by Thomas Dahlheimer

On the 4th of July, most of us, being in agreement with our nation's founding fathers’ 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, celebrated Independence Day. The declaration addressed taxation without representation, tyranny, liberty, governance and the "unalienable rights" of all people - rights that were "endowed by the Creator". It was about colonist leaders’ struggle to define those ideas for themselves and multitudes of early immigrants living amongst the homelands of [existing] independent indigenous sovereign nations.

These indigenous nations possessed full independent sovereign nation status - which England, the Pope and the early immigrants [including our founding fathers] refused to recognize. This was an injustice that violated the-- "endowed by the Creator"--unalienable right of indigenous nations to be rightfully recognized and treaded as independent sovereign nations with absolute root ownership of their homelands.

A United Nations World Conference Against Racism document presents information about this topic:

"Historians and academics agree that the colonization of the New World saw extreme expressions of racism - massacres, forced-march relocations, the 'Indian wars', death by starvation and disease. Today, such practices would be called ethnic cleansing and genocide."

"In the fifteenth century, two Papal Bulls set the stage for European domination of the New World and Africa. Romanus Pontifex …declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world, and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories. Inter Caetera ….officially established Christian dominion over the New World. It called for the subjugation of the native inhabitants and their territories,…."

"The Papal Bulls have never been revoked, although indigenous representatives have asked the Vatican to consider doing so. These 'doctrines of discovery' provided the basis for both the 'law of nations' and subsequent international law. Thus, they allowed Christian nations to claim 'unoccupied lands' (terra nullius), or lands belonging to 'heathens' or 'pagans'. In many parts of the world, these concepts later gave rise to the situation of many Native peoples in the today - dependent nations or wards of the State,…"

Our nation stole Native lands and denied Native peoples (tribes) their right to independent sovereign nation status. Why and how did these atrocities occur? The British government had afforded Native lands a measure of protection by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 which had attempted to restrict colonial expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains, and had alienated many American colonists. Likewise, many Native people knew that the American Revolutionary war against Britain was an unjust war, waged (in part) to gain the unrestricted ability to steal more of their peoples' homelands and subjugate more of their people.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence accused King George III of unleashing "merciless Indian Savages" against innocent American colonists. The image of the trespassing-thieving-subjugating-genocidal-religious sectarian and white supremacist American colonists being "innocent" as well as the image of the brave and righteous Native people who fought on the British side in the Revolution in order to protect their Native liberties and homelands as "merciless Indian Savages" fixed a delusional and self-serving memory and imagination of the Native people's role in the Revolution and wrongly justified their subsequent extreme mistreatment.

American colonists mistakenly believed that the Native people who were fighting on Britain's side were fighting for the continuation of British monarchy and tyranny. A nation conceived in liberty need feel no remorse about committing genocide against those who had fought against its birth.


The subjugation of this land's red indigenous nations and peoples by European colonization was a terrible injustice. And the establishment of a foreign--predominately white raced--independent sovereign nation throughout this land was even worse.

Most of the founding fathers were Masons. At that time, no nation believed in the "concept of freedom of religion", including this land's indigenous nations. In fact, at that time, the only place such an insane concept was to be found was in Masonry. From that perspective, America was actually founded on a Masonic principle, so that the basis and principle of national unity could no longer be officially based on the people's unified religious beliefs. This Masonic principle, which is a founding principle of America, is an unholy principle that--at the time of America's birth--the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant King of England and the indigenous peoples of this land were opposed to.

During a recent Eternal Word Television Network program a Roman Catholic Lawyer who had once been a Mason, proclaimed that a founding principle of the United States is a Masonic principle, the one mentioned above. And that when this Masonic principle is adopted into law--as it was when the U.S. Constitution was written--it keeps Jesus out of civil government. And that the Catholic Church “wants Jesus to be able to inter into civil government”, in order to transform it for the better and ultimately bring it to perfection.

In the Declaration of Independence the founding fathers defined and declared their supposed “righteous justification” for committing treason - by renouncing their English King’s rule over them. And they also established an illegitimate sovereign nation on land they stole from independent indigenous sovereign nations. The founding fathers wrongly separated themselves from the Pope and their King and then established an unholy and illegitimate nation state, the United States of America.

