U.S. Declaration of Independence With Translations

Perhaps the most sublime document ever written, the Declaration of Independence of the United States does not have the force of law, but was an inspiration to the Americans of 1776, and has since been an inspiration to uncounted billions of people around the globe even today.

Below are links to the original document in English, and to other languages courtesy of Google Translate (and I give the French language pride of place here, because if it had not been for the people of France, there never would have been a United States of America to begin with):

The Declaration of Independence

La Déclaration d'Indépendance

إعلان الاستقلال

Декларацията за независимост

独立宣言

Deklarace nezávislosti

Uafhængighedserklæringen

De Verklaring van Onafhankelijkheid

Ang Pahayag ng Kalayaan

Die Declaration of Independence

Η Διακήρυξη της Ανεξαρτησίας

הכרזת העצמאות

आजादी की घोषणा

A Függetlenségi Nyilatkozat

Yfirlýsingu um Independence

Deklarasi Kemerdekaan

La Dichiarazione di Indipendenza

独立宣言

독립 선언서

Deklarasi Kemerdekaan

The Declaration of Independence (Norwegian)

اعلامیه استقلال

Deklaracja Niepodległości

A Declaração de Independência

Declaraţia de Independenţă

Декларация независимости

Декларација о независности

Deklarácia nezávislosti

La Declaración de Independencia

Självständighetsförklaringen

சுதந்திர பிரகடனம்

ประกาศอิสรภาพ

Bağımsızlık Bildirgesi

Декларація незалежності

آزادی کےاعلان

Tuyên ngôn Độc lập

Mae'r Datganiad Annibyniaeth

Why bother with all this? Why should I have taken the time and invested the (minimal) effort? Because I truly believe that ordinary people the world over have no wish to kill each other, that they wish only for a fighting chance to live decent lives, to raise their families in peace and safety, because governments the world over cater to the rich and powerful who care not a fig whether ordinary people live or die, and because, in the immortal words of the slain U.S. President John F. Kennedy, I believe that ". . . our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."

Stop the Frickin' Wars!

America's seemingly endless wars need to end now.

The people of the United States don't believe in them. Americans don't believe that it is necessary for their "security" to conquer and/or occupy foreign countries. What they do believe is that these wars are being fought only to further line the pockets of the already obscenely rich Big Oil companies, and to throw dust in the faces of the American people at home so that more of them won't realize the extent to which their own government is screwing them right up the old yin-yang at home.

Many (far, far TOO many) brave young Americans have already given their lives or any chance of a normal life at home for no better reason than the fact that the evil, greedy cocksuckers who run the U.S. government want the campaign dollars tossed their way by the big defense contractors. Bright young patriotic kids, who's only "crime" is that up until now they've truly believed that the USA really is the "land of the free and home of the brave" are being killed, maimed, and brutalized every single day only in order to fight a wholly fictitious "War On Terror" when the real terrorists are right here in the USA!

Americans don't want an overseas empire, and never did! Real Americans have no desire to impose our system of government on anyone else, anywhere, and never have! Why the hell would we? For Christ's sake, it's now waging war against its own citizens here at home!

The U.S. government, and all too many state and local governments, have turned out to be "The Beast" spoken of in the "Book of Revelation" in the Christian Bible. Want to fight real "terrorists"? Start with the corrupt, greedy, power-crazed terrorists who occupy some of the highest positions in the U.S. government in Washington including the White House, both Houses of Congress, many of the federal departments and agencies, and don't forget many of the state governors' offices, state legislatures, and all too many local mayors' offices and municipal/county councils. Far, far too many of these people, under the guise of "conservatism" or "liberalism" have waged war on the American people for decades via the spreading of deliberate disinformation, the fomenting of mass-hysteria and fear, and now in some cases are even resorting to wrongfully imprisoning or shooting American citizens down in the streets merely for exercising their constitutional rights.

The American people are currently engaged in the fight of their lives, an epic struggle to take their own government back into their own hands so that, in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth."

The American people are unreservedly proud of and grateful to all who currently wear our country's uniform, but they need you here, now, at home to defend them from our country's real enemies.

Has U.S. Gov't Declared War On the American People? (Update)

No, the title of this blog post wasn't designed merely to attract readers and/or comments.

There have been growing signs and examples of forcible repression of Occupy protesters engaged in exercising their First Amendment rights for many days now. These occurrences of repression have been staged with more brutality in some places than others, but repression is repression no matter what form it make take.

There were the infamous examples of the so-called "Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge" and the subsequent assault on U.S. citizens conducted in NYC several days later by the NYPD. During the former the NYPD kettled and arrested some 700 American citizens peacefully protesting and expressing themselves.

