editorials from issues of Lumpen 85 -92

Lumpen #92 Give Up ? Rise Up
read the October Surprise article::

LUMPEN #91 Lumpen Manual (Spring 2004)

Ending the American Pre-Occupation and the Occupation of Empire

The anniversary of the start of the 2003 war against Iraq is here, and people are talking about gathering on March 20 as a day to “Still Say No to War”. Will one more day be enough to end Iraq’s occupation? On March 20, 2003, it wasn’t enough that people around the world took the streets, or that the city of San Francisco was shut down, or that 10,000 people in Chicago shut down Lake Shore Drive. It wasn’t enough that people were arrested and beaten, or that millions of dissenting voices were heard. The show of solidarity was refreshing, but the war was not stopped. We tried and we failed. Amassing in the streets last year, was simply not enough to stop the war. One year and thousands of deaths later, we must do more than lick our wounds and shake our heads in dismay. The changes that need to be made are systemic. In order to affect real change, our resistance needs to be systemic as well.

America is in a state of preoccupation. For many of us, life in this country has been reduced to trying to survive in a depressed economy and navigate a barrage of pro-war lifestyle demands. Corporate everyday business as usual message spin persists unabated, vying to numb us into a vacant state of submission. We want to feel like we can make a difference and change the game, but that requires that we first start thinking about how to change OUR game. These days the only thing more predictable than being herded around by riot police at a protest and marginalized as uninformed dangerous lunatics by the corporate media, has been the gathering of anti-establishment archetypes yelling three word chants and repeating the same desperate attempts at worn out, or half baked street strategies. As a movement, we are teeming with creative potential, yet we become an incredibly predictable bunch when we try to function as a monolithic force of opposition. If we don’t work to stay a step or two ahead of the slow but oppressive analysis of the state, then nothing we do can be truly effective. With the majority of our civil rights suspended, all we really have left on our side is the potential element of surprise. To continue to repeat our methods, is the last thing we should consider doing as an anniversary act, if we want to make any forward movement towards stopping the Iraq or the White House occupation. We need to find new points of leverage to wrest the foundation away from the monolith of Empire.

What about a protest that has duration, that is invisible, that cannot be corralled or stopped by the physical force of riot police, surveillance technology, or batons and tear gas. What about moving beyond disconnected acts of resistance and participating with an intelligent guerilla style attitude towards a resistance to end the war machine. One that uses techniques of subversion, not just feel good and oppositional defection? Every day and everywhere, decentralized groups of smartly dressed and happy smiling people get a lot done when they put their minds to it. This includes disaffected government employees and corporate ones as well.

The machines of war require support systems to persist. These include everything from food producers to new recruits to the weapons of war themselves. While the country of Iraq may seem incredibly distant, we can still affect the occupation of Iraq by influencing the support systems here at home. Every tool of warfare has a maker and a person who decides to make those tools available. They are our neighbors, they are members of our community and they are people who should share accountability for their actions. Their participation is an act of complicity that can be affected. We cannot turn our backs on the men and women who have been forced to serve the interests of Empire, but we can work to bring them home now, and make every attempt to make the business of Empire unprofitable. To that end, we can begin by securing the return of the U.S. soldiers back to their families, and the return of Iraq back to it’s people to decide for themselves how they want to be governed.

Ending the occupation of Iraq starts with ending the occupation here at home, because the war at home is also over occupied territory. It’s a landscape littered with forgotten histories, multi-corporate pathology, and prescription medicated minds. The territory we must defend and reclaim includes that of our psychological territories as well as physical space. We must engage in revolutions of awareness and holistic visions of a sustainable future. Whether it be through smartmob style or legislative interventions, spontaneous acts of nonviolent sabotage or individual acts of silent destabilization, appeals to conscience or refusal of services, the war machine must be stopped, and every tool in the toolbox needs to be re-examined and retooled in every and any way possible.

It’s obvious that there are a large number of people that want to see an end to the psycho- and socio-pathological interests ruling this country. So let’s end it, but for real this time. Real change is never easy or simple. It will certainly take more than another day in the streets. It involves regime change here at home. It involves long-term solutions. We’ll be living with our actions, or lack thereof, for the rest of our lives. Let’s not squander our precious beautiful days in fear, regretting the things we should have done, but didn’t. Let’s make sure to make every possible moment count. To end the Bush regime will not be enough. We must take down the system of Empire that allows it and other regimes to proliferate. We must create a new model for true democracy if we ever expect to survive our actions as a species.

- Agent Qwerty

Friendly Fire (September/October 2003)

Friendly fire is our theme this month. It's a metaphor for communicating to our readers some of the activities that artists and activists (mostly women), are engaged with in our little city of Chicago. It's a wild shot into the night of concioussness raising in the age of ATD. It's perhaps best represented by the activity of Nandini khaund at a little agit prop event we called freedom festival.