Our founding fathers did not respect this land's indigenous nations and peoples' unalienable human rights. And did not respect them, because they were under the spell of Pope Alexander VI and the King of England's 15th century evil propaganda, as put forth in the “Doctrine of Discovery”. I define this doctrine as being an indigenous peoples' independent nations denying and land stealing doctrine. This doctrine was religious sectarian, Eurocentric, White racist and caused genocide and ethnocide to be perpetrated against this land's indigenous peoples.

In 1823, the Doctrine of Discovery was quietly adopted into U.S. law by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, [Johnson v. M'Intosh]. In respect to this Supreme Court case, Steve Newcomb, an internationally renowned legal scholar, wrote: "Writing for the unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall observed that Christian European nations had assumed 'ultimate dominion' over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery, and that--upon 'discovery'--the Indians had lost 'their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations,' and only retained a right of 'occupancy' in their lands. In other words, Indian nations were subject to the ultimate authority of the first nation of Christendom to claim possession of a given region of Indian lands." (ref.)

"According to Marshall, the United States--upon winning its independence in 1776--became a successor nation to the right of 'discovery' and acquired the power of 'dominion' from Great Britain. Of course, when Marshall first defined the principle of 'discovery,' he used language phrased in such a way that it drew attention away from its religious bias, stating that 'discovery gave title to the government, by whose subject, or by whose authority, the discovery was made, against all other European governments.'"

"However, when discussing legal precedent to support the court's findings, Marshall specifically cited the English charter issued to the explorer John Cabot, in order to document England's 'complete recognition' of the Doctrine of Discovery. Then, paraphrasing the language of the charter, Marshall noted that Cabot was authorized to take possession of lands, 'notwithstanding the occupancy of the natives, who were heathens, and, at the same time, admitting the prior title of any Christian people who may have made a previous discovery.'"

Ironically, the same year that the Johnson v. McIntosh decision was handed down, founding father James Madison wrote: "Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from civil government, and exempt from its cognizance; a connection between them is injurious to both.” (ref.)

Most of us were taught growing up that the United States Constitution is designed to keep church and state apart. However, contrary to what we were taught, with the Johnson decision, the Christian Doctrine of Discovery was not only written into U.S. law but also became the cornerstone of U.S. Indian policy. The U.S. government was bent on promoting the establishment of a particular religion [Christianity], to the extent that it denied the Native pagan peoples their fundamental human rights. And because of the present-day existence of Johnson v. M'Intosh (and subsequent laws based on it), the U.S. government still continues to show preference toward Christianity and disfavors as well as suppresses the full restoration of traditional Native religions. And does so, by not repealing Johnson v. M'Intosh and subsequently giving the Native peoples' sacred homelands back to them.

Johnson v. M'Intosh is based on a Christian religious doctrine that is inconsistent with the Constitution's--prohibiting Congress from preferring one religion over another--religious clause of the First Amendment. Johnson v. M'Intosh is therefore in violation of the U.S. Constitution. This U.S. law also violates three unalienable fundamental human rights of indigenous peoples living in this land. This is in violation of the Declaration of Independence as well as internationally recognized norms of human rights declarations.

According to the Declaration of Independence "all people are equal" and their--endowed by the Creator--"unalienable rights" are suppose to be respected. However, indigenous people living in this land are not considered equal. Because of their ancestors' religious status at the time of their "discovery" by European colonizers, today’s Native people are still being denied [by the United States] their unalienable equality rights to have absolute root ownership of their homelands, and be recognized and treated as independent sovereign nations.

When it was legal to own black African slaves in our nation’s southern states, many U.S. citizens living in the northern states, including the President of the United States [Abraham Lincoln], decided to wage war against the southern states in order to save the Union as well as set the enslaved Africans free. And by doing so, show due respect for their--“endowed by the Creator”--unalienable equality right to be free people. The enslaved Africans were being denied their fundamental human right to be free people, and our nation set them free.

However, the indigenous peoples living in this land our still being denied three of their--endowed by the Creator--unalienable equality rights, or fundamental human rights. The right to absolute root ownership of their scared traditional/ancestral homelands, the right to be recognized and treated as full independent sovereign nations and the--freedom of religion--right to fully re-establish their traditional religions within their sacred ancestral homelands.

If we were to consider the indigenous peoples living in this land as being equal we would have to give their homelands back to them as well as give them due respect by recognizing and treating their nations as independent sovereign nations. And by doing so, we would be acknowledging that our "nation" is an illegitimate nation state.