Occupiers in other cities and towns have been subjected to low levels of harassment from the first, such as those in Cincinnati who were given citations from the Cincinnati Police Department on a nightly basis for days on end. Occupy Boston was assaulted by the Boston Police Department, during which assault numerous injuries were sustained and arrests made. Occupy Denver was assaulted by the Denver Police Department and the Colorado State Police.

A few days ago, Occupy Chicago was assaulted by the Chicago Police Department, and numerous arrests were made including dozens of nurses who were present in support of the protesters. Occupy St. Louis, Occupy Dallas, Occupy Tampa, Occupy San Diego, and Occupy Seattle have also either been assaulted or harassed by police, and there are many more Occupy groups too numerous to mention who have now had similar experiences.

Then two nights ago, Occupy Oakland was subjected to a full-scale military-style assault by members of the Oakland Police Department during which police fired rubber bullets and tear-gas at peaceful protesters, and flash-bang grenades and a sound-cannon were also employed by police. Many protesters sustained serious injuries, and one protester, a former United States Marine and an Iraq War veteran, was hit in the head by a projectile fired by police and is now in critical condition in a local hospital.

If that wasn't enough, at virtually the same time protesters at Occupy Atlanta were being forcibly evicted from their site and arrested by the Atlanta Police Department.

Last night Occupy D.C. reported being overrun by District police and their equipment confiscated, and today protesters at Occupy Tampa are reporting arrests for merely being present in a public park in broad daylight.

I am ordinarily not a "conspiracy theory" aficionado, but I for one do not believe that all these acts of repression can possibly have been either spontaneous or coincidental. To me at least it appears that the current Democratic Administration in Washington has realized that they cannot hope to manipulate or use the various Occupy movements nationwide to boost the chances of the re-elections of President Obama and other Democratic politicians in 2012, and that they have therefore concluded that the protesters are simply so much "trash," fit only to be swept from America's streets. What happened at Occupy D.C. seems particularly telling in this regard, since those protesters had never been subjected even to police harassment, let alone violence or arrests up until now.

Therefore it does appear to me, for one, that the government of the United States has now declared open war on the American people, albeit in the way wars are always "declared" these days--with no formal declaration by Congress, merely a directive of the Commander-in-Chief sufficing instead. It seems that the U.S. government has concluded, in its wisdom, that the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is no longer "operative," or at least no longer convenient, and is acting accordingly.

The only question remaining is what, if anything, are the American people going to do about it?

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Update: As of this morning Occupy D.C. reporting they are fine, but expect possible police raid tonight. This does not change my basic thesis.

Further update: I've now found and listed on Twitter @OccupyMarines, @OccupyNavy, @OccupyArmy, and @OccupyAirForce. The serving men and women in the U.S. military have never in our history let the American people down, and by God it looks like they're not about to start doing so now!

What The Hell Happens Now?

There have been shocking scenes of repression (or attempted repression) ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement began in NYC, back in the days, merely a few weeks ago, when only a very few protesters were involved. These scenes included young women being pepper-sprayed in the face and climaxed in the now-notorious "Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge" in which some 700 protesters were lured by the NYPD onto the vehicular deck of the bridge and then arrested en masse, and included scenes a short time later in which hundreds more protesters were brutalized by the NYPD as they attempted to reach Wall Street itself. It was these scenes, more than anything else, which probably led to Occupy movements springing up in sympathy all across the country, so that today some 1,500 American cities and towns are "occupied."

There have also been other repressions, some more dramatic than others, including those which took place (and in some cases are still taking place) in Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and St. Louis, just to name a few. To their eternal credit, the Albany Police Department flatly refused the orders of the Mayor of Albany and the Governor of New York to evict the Occupy protesters in that city, but thus far they are the exception, not the norm. Of course, all sorts of supposed "justifications" have been advanced for these repressions, with civic authorities often citing municipal ordinances regarding "camping" in city parks or the use of city parks outside certain hours of the day, although the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in no way limits the exercise of free speech.

Last night, however, the repressions assumed a ferocity heretofore unseen in this country. Occupy Atlanta protesters were forcibly ejected from their site, with many being arrested as is attested in this video:



And of all the attempted repressions which took place, the most ferocity was shown in Oakland, California, by members of the Oakland Police Department, as shown in these videos:







Just yesterday, The New York Times published a poll which showed that some 46% of Americans agree to at least some degree with the Occupy protests: "New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government".

The question at hand therefore becomes what if anything are Americans thus far not involved in the protests in any way going to do about all of this? Will scenes like those above motivate them to join protests taking place in their cities and towns? Or to form new Occupy protests where none now exist? Or will they simply purchase another six-pack and kick back to be "entertained" by yet another brain-numbing "reality television" program?