Most of our first encounters with the artists contributing to this issue were accidental, randomly accessed, by coincidence. We met them at a festival. Saw them in a bar. Ate next to them at that cafe. Saw their website. Marched down Michigan ave during a protest. Danced with them at a party. It was later that we met again, discovered their talents, interests and lives. We went to their shows, hung out with them in weird places. And throughout the past few years they have played instrumental roles in making Chicago one of the best cities to live in during the transformation of the country into a north american internment camp.
We ask them to engage with us. Play with us. Collaborate with us. We watch them create communities of mutual aid, weave meaning into their works to communicate messages from the future. They spontaneously erupt in flames for us, build protest machines fo us, reveal the dark and bright sides of this life for us. Drink us under the table.

Together they form a small portrait of the emerging cultures that are affecting the future of this city. They represent a sampling of the invisible network of cultural workers, designers, provacteurs, musicians, artists, and activists that are navigating and exploring spaces to liberate ourselves from the ho hum and hum drum of the normal, the most travelled paths, the safety of regularity. They are creating worlds for us to explore. They give us hope.

This activity is what makes us sing. They make us live and make us love.

Everyone taking part in the invisible revolution in Chicago knows that something is going on. That the the diversity, quantity and quality of the cultural forms emanating from the basements, apartments, bars, clubs, parks, and social spaces of this city are going to change the direction of something , but what? Where is this thing going we like to ask ourselves.
Readers of lumpen may be confused with our usual assortment of hard hitting radical diatribibes against the corporate takeover of our lives. Many regular readers can't take the medicine we print regarding the same old new world order that is accelerated under the Death Kingdom of Bush. Politics suck. especailly today. but the politics and the economics of the everyday affect us. And we need to activate ourselves to defeat the forces that want to control you.

We are being activated by the thriving social and cultural forms and activities that surround us. We find the efforts of those creating new spaces to share and create other worlds that are possible a much needed antidote to the way things are. We believe the only hope for us collectively is to expand the activities of the cultural scenes and meet them head on with the boring theorretical political cultures that have run out of steam. We need to intersect these worlds. We need to reinvent what it means to be human.

This is what we are working towards in chicago. We are changing the way we want to live and how we will live in these dark ages of the bush empire. A series of movements are being built that are yearning for connection aroudn the country. We see threads of a different world being woven into a direction that is taking us out of the morass of medicrity and inaction and captivity.

We want to connect the invisible networks that are connecting our communities, our scenes our activities, projects, plans and situations. We want to meet everyone who has figured out that we have to start doing this for ourselves and those not converted by the machine of the Free Market, not concern oursleves with the impossibility of what lays ahead.

The margins will determine the center. You are taking part in this invisible revolution.
-Edmar

Interference May 2003

The illusion of public discourse, the flickering somnambulism of TV journalism, the ease at which the public can be lied to with no recourse and be persuaded to support the mad men in power is depressing. They push the Fear button and devastate sanity and reason. Eviscerating history, making an ideology of destruction a paramount goal, creating new myths to seduce the ignorant, these men are powerful in constructing reality. Their mastery of propaganda is unparalleled in this Age of Information.

Like the emails in your inbox, deleting the spam of PentagonNBCNN propaganda is tedious and numbing. But despite our tools and urls many Americans still think Saddam Hussein, the two most hated words in recent history, flew the jets into the World Trade Center.
Half the public is afraid to speak their mind, eagerly retreating into negation of the truth of America’s real legacy and of its role in inflicting pain on much of the world. The other half is triumphant in its collaboration with their sainted bullies, vampires, and nasty men who have a vision of Total Control and Submission of the world.

The year ahead is a critical juncture to reinvest the enormous amounts of energy and time we have spent in trying to stop the wars. Its time to take our collective experiences and efforts at stopping their insanity and apply them to the Total Info War at Home. Our only strategy is to combat their money and media with our numbers and the multiplicity of our voices. This is the time for us all to engage in the multiple aspects of info war and learn from the professional myth makers and PR firms that controlled the stories that led us to war. We have to embed ourselves in the everyday cultures and societies around us and start talking to the human beings not yet converted to the Bush gospel networks. On personal levels, we cannot delete relationships to those who cannot speak about the everyday horror of Bush. We need to understand why they have been so incapable of seeing the writing on the wall and teach them how to read.

In teaching how to read we have to run massive interference to the Bush strategies of controlling the debate about the future world they have in mind. We cannot allow them to claim victories out of disasters or allow them to continue to manipulate the myths of patriotism, freedom and democracy for their goals of securing consent. We have to research and understand their methods and use those methods against them and their machines of manipulation. We need to run interference with their communication channels by talking to each American on the street, on the bus, at work, in school about the hidden wars and usurpation of our remaining liberties. We have to expose their lies and explain the truths and stories about a world we really want to live in. We need to create art, agitprop, music, ideas and campaigns to educate our frightened or atrophied brothers and sisters.

There are many paths to take and histories to teach in exposing these maniacs. By retelling recent history and combating the ignorance factories of the media cartels we can bring their downfall. For example, if the American public knew the extent that the Bush administration was warned of the 9-11 skyjackings or that it was complicit in the arming and training of Al-Queda, the Bush team could lose the information war it has waged against the American public. Recent cracks in the cement, if you are looking, show a noticeable pattern of cover-up, foot dragging and contemptible obstruction of the truth. The Bush team knows that if the public gets their hands on the evidence their reign of terror could come to an end.