How can a foreign people of a different race, language, religion and culture invade another peoples' homelands and establish a legitimate independent sovereign nation on their land? It's impossible.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed what happened to the indigenous people living in this land? The decisions that the earliest European colonizers (15th century popes) and the founding fathers made are why, after 500-plus years, indigenous people are still standing here trying to influence us to recognize that their nations are independent sovereign nations and our nation is an illegitimate “nation” established on their land, their continent.

Kevin White, a writer for Indian Country Today, wrote, in his July 25, 2008 article, Toward Indigenous Independence: “In the 1898 Curtis Act and the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the U.S. abolished tribal governments first and then required elected forms of governance with constitutions modeled on the U.S. to be recognized in the latter act - this despite many objections of indigenous nations and forms of governance that have existed since long before contact with the West.”

“Even treaty making came to an abrupt and permanent end by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1871 without any thought to existing sovereign indigenous nations' positions, questions or consultation. I wonder what would happen if England suddenly and arbitrarily decided the 1776 Declaration of Independence no longer applied the way the U.S. did in 1871 regarding treaty making?”

I call for England (queen) and the Vatican (pope) to disavow and rescind the claimed validity of the U.S. Declaration of Independence that was used by the United States' founding fathers--in defiance of England's governing authority over them--to establish an illegitimate nation. A "nation" that from its birth denied the New World's indigenous nations and peoples their-- "endowed by the Creator"--unalienable human rights to absolute root ownership of their homelands and independent sovereign nations status and rights.

Maine's Episcopal diocese is the first in the continental United States to protest against the Doctrine of Discovery. "The diocese passed a resolution at their annual convention calling for Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury to disavow and rescind the claimed validity of the doctrine of discovery against all peoples, specifically as it is set forth in the 1496 Royal Charter granted to John Cabot and his sons by King Henry VII, and all other doctrines that have been relied thereon for the dispossession of lands and the subjugation of non-Christian peoples...."

Our nation's founding fathers declared to the King of England: ''In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A nation-state [Prince] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of free people.''

In respect to the government of the United States, have not the indigenous nations and peoples of this land been doing the exact same thing and receiving similar, and even more harmful, repeated injury ever since the establishment of our nation to the present-day? Is not our nation like a tyrant, and unfit to rule over this land’s indigenous people? People who would like to be free from our nation’s tyranny?

If the U.S. Declaration of Independence and revolutionary war is what freed the colonists from the tyrannical rule of an English monarch, what would the different indigenous sovereign nations of this land have to declare and peacefully resist to be free of the tyranny of the United States?

Resistance precedent: Proposed Oglala Lakota Constitutional Declaration of Independence.....The title of Birgil Kills Straight and Steven Newcomb’s proposed constitution is, Toward an Oglala Lakota Constitution - Statement of Basic Principles. Birgil Kills Straight and Steven Newcomb are the co-founders and co-directors of Indigenous Law Institute. Here's the introduction statement of their proposed Oglala Lakota Constitution: We, the People of the Oceti Sakowin, have existed rightfully free and independent since the beginning of time. As a sovereign Nation, we are, and forever shall be, rightfully free and independent. Accordingly, we the People of the Oglala Lakota Nation have the inherent right to establish any government for ourselves. This is but an exercise of our inherent power and vested right of self-determination.

Another precedent: The Hawaiian Kingdom Government, a 70 member group of native Hawaiians, recently demand sovereignty for the Pacific island. They locked themselves in the Inlani Palace, one of Honolulu's most popular attractions, and demanded independence from the United States.

Another precedent: Echoing the methods of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, a small Lakotah native delegation of outsiders arrived at the U.S. State Department and produced a list of grievances--including the disappearance of their culture and the theft of their natural resources--before announcing that the Lakotah formally and unilaterally withdraws from all agreements and treaties imposed by the United States. This was a group of Lakotah outsiders' "Lakotah" declaration of independence from the United States.

Another precedent: On September 2, 2008, members of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) of the Dakota Oyate reclaimed their people’s sacred Minnesota Coldwater Spring site, where there is [a] Dakota creation story. The Dakota (including the Dakota, Lakota and Nakota) are claiming their inherent right to their sacred sites. Because the U.S. did not keep the meager terms of a 1805 treaty, a treaty that provided the Dakota special rights to their Coldwater Springs site, as well as to 155,000 acres around the site, members of the Dakota Oyate have questioned the legitimacy of the United States government and the State of Minnesota to occupy this land base and are know occupying their sacred Coldwater Springs site as well as claiming their people’s inherent right to absolute root ownership of this sacred Dakota site.

