as well."
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- Sheehan argues that it's necessary to dig up all the
bodies and bones or there'll be "no healing."
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- In one sense, Sheehan is both old-fashioned and cutting
edge she uses the appropriate term in discussing U.S. foreign policy
"imperial." When asked she believes current U.S. policy
is imperialist, she replied "Of course."
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- But her focus is more on re-invigorating the peace movement
at the local level, which she says is doing a "bad job" under
the Obama administration. Make no mistake, Sheehan sees the current imperial
policy of the U.S. reflected in a domestic "class war" as well.
The book poses a key question: "What can the vast majority of Americans
do as the "robbed class?" She recently wrote: "The so-called
Ship of State that 'turns slowly' cannot turn at all if the rudder keeps
pointing in the direction of economic piracy for the Robbers and economic
pillage for We the Robbed." This populism from below sentiment has
usually been a harbinger for large-scale social economic movements, from
the original Populists to the Socialists, Wobblies, progressives and New
Leftists.
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- Her new book analyzes the relationship between the U.S.
government and the six or so transnational media corporations that control
80% of the world's for-profit content. Sheehan's strategy is to avoid the
Robber Class corporations as much as possible, whether its through publishing
e-books and articles on the internet, or re-allocating one's capital in
a different direction.
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- Sheehan's pitch is to free ourselves from our co-dependency
with the Robber Class. "Only buy used, only use cash or bank debit
cards, or only buy from local merchants," she recently wrote. They
can only steal from us if we enable them." And when the Robber Class
steals from us they generally get away with it. Sheehan argues that Bernie
Madoff was punished so severely because he stole from the rich.
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- Sheehan's book is a plea for the robbed class to take
back their independence and the wealth that they produce, not only for
their own good, but for the good of all the people on the planet.
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- Bob Fitrakis is the Editor of freepress.org and the author
of The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist
Party.
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