TOM PAINE - THE ORIGINAL CHE GUEVARA

On June 8th, 1809, Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain in 1737 in Thetford, England) died at the age of 72 in Greenwich Village in New York City. One of the greatest revolutionaries and writers in human history, one of the most integral and important personalities of the American Revolution, Tom Paine died poor and alone. Refused a burial plot in a cemetery because of his questioning of Christian dogma, he was buried beneath a walnut tree on his farm in New Rochelle, NY.  Only five mourners attended his funeral. 

As Robert G. Ingersoll wrote, many years later, "Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine."

But his ill-attended funeral was not the last of the great man's post-mortem indignities. Ten years after his burial, his bones were disinterred by Englishman William Cobbett, a radical reformer, who planned a heroic re-burial of Paine in his native land. When Cobbett died, 15 years later, Paine's bones were still among his effects, but had never been reburied. They were subsequently lost, and have never been found. But there is a magnificent song, Tom Paine's Bones, that is worthy of the subject, and I am sure Tom would approve.

Tom Paine had called out George Washington and other aristocratic Founding Fathers on their avaricious hypocrisy, and though Paine was a Deist who believed in God but no organized religion, offended the church with his critical analysis of the Bible and religion, and had scandalized, if not terrified, the monied classes on two continents with his advocacy of socialist economic reforms. Though he was reviled by many, he had helped to liberate both the USA and France from despotic monarchies and improved the lives of millions in his own lifetime, and since his death, his words have inspired revolutionaries around the world for centuries.

At the age of 16, Tom Paine tried to become a pirate, attempting to sign on with the privateer ship The Terrible, commanded by a man known as "Captain Death". Though rebuffed at the time, three years later he did serve for a year as a privateer. In subsequent years, he worked as a corset-maker, school teacher and customs officer, among other trades, until in September 1774 he met Benjamin Franklin, who invited him to America, where he arrived on November 30th of that year.

Paine quickly became the editor of the most popular and successful magazine in the Colonies,  a position which he used to advocate the abolition of slavery, worker's rights to the means of production and within the year, the American Revolution against British rule. Paine's 1776 pamphlets, Common Sense and The Crisis are credited  with inspiring and sustaining, respectively, the American Revolution in the year of its birth. They both remain among the greatest examples of revolutionary polemics ever written.  John Adams declared that, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, Washington's sword would have been raised in vain." Paine was not just a writer. He enlisted in the Continental Army and served as a soldier under Washington and General Nathaniel Greene.

Paine was a harsh critic of war profiteers, and in 1779, he even donated $500 from his own soldier's salary, (the equivalent of about $14,000 in today's dollars) to start a soldier's relief fund, and in 1781 went on a series of successful fund-raising trips to France. The French aid he procured was invaluable to the victorious conclusion of the American Revolution. After the war, Paine was awarded a small farm in New York and a smaller pension, small recompense for the hundreds of thousands of his pamphlets that had been sold throughout the war, for which not he, but others were paid.

In 1790, Paine traveled to France, then in the midst of its own revolution. In early 1791, Paine published The Rights of Man, which quickly sold over one million copies. On paper, in 1791.It was so inflammatory it got him tried for treason in England, in absentia, but in France, it was the basis of the new French Republic's Constitution, which can best be summed up by its motto: "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" - "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood". Paine, though not speaking the French language well, was inducted into the French National Assembly, where he supported the French Republic, but opposed capital punishment, and proposed King Louis XVI be exiled to America, rather than guillotined. Those who wanted Louis' head, and got it, including Maximillian Robespierre, were soon seeking Tom Paine's head as well, and almost got it. Paine was sentenced to death by guillotine, spent a year in a French prison, and was only released in 1796 when Robespierre's faction lost power. He was reinstated as a deputy in the French National Assembly.

In 1797, Paine's pamphlet Agrarian Justice was published and was met with great opprobrium by the propertied class, Paine's proposal that all people had an equal right to the Earth, like Gerrard Winstanley's, 150 years before that, and Che Guevara's 150 years later, forced Paine to return to America in 1802.

There, he discovered his service was forgotten and his reputation smeared by the wealthy and the church. Despite his poverty and his physical condition, worsened by occasional drunkenness, Paine, like the fictional Cyrano de Bergerac, continued his attacks on privilege and religious superstitions.
He died in 1809, was buried and then disinterred, his bones lost to the ages, but his legacy remains  immortal.

Like Paine, Ernesto "Che" Guevara left his native Argentina for Cuba upon the invitation of revolutionary Fidel Castro. Like Paine, Guevara fought and won a righteous revolution on foreign soil, using both words and weapons, and after victory, was instrumental in creating essential economic and diplomatic relations with foreign countries; Paine with France, Guevara with the USSR.