Canadian precedent: The MNN Mohawk Nation News Staff state in an article titled, Why Canada is not legally a state, that: “Before European 'visitors' floated over the ocean and stumbled onto our shores, we formed a federation according to our constitution Kaianerehkowa. The Rotinoshonni:onwe Confederacy is made up of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. The Rotinoshonni:onwe Confederacy never gave possession of any territory to any European people. So far Canadians do not understand or acknowledge that we never agreed to join their colonial regime or to give up our original law or nationality. The Rotinoshonini:onwe Confederacy has never been legally incorporated into Canada and remains independent." The Haudenosaunee Six Nations are independent indigenous sovereign nations.

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

News about the increasing popularity of this article:

The Program Manager for the National Multicultural Institute [Amy Kasi] recently contacted me and asked if I would allow her to display, both, a link to this article of mine as well as a quote from the article, in the SPOTLIGHT section of her institute’s monthly newsletter. I said “YES”, and they were then displayed in the institutes October newsletter. This institute sends out monthly newsletters to a network of almost 3500 members.

This article is associated with my Rum River name-change movement, as well as other activist initiatives of mine within the Dakota’s Mille Lacs Lake traditional/ancestral homeland. It is especially associated with my initiative to regain the Dakota’s sacred Mille Lacs Lake ancestral homeland, an initiative of mine that is presented in my article Regaining The Dakota’s Mille Lacs Ancestral Homeland, an article that is posted on the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community’s website.

And after sending my article Independent Indigenous Sovereign Nations to Paul Gorski, a nationally and internationally renowned multicultural educator and social activist, he, with my permission, posted it on his MultiCultural Pavilion website’s digest forum. It was on his MCP digest forum that Amy Kasi first read the article.

When requesting permission to display my article in the NMCI newsletter, Amy Kasi wrote: "I think it would be a valuable resource for anyone interested in not only indigenous peoples but also the history of the US and human rights violations in the US.

The quote of mine that is displayed in the SPOTLIGHT section of the NMCI’s October newsletter reads:

…“However, the indigenous peoples living in this land our still being denied three of their--endowed by the Creator--unalienable equality rights, or fundamental human rights. The right to absolute root ownership of their scared traditional/ancestral homelands, the right to be recognized and treated as full independent sovereign nations and the--freedom of religion--right to fully re-establish their traditional religions within their sacred ancestral homelands,…”

Also, the Project Leader for the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering [Griff Wigley], recently posted a comment of mine, which includes a link to my article Independent Indigenous Sovereign Nations, on the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission's Native American Minnesota - A journey of learning and understanding - blog site.

An internationally renowned Indigenous activist recently contacted me and said that my article Independent Indigenous Sovereign Nations “is a very good article”. And this article of mine was also posted on the My Two Beads Worth website as well as on the popular website Indigenous Peoples Literature.

Reverend Dave Gallus, a Roman Catholic pastor of mine as well as a member of the Mille Lacs Human Rights Commission, and I recently met at Wahkon, Minnesota’s Sacred Heart Church, a Catholic Church located on the south end of Mille Lacs Lake, to talk about my article Independent Indigenous Sovereign Nations.

For many years, two of the three pastors of Sacred Heart Church in Wahkon were missionaries to the Asmat, a primitive tribal people living deep in the jungle of Indonesia.

During a recent homely, one of these two missionary priests [Rev. Greg Poser] spoke about an Act of the U. S. Congress that legalized and implemented the taking of communally owned tribal land and dividing it up and allotting it to individual Natives. He then said that he and Rev. Dave Gallus had been talking about how most people living in this land [mistakenly] believe that living in an individualistic society and having individual ownership of land is the civilized way to live and that the tribal way of life is uncivilized.

He then said that owning land communally is the right way to go and that the tribal way is the civilized way. Evidently, Rev. Dave Gallus and Rev. Greg Poster have decided to promote my mission to influence the people of the dominate culture to assimilate into the tribal way, to look at Indigenous cultures and harmonize with them in order to survive and prosper as a civilized people.

source: http://www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/843590

You Know Your Empire's Collapsing When...
by Kirkpatrick Sale
http://middleburyinstitute.org

[The following is from a speech delivered to the Second Vermont Republic's celebration of Vermont Independence Day--when, in 1777, it declared itself an independent republic--in Montpelier on January 15, 2008.]

