TIME FOR THE SUN TO SET ON SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND ITS AMERICAN CORPORATE COLONY - LET'S ORGANIZE A NATIONAL SHOPPING STRIKE LABOR DAY 2009

21^st Century Slavery is bigger and more pervasive than you realize.

Incredibly, the TIMESONLINE (June 26, 2009) reports that British Airways has fooled and bullied 800 of its 40,000 employees to volunteer their time for the Company as if it were a charitable organization. William Wilberforce is spinning in his grave.

Thousands more BA workers caved in to take voluntary cuts in pay. Meanwhile, The Guardian reported (June 10 , 2009) that CEO Willie Walsh had no qualms about pocketing a healthy pay raise to maintain his Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous.

Perks and raises for other upper crust folk at British Airways were not publicized in the Times, but I’ll bet they’re all feasting on the newly-diverted wages earned by the blood, sweat and tears of their fellow Brits because they are just more important due to their hereditary superiority. The madness of King George is obviously transmitted genetically to those bred to lead in the UK.

While worldwide slavery returns rampantly, the average worker feels powerless to answer Management demands for free full- and part-time labor “for the good of the Company”. If they refuse, they will end up with nothing, the workers believe, because “the Company cannot survive unless everybody sacrifices”. A 10% pay cut across the board sounds fair – except when the top earners rake in seven figures and the janitor scrapes by on $30K/year (oops – make that $27K). Each turn of the screw is to be accepted stoically and without question by the rank and file.

The Big Boys still get their secret rewards and spend their wads openly.

Management may open up the carefully cooked books to unions and employees, poor-mouthing and pretending that there is no capital available to pay already-earned current and unpaid overtime wages pledged in contracts or other agreements. In California – payment of even “unauthorized” overtime wages is a paramount worker’s right guaranteed by the State Constitution.

But, we’re expected to forget about all of these rights – not to mention health benefits and pensions – since everything can seemingly get tossed out under the current American Federal bankruptcy laws rammed through under Bush, Cheney and the House of Lords – oh – I mean Congress.

Under retrograde Court decisions and dictatorial presidential Executive Orders, American workers are told that they must check their Constitutionally guaranteed Natural Rights at the door of the workplace. We must pledge the same oath of fealty to our “at will” employers as did European serfs and vassals to their Feudal Lords.

At least California law enshrines worker rights above those of the employers, but the bottomless pits of money held in offshore, off-the-books pockets of corporate vampires has funded a clever system in which California workers are fooled into waiving their rights. The sly corporate chicanery of the internal “Compliance Officer”, “Self-Reporting” and “EAP Concern Hotlines” fools employees into believing that they are reporting violations to somebody who cares and will effect a change in the Company’s established practice of illegal exploitation.

The employee is handed his thirty pieces of silver, told to ignore the identical plight of his fellow workers and handed a new Oath of Fealty to sign in exchange for the pittance – actually a one-sided waiver of all possible employee claims – past, present and future – against his Corporate Lords and Masters.

Ironically, Federally “guaranteed” student loans incurred to qualify workers for participation in the new serfdom have now become onerous debts for life – never to be paid off, and never to be discharged in personal bankruptcy even after the bankrupted front company sucked dry by their Corporate Masters spew the poor debtors onto the pavement. Plus, the Feds step in with the IRS as the ultimate collection agency!

But wait – there’s more! The “bankrupt” employer has already sent all the unpaid wages, pensions, taxes, promised medical and dental payments to a parent holding company that trades on one of the world’s many stock exchanges.

Invariably, profits from the good years have been hidden away in the coffers of the chosen few who have surrounded themselves with the fat from these holding companies. Secret accounts and complex international investment schemes give the appearance that the frontline company is as broke as a drunkard the morning after payday.

An army of honest accountants could sort out the details, but the folks at the apexes of these Ponzi-scheming corporations have purchased judges, armies, police and governments around the world to validate control of this neo-feudal society.

The Founders of the USA saw through the analogs of these practices which are as old as the Roman Empire and Feudal Europe, as exported to the New World by the likes of the Hudson Bay Company and others holding Patents from the Crown to rule with the iron fists and heels of the Red Coats as their muscle.

Our founders mutually pledged to one another their lives, their treasure and their sacred honor in the cause of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and established a form of government of, by and for the people which has been expanded to include all citizens.

