Patti Smith isses an indictment of George W. Bush in London by Todd Baesen Wednesday September 17, 2003 at 07:29 PM Toddbaesen@juno.com
Patti Smith, who headlined a Berkeley anti-war concert earlier this year, ended her politcally charged summer tour in London with a spirited recitation of the Declaration of Independence, followed by this indictment of the policies of President George W. Bush.
PATTI SMITH: 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 and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers 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.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, 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.
The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation's all having as a direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these United States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
George Bush has suspended the rights of American citizens to fundamental civil liberties.
He has forgotten that the United States was founded on the proposition of the separation of Church and State. 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. 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.
Whether or not I fumble, or stumble over certain words, the truth is just, the truth is here.
And we indict George Bush.
Just as the revolutionaries indicted King George III, so we indict George Bush:
For refusing to abide by international agreements for the protection of the environment,
for abandoning Alaska to the oil companies,
for abandoning Afghanistan,
for humiliating the United Nations,
for squandering a vast federal surplus,
for giving tax breaks to the rich,
for refusing to participate in international courts,
prosecuting crimes against humanity, for flouting the Geneva convention by sequestering captured prisoners at Guantamano Bay,
for holding captured Iraqi's in barbaric conditions, where neither their families or the Red Cross have access to them,
for destroying the Baghdad International Library,
for destroying the oldest copy of the Koran,
for napalming Iraqi soldiers,
for killing innocent Iraqi citizens,
FOR WAGING A WAR BASED ON LIES! - LIES! - F**CKG LIES!!! (I added the asterisks)