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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2005)
PAGE 4 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE REVISED BY R. JEFFERSON D. In the State of Oregon, July 2005 The unanimous DECLARATION of several people native to the State o f Oregon, and of many other citizens o f the United States o f America: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among us all, deriving their just powers only from the consent of the governed — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light or transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that humankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present unlawfully, at best dubiously elected “King," President George W. Bush, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with resolute firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers from invasion without, and convulsions within. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by overwhelming the Judicial Branch with His Chosen justices, and by threatening to destroy Congressional power to block the nomination of even more of the most outrageous champions of his personal view of Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has declared war without the consent of the people or the Congress, war that is now known to be illegal according to international tribunal. He has mocked the significance of war and of religious establishment worldwide by invoking the Christian Bible in the name of his administration’s attempted military domination of industrial oil reserves in middle eastern “Biblical" Nations (such as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, et.al.) with reference to U S. military actions specifically by using the term: “CRUSADE,” thus inflaming a retaliatory religious and political “JIHAD” among citizens of many nations suffering under U S. attacks. He has shamed the United States by invoking widely through extensive media propa ganda the exact terminology used historically by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis such as “shock and awe" and “New World Order” while referencing our own military actions. He has evinced the embodiment of the dictionary definition of Fascism: “Any authori tarian, anti-democratic, anti-socialist system of government in which economic control by the state, militaristic nationalism, propaganda, and the crushing of opposition by means of secret police emphasize the supremacy of the state over the individual. A political philosophy, move ment or regime that exalts nation and race and stands for central autocratic governmental control, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.“ (Funk & Wagnalls, and Merriam Webster) He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to Civil Power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For quartering large bodies of our armed forces among other innocent and sovereign nations: For protecting them by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these sovereign nations: For imposing our dominance in Trade with all parts of the world, using our military to achieve this end: For imposing Taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the Laws of the U S. Constitution in neighboring Provinces, establishing therein an Arbitrary government prisons (Guantanamo, others), and enlarging their Boundaries so as to render them at once an example, precedent, and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule, and for instituting torture and murder among detainees within such facilities: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamen tally the Forms of our Governments (“Patriot Act" 1 & 2): For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our environment, contaminated our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of our sons and daughters in the name of the so called “War on Terror" to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun CREA TE A DECLARA TI ON OF EQUALITY with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrection amongst us. He has endeavoured to destroy, and to perpetuate the destruction of the original Inhabitants of “our frontiers,” with the merciless and ongoing war, oppression and genocide perpetrated on the original sovereign nations of North America, so called “Indian Savages,” using broad powers of warfare in an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions of original Native American inhabitants of this continent, with methodology including but not limited to: Genocide, Torture, Imprisonment, Biological and Chemical Warfare, Poisoning by Nuclear Radioactive Materials, Forced Internment, Religious Oppression, and with the cruel formation of a multitude of evidently false Treaties not fully honored by the United States in past nor present generations. 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 President, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our American brethren, even to those partisan or apolitical. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our freedoms guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution. We have appealed to their native justice and magnan imity, and we have conjured them by ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of humankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the citizens of the State of Oregon in the United States of America, in General Conversation, Assembled or Not, appealing to the keen observance of all Nations of this Earth for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name and by the Authority of the good People of these United States of America, solemnly publish and declare, That this State of Oregon is, and That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the dubiously separate Republican/Democrat administrations, and especially that all political connection between people of the United States of America and the entire “elected" and appointed Executive Republican Bush administration is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do, including but not limited to bringing to bear the scrutiny of Truth and Justice to the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity such as unlawful warfare, bombing, imprisonment, and torture of our own people and of citizens of many other nations. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of historical facts, scientific truth and of the U.S. Constitution, and so that all Nations of this Earth may know the present critical concern of these American U.S. Citizens, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. R. Jefferson D. is a nome de plume of a noted Oregon coastal resident who prefers a plethora o f literary guises rather than simple anonymity. R iv e r S ea ■ ----- GALLERY C O N T i AA P O R A R Y W O R K S O l A R I JEN N IFER W ILLIAM S W W NICK KNAPTON PAINTINGS FMM VHNH FM ( W W A W JULY 9 -A U G U S T 3 A '. I O K I A , O l '. l 6 O N 9 /1 0 1 (5 0 3 ) 3 7 '• 6 5 5 5 1160 COMMERCIAL ST., ASTORIA ♦ 325-1270