I want to start out with a little game, called How Do You Know When Your Empire Is Collapsing, invented in a little different form by a political scientist on Long Island. Let me give you a few examples of how it works.

Let's say for starters, you know your empire is collapsing when the empire that is your fiercest rival buys up a total of 26 per cent of three of your major Wall Street firms for $9 billion dollars, and declares that it has another $200 billion dollars that it is looking to invest.

[Since we're going to be doing some numbers here, I should pause to give a little reference for the concept 'billion.' A billion seconds ago was 1959 " which means some of you here haven't yet lived a billion seconds. A billion minutes ago Jesus was walking along the Sea of Galilee " more than 2 millennia ago. A billion hours ago, about 100,000 years before the present, the classic Neandertal peoples were wandering Europe and the Middle East, and Homo sapiens started to move out of Africa. We throw the term around a lot, but a billion is a big, big number.]

Next, you might figure your empire is collapsing when its total debt obligations amount to $50.5 trillion dollars. That is so big that it's about the same as the total household income of everyone in the country, including the billionaires. In other words, we owe almost more than we make.

Or, take one more " you know your empire is collapsing when you start a war half the world away, on complete fabrications and in total ignorance, slog on for five years with no success " 2007, you may have noticed, had more people in uniform killed than at any time since the war began " with an army half of which are lawless mercenaries and the rest are under-trained, ill-equipped, and unmotivated youth, and whose presence is not only making your homeland less secure but is damaging your reputation around the rest of the world.

Just like Ninevah, just like Tyre " in fact, it's classic " just like all the empires that have preceded it, from Akkad to Hapsburg, from Babylonian to Dutch, from Persian to Ottoman, from Roman to Soviet, the American empire is collapsing, collapsing around us, and the consequences will not be pleasant.

You know your empire is collapsing when the UN, comparing a number of measures of child well-being in the industrial world, ranks you 20th out of 21, behind Poland, Portugal, and Hungary, ahead only of Britain.

Or when the World Health Organization ranks your healthcare system overall as 37th in the world, below Cyprus, Columbia, Morocco, and Costa Rica, just above Slovenia.

Or when scholars, measuring worldwide standards of living, including health, wealth, happiness, and stability, give Norway a rating of 37, the highest, followed by Iceland at 35, Sweden at 30, and the Netherlands at 27, and give the U.S. " 19, in other words, by this ranking the best country in the world is twice as good as America.

I have studied empires pretty carefully over the last few years, and I have figured out the basic nature of these systems and concluded that all empires collapse, and usually within less than a century, because of their inherent nature. They not only make mistakes but usually the same set of mistakes simply because of the inevitable character of the imperial structure, which ultimately fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, social stratification, economic disparities, heterogeneity, domination of people and nature, hierarchy, and environmental ignorance.

There are, to my reading, four basic reasons that empires collapse, and

I'd like to set them out, particularly in reference to the modern American empire.

1. First, environmental degradation. Empires end by destroying the lands and waters they depend on for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without a sense of limits. As Sumeria collapsed when its irrigation systems drained and salinated its waters, as the Roman collapsed when it turned the fruitful African littoral into the Sahara Desert, so the American is engaged in the massive destruction and pollution of its environment, worldwide. Science is in agreement that all the important systems upon which human life depends are in decline and have been for decades: the erosion of topsoils and beaches, overfishing of every ocean fishery, deforestation, freshwater and aquifer depletion, pollution of water, soul, air, and food, overpopulation, overconsumption, depletion of oil and minerals, introduction of new diseases and invigoration of old ones, extreme weather, global warming, rising sea levels, species extinctions, human overuse of the earth's photosynthetic capacity. A lengthy Defense Department study two years ago predicted 'abrupt climate change' was likely to occur within a decade, will lead to 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy, endemic 'disruption and conflict,' and a 'significant drop in the planet's ability to sustain its present population.' The Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson said it more simply: our 'ecological footprint is already too large for the planet to sustain, and is getting larger.'

That way to end of empire, for sure, maybe end of civilization.

2. Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, in their heartlands and then in colonies farther an farther away from the center, because their populations become large and their armies too extensive, and when the resources fail the economy fails. In addition, imperial trade systems are so widespread that they are not well controlled, with many booms and busts, and it is the imperial elites who prosper at the expense of merchants and farmers. As Teotihuacan collapsed in the 7th century AD because it deforested its hills for building and agriculture, as the Byzantine empire failed when it used up resources and found its economy eroded by inflation and its unpaid armies in revolt, so the American empire has built a fragile imperial economy that is unsustainable and is already on the verge of crumbling, as the recent stock crashes attest.