Both continued their internationalist and humanist revolutionary work in other countries after the success of their first revolutions, Paine risking his life in France, Che risking his in the Congo, and losing it in Bolivia. Both were impassioned and prolific writers, whose works are widely regarded as masterpieces and studied and respected to this day. Both were buried on foreign soil with ignoble ceremonies, and both were subsequently disinterred and brought to other countries.  Both exemplified universal Humanity and the highest qualities of genuine Internationalism.

Both were willing and able to back their words with deeds, even up to and including facing death in order to stand for their principles. And their principles were not only the same they were and are correct, universal and the highest that Humanity can aspire to.

Thomas Paine, like  Che Guevara 150 years later, is a titan in the revolutionary history of human evolution, whose words and deeds will continue to educate and inspire all those who believe in a just and prosperous future for all of Humanity and are willing to stake their lives upon the task.

 “THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." - Thomas Paine

In these days of trial and turmoil, when the USA faces perhaps the greatest threat and challenge in its short 244 year history, it behooves all true patriotic Americans to read or re-read the words of Tom Paine today, to be reminded not only of what it means to be a true Patriot of one's homeland, but also of what it means to be a member of the Human Race. The time is ripe for a new American Revolution, which can and must reverberate throughout the world.

The choice is stark - either we undertake the risk and toil of a new revolution today, to create the liberty and equality and justice of  a new world, or we will face the slavery and extermination of the "New World Order", from which we will never escape or recover. The time is now, tomorrow will be too late. Take a lesson from Tom Paine, and Che Guevara, from the first American Revolution, from the French, the Cuban, the Russian and the Revolution of the Donbass Republics. We fight not just for ourselves but for the unborn generations, for the future of Humanity itself. As Tom Paine wrote, "If there is to be trouble, let it be in my day, that my children may know peace."

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, BROTHERHOOD, FOR ALL HUMANITY! YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN AND NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS! VICTORY OR DEATH! DAVAI!

JUNE 2ND - A GOOD DAY FOR A HISTORY LESSON ABOUT THE FUTURE

In memory of the June 2nd, 2014 attack on Lugansk, that killed 8 peaceful civilians, including Inna Kukuruza.

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As Reaper attack drones circle the skies of Washington D.C. today, the US military prowls streets across the nation, ready to defend the goddamned US government and its owners and masters from the citizens of the USA, it is a good day to look back in history, in order to see what lies ahead. Because what's past is prologue...

Six years ago today, on June 2nd, 2014, US-backed Ukrainian nazis made a rocket attack on the administration building in Lugansk, an area formerly in Eastern Ukraine that had risen up and refused to recognize or submit to the neo-nazi puppet regime illegally installed in a murderous coup by the Obama/Biden regime and the Clinton State Department.  In act of abject terrorism that exactly fit the definition of a war crime, a Ukrainian SU-25 attacked a group of civilians gathered peacefully on the street in front. Five women and three men were murdered, with 20 more severely injured by the attack. All were civilians, none were involved in defensive military actions. Unprovoked mass murder by the military against peaceful unarmed civilians. on orders from the USA. What the US government has been doing here for more than half a decade, they are now preparing to do there, inside the United States. What they have done to us, they will soon be doing to you. Come and see...

There was a video made of the aftermath, in which a dying woman who had both her legs blown off politely asked to use a phone in the last minute of her life. The photo below was made from a screenshot of that video.

After the massacre in Odessa, on May 2nd, 2014, exactly one month before the attack on Lugansk, I had been seriously considering coming to Donbass to fight the nazi murderers and help defend the innocent civilians who were being murdered there every day. But on June 2nd, when I saw the photo and video of Inna Kukuruza, all questions and other considerations vanished from my mind. I knew I would come, and I knew I would fight, or die trying.

And so I did.

Six years later, the war drags on, still backed by the goddamned US government under the Trump regime, just another fascist scumbag, an even bigger piece of shit than Obama was, and every bit as much of a war criminal. But the same war of military against peaceful Ukrainian citizens, that Obama unleashed and Trump has continued and even escalated, is now being directed homeward, against the citizens of the United States themselves. And the US citizens who have sat impassive and uncaring for 6 long years while a US-backed puppet regime has murdered almost 15,000 citizens whose only crime was to defend their own land, homes and families, will now themselves get to taste the fascist boot, to feel the fist of steel from which the velvet glove has now been permanently removed. And you cannot say we didn't warn you, and do not dare to have the impudence to say you do not have it coming.