Another question worth considering is what if anything will the U.S. military do? Not the brasshats in the Pentagon, of course. They are a part of the problem, shamelessly pandering to whatever corrupt administration happens to be in power in Washington at any given time, for no better reason than the wish of the "Commander-in-Chief" du jour to prove he has a bigger set of stones than his predecessor in office. But what about the brave young men and women who are actually fighting and (in all too many cases) dying overseas, who have been told for over a decade now that they have been and are making incredible sacrifices to protect "freedom" back home?

Clearly, the powers-that-be in the United States are now feeling threatened by non-violent protesters who, only a few weeks ago, were mostly being written off as "lazy hippies." What will happen next is anyone's guess.

A Successful Outcome for #OWS?

Someone who is participating actively in the Occupy movement, who has been doing so since the early days in Liberty Park in NYC, and whose judgement I respect and trust, asked me via Twitter yesterday: "Here's a question for you: what would an outcome for this look like? What would you consider a success?"

He was referring to the Occupy movements as a whole in asking the above questions, and he was referencing the blog post I published on Sunday, Oct. 23rd: "#OWS Now In 1500 Cities/Towns In US--Will It Be Enough?".

My answer is simple enough: a complete reconstruction of the American socioeconomic and political systems.

To flesh that answer out a bit, I mean the reconstruction of the American socioeconomic system, which would include the elimination not of capitalism per se, but the ending of predatory capitalism, of crony capitalism, and of the American corporatocracy, the last of which issues also falls under the reconstruction of the American political system since the two have become inextricably linked. As for the reconstruction of the American political system, I believe that assuming the retention of the present Constitution as a starting point, several constitutional amendments would be required. Among these would be an amendment which would effectively and for all time reverse the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, another amendment which would set term limits for members of both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, another amendment which would end lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary (including the SCOTUS) and replace those judicial appointments with appointments of specified duration, another amendment which would end the pernicious, dangerous, and undemocratic practice of organized lobbying, an amendment which would forbid all forms of paid political advertising, and at least one further amendment which would subject all elected (and some appointed) federal officials including the presidency, members of Congress, and justices of the Supreme Court to the process of recall elections under set terms and conditions.

Obviously, there isn't a chance in hell that all of those issues, perhaps even any of them, will ever be addressed--not in the lifetimes of those now protesting in the streets of America's cities and towns, and probably not in the lives even of their great-great-great grandchildren. But my friend (and I do think of this man in that way, although we have never met and probably never will) didn't ask me for a realistic appraisal of the possible, only what I would consider a "success."

"But you didn't mention ending America's wars!" someone reading this post might point out hotly. No, I didn't, because if the American people actually controlled their own government, American empire-building and military interventionism/adventurism would stop in about ten seconds, and U.S. troops overseas would be boarding ships and planes for the trip home beginning in twenty-four hours or less.

If you are reading this and asking "Why not all or any of the above?" the answer, as I've stated in this blog numerous times before, is even simpler than my original answer to my friend's questions. Those who currently hold the strings of power in their hands in the United States, including the elected officials of either party not to mention the corporate CEOs and boards of directors who pull their strings, are not about to let power slip out of their hands. In fact, in all of human history, no entrenched socioeconomic/political system has ever voluntarily relinquished its power and authority; and say what they will, pretend to "understand" or "sympathize with" today's Occupy protesters as much as they may, those men and women who run the United States of America today will prove no different when push comes to shove.

"Ah, but what about Tahir Square?" you may ask. Didn't the people of Egypt, or at least the people of Cairo, manage to force basic regime change in a country which, unlike the United States, had no effective democratic traditions in the first place? Yes, they did, but the protesters in Cairo were in Egypt's capital city, and they numbered not thousands but tens or even hundreds of thousands. And even then, they were not successful until the Egyptian military decided that their best bet was to dump their allegiance to Hosni Mubarak and his regime and to go over to the side of the protesters instead. The same was true in Tunisia. Protesters there were only successful when the local gendarmerie and military dumped their former employer in favor of those who were protesting the status quo. Can anyone imagine a similar situation occurring in the United States? In Washington, D.C.? I can't.

The late, former revolutionary and Chinese leader Mao Zhedong once observed that, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," and he wasn't wrong, although one might well generalize the former Chairman's observation to read that political power grows out of the control of armed force, for all the fantasy Americans are still taught today in school that "government derives from the consent of the governed."