Unsustainable? We have a trade deficit of $763 billion dollars. And crumbling? The dollar has lost value everywhere " it is down by nearly 40 per cent since 2000 " and the credit crisis is so vast that it is only by the most extraordinary financial contortions that anyone keeps any faith in the dollar at all. It will not take long before the oil states will no longer want to operate in that currency and the petro-euro will supplant the petro-dollar, and won't take long for China to dump its worthless dollars, as it is already starting to do, in the process of buying up our banks.

[You know your empire is collapsing when those who have lost faith in its currency bid the price of an ounce of gold to a record high in January of $901, and you have to dump gold from your reserves to get it down.]

Add peak oil. You know your empire is collapsing when it is willing to pay $100 dollar a barrel for the oil it has unwisely built its whole economy on, can't find a way to limit consumption (and slaps down those who try), and has about as much clue on how to develop an alternative as the Norse in Greenland did when they knew their herds were destroying the land but kept on using them until that society collapsed in the 15th century.

3. The third major cause of imperial collapse is military overstretch. Empires are by definition colonizers and trying to keep control over hostage peoples by force inevitably leads to large and often uncontrollable armies, massive drains on the economy, and ultimately rebellion on the periphery. As the Roman empire collapsed when the 'barbarians' at its frontiers revolted and the Roman legions, stretched from Germany to Africa to Persia and grown unruly and corrupt, were defeated, as the Persian empire fell in the 5th century BC because it was unable to maintain the colonies it had established from India to Africa and the peripheries rose in revolt, so the American empire is overextended, weakened at the peripheries, forced to use ill-equipped and undertrained troops to maintain it, and even the generals admit that it can't be sustained.

We have 547,000, more than half a million, active troops, based at, this is amazing and little understood, more than 725 admitted military bases in at least 40 countries around the world, plus a formal 'military presence' in no less than 153 countries, on every continent but Antarctica, and nearly a dozen fully armed carrier and missile fleets on all the seven seas.

We are now fighting in four admitted wars from Eritrea to the Philippines and winning none of them. The cost is enormous and draining the treasury at $3 billion a week--total cost an estimated $609 billion dollars so far, another $200 billion next year, and a projected $2.1 trillion even if some troops are withdrawn by 2013. And that does not include the mercenary budget " for the Blackwaters and such-- paid by the State Department, estimated at $100 billion a year, or the troops run by the CIA out of its unknown black budget. It is a cost that is putting a severe strain on the American treasury, whether we acknowledge it or not, and its effect of undercutting all other domestic discretionary spending " for example, on education, infrastructure, homeland security, and food and drug inspections " has already had severe social consequences and will continue to have more.

[You know your empire is collapsing when you spend billions of dollars that you don't have, to create a missile system that doesn't work, to use against an enemy that you don't have either.]

And all of that to try to maintain an empire that is already shrinking. Latin America, which used to have U.S. colonies from Cuba to Argentina, has thrown off most American influence, installed governments hostile to America and welcoming to the Chinese, and mostly refused to bow down to the 'structural adjustments' that the World Bank used to be able to use to manipulate their economies. [You know your empire is collapsing when the leader of one of the countries there that we used to have in our pocket, and couldn't pull off a coup to oust, comes to the United Nations and makes fun of your emperor and says he smells sulphur where the emperor just was standing.] All of the Moslem world is hostile to American interests and policies, including the Saudis leading the jack-up of oil prices, so is much of South Asia, and American prestige and influence has fallen considerably in Europe, central Asia, and Japan. We are good friends with Slovenia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgystan, that's about it.

For all of our 725 bases, we no longer control the world, and our attempt to do so has been a disaster.

4. Finally, empires fall because of domestic dissent and upheaval. Crashing economies, food shortages, political repression, military drain, and increasing disparities between the rich and poor create domestic discontents that, lasting long enough, lead to rebellion and civil war. As the Mughal empire of India collapsed when excessive taxes to support the military led to armed resistance, as the Aztec empire collapsed when its population showed no interest in defending the central government that had been bleeding them of tribute when the Spanish arrived, so the American empire faces a prospect of increasing dissent and division, malaise and disaffection, even a growing movement toward outright secession, now with organizations in at least 30 of the 50 states. It is not yet revolt and rebellion, but the institutions of this nation " Presidency, Vice Presidency, Pentagon, Congress, the lot " are held in greater disdain and disrepute today than any time since opinion polls began to measure this " and rightly so.

