Independence Day

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 GOVERMENT,
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!

-Patti Smith