We still have an opportunity every two years to throw out the bums that the hidden American and Foreign aristocratic puppeteers have given us to choose from, if we can rouse ourselves to action.

Consider their crimes:

The current crop of neo-feudalists running our country have mutually pledged to one another our lives (as human “resources”), our treasure (our children and the few pennies we have to rub together), and the cutthroat honor of thieves.

They toss our lives and TRILLIONS of our dollars away in pointless land wars in Asia to bolster the remnants of the British Empire.

They suspend liberty and allow our president to govern by “executive order” as in any Third World dictatorship.

We’ve been given genetically modified bread and 200 channels of high-def X-Rated circuses to keep us mollified.

Thanks to the bumper crops of poppies farmed in the warlord-controlled areas of Afghanistan (unhindered by the pipeline-building puppet Hamid Karzai), Opium is the now the Opiate of the masses in our cities.

Violence, however, is not the answer.

We must begin in a united effort to hit the neo-Feudalists where they are most vulnerable.

Being accustomed to living off diverted income streams flowing through American retail and wholesale markets, these Big Boys are very worried when we don’t support the American consumer economy.

Remember 9/11? Within a few days after the tragedy, the Wall Street wiped away its crocodile tears and proclaimed Business as Usual as our American duty. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown handed out posters proclaiming "America: Open for Business" to get the cash pipelines flowing again.

Here’s our chance to get the attention of the Bums in office: A National Shopping Strike on Labor Day 2009. Instead of flooding the retailers to load up on sweatshop-produced trinkets, we stay home with our families or friends. Maybe visit that neighbor we’ve never met.

Many of us should organize public rallies in every town square, State capital and Washington DC – without spending a dime – but speaking out on matters which have been avoided by our “elected” officials.

For starters:

• Let our political officials know that they are supposed to be our public servants not our Lords and Masters – we are a Republic which is a Representative Democracy, not a neo-Feudal Oligarchy serving the British Empire.
• We will no longer tolerate taxation without representation. That includes guarantee of full payment of wages we have earned from the coffers of those who have run off with our money to offshore tax shelters.
• We will no longer tolerate American businesses selling us out – their neighbors and fellow citizens – under the guise of the “free market”. Importing peonage workers living in tents or under bridges is not “free market” labor, it is violation of human rights. Just because a desperate undocumented foreign worker or an illiterate man in the Mississippi Delta is willing to work for $3/day does not justify a business owner taking advantage thusly.
• We will no longer tolerate a so-called “free market” that pays slave wages, whether here or in sweatshops in Asia, Latin America, Africa or elsewhere.
• We will no longer tolerate American businesses sending our skilled white-collar office and technical jobs overseas to add another Armani suit to some Big Boy’s closet.
• We will no longer tolerate petty corporate dictators limiting our Constitutional rights in the workplace.
• We will no longer work without fair and equal employment contracts and uncorrupt local unions in each workplace.
• We will no longer tolerate American business fleeing to offshore tax havens to avoid paying their share of our common infrastructure, government and defense.
• We will no longer tolerate slave wages to be paid for the most disagreeable jobs – creating a class of American untouchables to be our garbage collectors, sewer workers, landscapers, etc.
• We will no longer tolerate American businesses being permitted to own and control their own private armies and police forces to intimidate and bully American citizens.

Any politician who does not agree to our reasonable demands shall be considered a Bum and recalled in States where recalls are permitted.

As we articulate our demands, we will plan a week-long National Shopping Strike to follow beginning on Thanksgiving Day, should the politicians and Bums still in office ignore us.

Then two weeks beginning January 1.

By Election Day 2010, we should have identified who the sellout Bums are in each political jurisdiction. We should select honest public servants from our midst – Democrat, Republican, Green – it is the character of the candidate - not the party he/she belongs to that should be our focus (professional politicians and Corporate shills need not apply). Then we THROW THE BUMS OUT.

As Ben Franklin said: If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately, and enough of us are already dangling from the corporate nooses. It is time for Americans to pull together and stop these bad guys before they do any more damage.

STEP 1: LABOR DAY 2009 – NATIONAL SHOPPING STRIKE AND PUBLIC PRESENTATION OF OUR UNIFIED DEMANDS OF RESTORATION OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.