In the United States, "armed force" means police departments and active members of the United States military. As of today, in cities and towns across the country, American governors, mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs, and other authorities are demonstrating clearly that, constitutional rights notwithstanding, they have no hesitation in using the armed forces available to them in the form of militarized police departments to sweep up protests and protesters whose goings-on they find threatening or even simply inconvenient, nor is such repression occurring only in areas where elected officials are self-proclaimed "conservatives." And this when the Occupy protests are little more than a month old. Already the forces of repression are trampling constitutional rights which Americans have taken for granted for centuries, and they've just barely begun warming up.

As the repression builds, will more Americans (in tens or hundreds of thousands, or even in the millions) be motivated to come out into the streets and take an active part? I would't care to bet on it.

#OWS Now In 1500 Cities/Towns In US--Will It Be Enough?

Incredibly, the Occupy Wall Street movement has now spread to some 1,500 cities and towns across the United States. Will that be enough to force meaningful change?

I think not. I support the movement, although I cannot do so actively, and I continue to believe that the Occupy movement is the best, perhaps last hope the people of the United States have to regain control not only of their own government, which sold itself out to the monied interests in this country decades ago, but also of their own society as a whole including their economy and the way information itself (perhaps the most priceless of all commodities) is disseminated in our society.

However, as I've stated in this blog before and will now state again, no entrenched, powerful socioeconomic and/or political system has ever in the history of the world succumbed to radical change from within or without unless it has been presented with no alternative, or else has been forcibly swept away; and it is inconceivable to me that the corporatocracy which has now governed through its bought-and-paid-for politicians for decades, and which has used its power during those decades to stack the proverbial deck to its own advantage in every imaginable way will be any different.

Yes, it is truly marvelous that there still exist enough clearheaded, patriotic Americans to have brought Occupy protests to the streets of 1,500 U.S. cities and towns. That in itself is something I never hoped to see and is an accomplishment of historic proportions. But even if every city and town in the country were "occupied," even if there were tens of millions of Americans protesting in the streets instead of the tens of thousands we sometimes see today, still the prevailing system would not change. It would not because it cannot.

Both of the major U.S. political parties have long since sold their souls to their corporate masters. Perhaps the advent of television made that sellout inevitable, given the power television at once assumed over U.S. federal, state, and local elections and the costs associated with political (as with all other forms of) advertising, but the two major parties' Faustian bargain has long since come due. Try as they might, they will not be able to escape the coils of their masters. It is also an historical fact that no third party has ever in U.S. history been able to make any lasting contribution for good or ill with the exception of being in a position to act as a spoiler from time to time.

Add to all of the above the facts that police departments across the country have been militarized and trained to see so-called "terrorists" lurking around every corner, that what once passed for journalism in the mass-media (also corporate-owned) has long since turned into little more than a propaganda machine touting the virtues of the status quo, and that it goes against human nature for those who hold power of any sort ever to relinquish it willingly, and it seems clear that even if the current "occupiers" manage to make it through the oncoming winter intact, even if some sort of national General Assembly can be formed and is permitted to meet and do its business (a highly questionable proposition at best, given the level of repression already being practiced against the movement across the country), the end result will still be an election as usual in 2012, for which the usual candidates will be selected in the usual way. These candidates, so-selected and both beholden to those who bought and paid for their nominations and who will also buy and pay for their campaigns, will then be presented to the American people as their only alternatives. The final outcome, no matter who wins the White House or which party controls the Congress, will leave the American people precisely where we are right now.

The Occupy movement is a great beginning. It has at least managed to get thousands of Americans out into the streets to protest the injustices being practiced against them by their own elected and appointed officials and by those officials' true bosses, and it has perhaps gotten millions of other Americans who are not as yet actively protesting to stop and think about where our country is headed. But that in itself will not be enough. If the Occupy movement remains what it is today, at best it will go down in history books a few decades from now as just another populist "revolt" which in the end came to nothing.

What I Hope #OWS Will Accomplish

First (and again), I can't stress enough that I am not an active participant in any of the Occupy movements around the country. The nearest to me would be Indianapolis, I'd have no way of getting there even if I wanted to, and my health's so crappy I can only barely make it out of my apartment two or three times a month for very short periods of time. So that's out.

Second, the ideas I'm going to present below do not represent what I think is actually achievable. What might be or wouldn't be achievable would take a completely separate blog post, if not a full-scale book to set down.

Below, then, are the issues which I, as a private citizen, feel need to be addressed. They appear in no particular order, and in some cases are more fully-fleshed than others. The ideas presented are really only a much-abbreviated version of my personal wish list.