[You know your empire is collapsing when, according to a poll taken in the fall of 2006 by the Opinion Research Corporation and broadcast by CNN on October 23, 71 percent of your citizens agree that 'our system of government is broken and cannot be fixed,' and another 7 percent agree it is broken but 'hoped' it could be fixed. Broken and CANNOT be fixed.]

Well it's not rebellion, thanks to the increasing sweeping and illegal repression of dissent by the Bush regime " leading up to, by the way, the vicious mccarthyistic House Resolution 1955 passed " 404 to 5 " and sent to the Senate, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, nothing less than the establishment of thought police to find and jail anybody that thinks unpleasant and subversive thoughts about this nation.

Thanks also, I should note, to the success of the system's modern version of bread and circuses, a unique combination of entertainment, sports, television, internet sex and games, consumption, drugs, liquor, and religion that has so far successful deadened most of the general public into apathetic stupor.

But it is hard to believe that a nation that is, first, so thoroughly corrupt as this " in all its fundamental institutions, its boughten parties, military contractors, academies, corporations, banks, brokerages, accountants, governments " and, second, so thoroughly economically unequal " 2005 figures show that the income of the 3 million Americans at the top was equal to that of the 166 million at the bottom " can survive without revolt.

The Bush administration has shown, in fact, that it is not capable of governing a population of this size and complexity " Katrina above all, energy deregulation (Enron etc.), subprime credit collapse, unregulated housing boom, gasoline mileage, FDA inspections, mine-safety inspections, no-bid contracts to favorites, misuse of wiretapping, Abramoff-Delay bribery, consumer product safety, the list of failures go on--and there's no imaginable successor that could: the empire is too vast and intricate, the homeland is too immense and diverse, the systems are too complicated and fragile. The citizens will someday rise in protest, I predict.

Those four processes by which empires inevitably fall " environmental, economic, military, and civil " are inescapably operative now, in this latest empire. I would be willing to make a sizeable bet that a combination of several or all of them will bring about its collapse within the next 10 years. The lesson from Jared Diamond's recent book Collapse is that almost no society is capable of escaping the kinds of peril that an empire like this faces.

Unless you secede from it, and the sooner the better.

You know your empire is collapsing when that idea just makes plain good sense.

Russell Means once said to me, much more simply and directly, "All Empires end from within", roughly paraphrasing. All those things noted in cstalberg's message makes me consider those words and offer context and meaning to them for our times.

bump

let them eat grass.

I guess I should start my argument here. It seems to be the best place to make such an argument. I want other users to actually comment and to give their ideas. In another section of this forum I started a topic about whether or not we should start a peaceful confederacy with all other indigenous groups in the western hemisphere. Meaning all of us native Indians. However I don't believe the idea is being received well. I think that people misconceive this idea as an imperial one. However my idea is that all the indigenous would work together in a loosely bound state which would have common laws, traditions, and practices. It will establish systems to make the trading of information, knowledge, wisdom, and truth more easy. A great peace would result in which we have no more warfare or strife on our part. A utopian and simple structure. Which over time would establish a network of peaceful traditional trade, and traditional economies (like fishing, hunting, trading of food, clothing, and ideas) from north to south. Every tribal and linguistic group would be responsible for its own conduct and has the ability to severe relations with other tribes. These laws that bring the tribes together are not binding and tribes have the right to withdraw from the treaties at any time. Over the entire allegiance would be one wise matriarchal leader to maintain peace, and one patriarchal people to maintain abundance, and law and order in these societies. The women would be responsible for diplomatic relations, and would tell the men when they believed war was necessary. In turn the men would tell the women when they believe that they were not maintaining the peace and trade. Actively having a balance system to keep things in place. There would be a set of elders acting as the "judges" so to speak and interpreting the order of law over these lands. They are responsible for protecting the sacred laws of peace. And finally there would be a group of men, women, and wise youth from all corners of the continents who would gather each year to establish laws or to deal with the popular demands of peace. In this nation there would be no fossil fuels, or greedy governmental/ big corporate enterprises with control over the resources, or that make decisions for the whole. People will have the right to establish small companies, and be responsible for all of its conduct. Also over the centuries we would establish a united transportation system making it easy to travel from Northern Canada to Terra Del Fuego in a matter of days. There would be a merged infrastructural system in which there would be one communications system making it easier for the ideas of one tribe to travel to another tribe.