So now here is the lesson - What you have done to others, whether by actively supporting the nazi scum of the Obama and Trump regimes, or by passive and cowardly acquiescence to their crimes, will now be done to you. Like the people of Ukraine, you will now be given the choice of either total slavery and obedience or having all-out war waged against you by the US state and military. The choice is stark and absolute, there are no other options. You may run, or you may hide, but only for a little while, and the day is coming, sooner than you think, when you will have to decide whether you will meet it, along with the nazis of the 21st Century, on your feet or on your knees.

You face the same war and the same enemy as the Native Americans (both North and South) faced against European invaders, the same war and the same enemies the Soviet Peoples faced in June of 1941, the same war and enemies faced by the People of the Donbass People's Republics - a war of enslavement and extermination, genocide, a war of annihilation, in which the side that does not prevail will be completely defeated and destroyed. Your choice is literally victory or death. If you fight, you may well be killed, but if you do not fight, you will most certainly be exterminated, or wish you had been.

Being peaceful will not save you. Being innocent will not save you, all your craven obeisance will not save you. Either you will fight, now, or you will live as a slave until your masters decide you are more useful as fodder for other, more useful slaves.  You will be ground up and fed to slaves who will shit you out as they work, onto the floor of a world unworthy of life or of living in, devoid of hope or humanity, where the only and eternal future will be that which O'brien predicted to Winston Smith in 1984. "A boot stamping on a human face. Forever." So fight, now, or face your future...

Most US citizens will not even consider resistance, won't even think about it, much less talk about it, much less actually do anything about it. Many are already groveling on their bellies, even before the really hard times begin, willing to lick any hand that feeds it, and run to hug their chains. They will be fed on filth, if they are not simply left to starve, they will be worked like beasts of burden and exploited like livestock, inspected, infected and microchip injected, used as human guinea pigs and harvested for their organs. Their children will be used as sex slaves by their masters, and all will be exterminated like insects when they are no longer profitable or useful.

And all those who willingly accept this fate deserve it.

There are a small percentage of Americans who will stand and fight, even against seemingly impossible odds, even if, like at the Alamo, the odds really are impossible, there are those those who would rather die fighting than willingly submit to slavery and all that it entails. And with them lies the hope, the only hope, not only for their own future and that of their country, but of Humanity itself. These few millions, this small percent of the US population, will retain the right to call themselves true Americans, and more importantly, to call themselves human beings. And though they will face the most diabolical, ruthless and technologically repressive regime that man, machine and money have ever been able devise, the Human Spirit is a powerful force, and capable of victory against even the most formidable odds.

Take a lesson from the Soviet Union, that shattered the world-wide ambitions of nazism only 75 years ago. Take a lesson from the Donbass Republics, whose Heroes stood and fought, even when there was almost no hope of victory or even survival, and continue to this day to do so. What has been done before can be done again, though it will take an equal or perhaps even greater sacrifice. The USSR paid with the lives of 25 million of its citizens to free itself from the nazi invaders, and if the people of the USA have to pay a similar price to free themselves from the apparatus of feudal repression they call a "government" and the parasite vermin who own and control it, it will be worth it. The alternative, for anyone who retains a shred of Humanity or a speck of honor and self-respect, is simply too horrible to contemplate, much less allow.

Remember Inna Kukuruza and George Floyd, and all those who have been murdered, and remember that those who murdered them will show you no more mercy whether you surrender or fight. And remember those who smashed the nazi war machine and those who overthrew the fascist state. Remember those in Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Donbass and all over the world, who do not give up, who resist with their courage, blood and sacrifice. And understand, these were and are only ordinary people, human beings who simply decided that they would live and die as human beings, and come what may, they were ready to lose their lives, but never their Humanity.

Learn your history, and remember it, while you still can. There is a concerted war on reality, on truth and above all, on history, going on right now.  The truth of what happened just a few years ago is being erased and distorted and soon it will be flushed down the memory hole of the media and social media, to be lost forever. And if you think that is an exaggeration, try searching for "Inna Kukuruza Lugansk June 2, 2014" on Google or even Duck Duck Go. There are less links to that query than there were people murdered that day. Try the same search on Youtube, you will not find a single video out of the scores that were there only a year ago. Through deletion and search engine manipulations, the past is being stolen from right before your eyes, as you sit there and watch. Will you let them do the same to your future? If you do, they will.

The time is now, the swords are out and the lines are drawn. For years, I have been warning the forces of Justice and Freedom, of Humanity, that the longer you wait, the harder it will be when you do start fighting. It is now to the point that if you don't start fighting now, then you have already surrendered. VICTORY OR DEATH. You have no other choice. The People of the Donbass People's Republics have done it, and we still survive. You can do it too. Davai!