Get Corporate Money Out of Politics

I think I've heard this mentioned by occupiers more often than anything else, and I couldn't agree more. The trouble is how, exactly, is this to be accomplished? The idea I've most often seen regarding getting corporate money out of politics is to get the states, since Congress will never go along with it, to agree to call a constitutional convention, which would then draft an amendment to the U.S. Constitution essentially reversing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the notorious Citizens United case.

The trouble with that idea is that corporate money is involved in the state legislatures too, although to a lesser extent than it is in Congress. Another problem is that many would-be professional politicians get their start in one of the state legislatures, hoping to go on to "bigger and better things" later on (i.e. election to the U.S. House or Senate). They're unlikely to be sympathetic to the idea of reducing the flow of cash to the members of a body whose ranks they hope to join one day.

Dismantle the "National Security State"

This heads such issues as the repeal of the infamous "Patriot Act" and the other similar and/or supporting acts of Congress which were initiated by President George W. Bush, and which have been added to and strengthened substantially by President Barack Obama. Collectively, these acts represent the most heinous, fundamental assault on the civil liberties of Americans since the notorious "Alien and Sedition" acts were enacted under President John Adams. There is also the point to consider that the establishment of the so-called "Department of Homeland Security" and the various minion agencies which were created to augment and support it represented a doubling of the size of the Federal government (and of the government's non-military expenditures) from what existed at the time George W. Bush first took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.

Clearly, doing anything in the way of the repeal and subsequent dismantling of DHS and any of its subordinate agencies would represent taking a colossal political risk on the part of any elected official who might support such a move. That would be the case even for elected officials who might not be personally corrupt in the sense of having benefited financially from the industries which make the national security state possible.

Why? Because there are individuals and entities existing in the world who do wish the United States and the people thereof harm, even if the majority of them may only be semi-brainless fanatics. Even if the political climate in this country weren't as poisonous as it is, any politician with even half a brain must realize that were they to vote for the disestablishment of the national security state, and if a successful attack were then made within this country resulting in mass casualties, their career in politics would be finished. The dead and/or wounded would have been their fault. At least that is what the perception of the media, and of a very large segment of the general public would be.

Bring the Troops Home, Drastically Downsize the Defense Budget

This amounts to the dismantling of the "American Empire" and of ending U.S. military adventurism and interventionism. These ideas seem to be prevalent among a large proportion of the Occupy crowd, although nowhere near everyone involved would think these ideas even worth mentioning.

First, while there have always been Americans who have believed (as George Washington did) that the less the United States has to do with other countries the better, there have also always been (and still are) many millions of Americans who believe that exactly the opposite is true. Anytime a people anywhere are oppressed, there are Americans (including many on the "progressive" Left) who believe the U.S. ought to intervene, even militarily, on "humanitarian" grounds even when the regimes involved pose no threat whatsoever to the security of the United States. In support of this assertion I offer the unilateral military interventions decreed by Democratic President Barack Obama in the affairs of Libya and Uganda. There are also Americans (perhaps more on the political Right) who believe (rightly, in my view) that a war economy produces more jobs (and profits!) than does a peacetime economy. Then there are those on the political far-Right who genuinely believe in what has been labeled "American exceptionalism," that the United States somehow has a "duty," possibly divinely-ordained, to act as the world's policeman.

Second, the drastic downsizing of the defense budget would inevitably lead to the loss of tens of thousands, if not millions, of American jobs, as pointed out above. Huge defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed, and a plethora of others would find themselves with no further rationale (in a business sense) for employing those American workers who make the Pentagon's "toys." If the U.S. economy were healthy, if unemployment in the United States was low, such cuts in themselves would undoubtedly raise the unemployment level substantially, and might indeed cause the whole economy to slow to a crawl.  And today, of course, the U.S. economy is already circling the proverbial bowl, and unemployment is already at unacceptably high levels. Again, no politician in his or her right mind is going to support this, since their political enemies would inevitably (and gleefully) point the finger at those responsible and accuse them of throwing millions of Americans out of work, to say the very least.

Third, like it or not, the United States has now become a global empire, at least on a de facto basis, and any historian worth his or her salt knows very well that, in historical terms, once an empire comes into being, it has no alternative but to continue to expand, that the instant an empire ceases to expand, it begins to die, and that what may take its place when it finally does die is unpredictable and often wholly unforeseeable.

None of the above is to say that I am not personally in favor of dismantling the American Empire and of drastically downsizing our defense establishment, but it is, I think, necessary to at least look at some of the real issues involved, and to understand that the whole issue isn't nearly as simple as it may appear on the surface.

There are my two (or three) cents for today. There are a great many other issues I would like to see addressed in a best-case scenario, but I'll leave those for another post.