We all would work together in situations concerning our safety or economy. There would be roads, bridges, energy systems, and train tracks that are independently owned by it region or tribe. It would fall under interregional standards however. Which would be agreed upon by all tribes and regions as convenient. Furthermore when there are certain areas of needed cooperation we would have the means to carry out this. We would only have a defense force, not a dominating military power. Actively we would only have police that would patrol the air, land, and sea. With adequate training to protect our people in case of any impending attacks from any front. Most importantly we would have universal healthcare, and education. We would have total immersion schools throughout the confederacy, and would operate premier institutions across the continents. We would all have universities which would have students from across the confederacy ( Like Russell Means University or something ). Even foreign students could attend our universities. Best of all we would be able to practice our spiritual beliefs freely as we please. Without the disruption of the "papal bull". We would peacefully reach new horizons of harmony. A lasting peace would result.

I am very happy to see my family winning battle such as these. Though something continues to hang around in my mind. As these battles were won what battles elsewhere were lost? Learning the ever changing rules of their game is a lifes work itself..... and another form of colonization in my opinion.

I don't understand your point of view. Please explain LWB.

Someone run by greed will not give up anything by choice unless they can get something else of more value. THEY made the laws and change or add them to suit THEIR purpose. When a first nations person raised to think like a first nations person begins to think in another fashion it changes their thought process. An indigenous lawyer begins to think more and more like the ones they are fighting, because to truly win at your opponents game you have to think like they do. As the battle for the sacred lands were being carried out, they could have changed or implemented new laws to suit their purpose. They didn't so they gave up what to them was land and a way to keep you down, but also gave you something to fight for. So they gave it to you, and took something more precious. It's a shell game to them, you think you win, but you don't, you slip farther and farther into their shell game. Do NOT take this as me saying there is no way to win at all. Merely saying you can win at their game.

I finally understand what you have said so many days ago. I agree we must avoid the evil corporate machine. However we must also aviod the traps and snares of communism. We need a form of community socialism that does not call for as much government control of the resoruces, and people. We practically had this some centuries ago. We must stregthen on unit at a time.

Actually in this and other posts, talking about people governing themselves. I am calling for no government what so ever. NONE, that is a very hard concept to grasp as most think in the form of one person being in charge of some part of their life. I'm saying teach a child to be an adult, when you achieve that you have no need for government. Only a need for a council from time to time. Along the lines of what were militia back in the founding of this country. A group of people ready to come together when a task needs to be completed. There will be arguments from time to time that comes from people too stubborn to listen to the other party. Rather than cause a big stink and division in the community, you bring the council of elders together to make a judgement. That judgement is understood to be carefully weighed and thought and discussed, and that decision is final. That in itself is not a governance, it is a decision making process, to negate division.

Woah! No government. I don't know man. I don't like the sounds of that. I'm all for the individual, but I don't know. LWB. I'm an open minded man but no government? I don't think I can adapt to that. . Most natives even before the arrival of Columbus had government. I don't think the word "government" is an evil concept. I believe the individual, the society, and the leaders of that society must work together in order to achieve outcomes. I agree that there should be less strict or involved government nonetheless government. Self governing is good. However self governing with assistance is better. Maybe I am too cultured. In this modern day and age regardless if we like it much I think it would be wise to have an elder preside over the community. One who will act as father more than dictator. One that the people can trust. These "tribal fathers" should guide the people. I don't know just my opinion. I my point of view you need a standing defense force, and a proper maintenance of emergency resources. Temporary councils in my point of view cannot provide the services necessary assure the safety and peace of the people. Although I agree for less government, and I see the peace that could come out of this idea of yours. I think it would be safer to have a weaker government then to have an invisible one. I think it’s a good idea though. It would be excellent if people were perfect. Even in the best of environments things can go bad. Nice idea though. I’m seriously not knocking it though. Its an interesting concept.

thank you. Like I said it is my thoughts on how it SHOULD be. Wether that can be a reality or not... I can not say, yet. But that is far down the road, and the people now need stoves, coats, and food for the winter.

Agreed.

Hi LWB
I resonate with your words. I was reading an article which speaks on this issue. I think you will enjoy it. Here it is:

http://www.outlawjournalism.com/

Take Care

Anarchy is the best form of Government too bad it has became a taboo idea and redefined to mean something that it is not.