The White House is restricting access to the “official” investigation, even classifying as top secret, information that has already been reported in such aggressive investigative reporting outlets (haha) as the New York Times. The Bush secrecy reveals the underlying paranoia they are gripped with. Without secrets they can’t control you.

They are also afraid you will stop watching TV. In the coming year the battles for your mindshare will be beta-tested as the election campaigns start. The economy will be a side bar that Democrats will want to raise to take out Bush but will fail to motivate a public eagerly watching the next Rambo series on Fox News. Bush’s Producers will be telling a tale of how he looked 9-11 in the eye and kicked ass for America. Heartbreaking video of the towers’ collapse, firemen rescuing people cut with Bush flying bombing runs over Al Queda caves and Hussein’s palaces will be powerful images that will be hard to erase from the public’s cache.
Better tales will be needed; ones that explain that the best way to stop terrorism is by not supporting it like we currently do and have done consistently. Just because they are “our” terrorists doesn't mean they are NOT terrorists. Recent US history of supporting terror is deep and the black hole into which it has been disappeared needs to be reversed. The destruction of civil liberties under the gestapo of the Homeland Security Department and the Justice Department needs to be screamed out from every window. Appeal to the self-interest of the public and explain that Bush’s war on terror is not bringing them security but only more pain. There are a few major stories that need to be shared, now and until they are booted out.

The 2004 election is our best chance at stopping them. I don't believe that by getting rid of the Bush Junta that America or the world will change. America will run the world as its leaders and corporate master sees fit until we change this Corporate globalisation monster. But lets put the pause button on this out of control Empire. We can start with reversing Bush’s End Game. We need to stop this hybrid Christian warrior cult’s ultra-right-wing sneering nazi death machine that is clearly making the word less safe for everyone, all the time.

It is the most important time in your life to be alive. Make it last longer.
—Agent Edmar

Dearest Lumpens,
The Lumpen Ministries have been awakened by the revelations delivered to us from the Televisual pulpits and media prophets. The current Armageddon that they report is a torrent of lies and they mislead the Flock into inaction, betrayal, and worse, destruction.

Lo and behold, the battle of Good against Evil is in its end game and we are here to make sure you choose the winning side and make yourself ready for the coming Choice. As reports of stars falling from the sky, beasts arising from the sea and blood of dead men flooding the earth proliferate, we feel unease at the interpretations of the false prophets. As nation rises up against nation, as plagues, supernatural terrors, and great battles in the skies are unleashed, we want to help the flock understand the Possibilities of absolute total devastation. We don’t trust the Evil Doers or their false MSNBCIAFOXCBS religions proselytizing on behalf of the Dark lords. Neither should you.

The Plague of Totalitarianism has risen across the globe. Forces of Satanic intent are bent on devouring the peoples of Earth through never-ending War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. Unholy forces using the rhetoric of Faith and technology of Science to obtain total power are waging their Crusade. They say the antichrist is here.

They say the Antichrist could be a human being, but even so he is the Deceiver. And he will deceive the world. He has come to us as being very good, and he claims to have established a reign, which seems to be just and prosperous to us all. But it is not. It is a reign that benefits the slothful, the greedy and his beasts. They say he is born in a church, but his religion is Oil. The shadowy and deadly firmament.

The three signs of Revelation are clear as Holocaust closes in. He is building a third Temple of Nuclear Armageddon in Jerusalem, he fancies himself as a great military ruler and he comes to invade the Middle East. The last sign is the most alarming as he seeks to enforce a worldwide system of religion on the world. The religion of Hypocrisy and Stupidity.
Lo and behold, the End Times are near as the Lawless Ones, this Antichrist and his minions, are bidding us to follow them to our deaths by deceitful methods. By declaring America as “God’s Gift to humanity” the Antichrist is trying to bring us to his fold of Evil deeds. He promises peace to those who follow him, and he has risen to a position of great power. But the Righteous must be wary. He persecutes all as being evil and unworthy when it is in fact his army of beasts that are leading us over the brink of the Apocalypse. He says the dominance of His Empire is imminent and inevitable, and that it will be a glorious age of peace and harmony. But as we all know it is only an age of peace and harmony for some people, his Chosen Demons... The fate of humankind hangs in the decisions of dangerous men.

With the help of his false prophets and media warriors, the Antichrist will gain control of the world economy, by forcing each person “to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name . . . six hundred and sixty-six.”

He persecutes all other believers and religions outside his Religion of Hypocrisy and Stupidity. He tortures those he claims to be his enemy. He watches us with his Total Information Awareness System with its all seeing technologic eyes. He lies with his Global Communications demons. With his societal control shamans he tries to keep us from doing even the most simple of tasks, like addressing human rights or environmental dangers, whether it is the ozone layer, global warming, pollution of the air or water, or bio devastation. He pits humans against humans in his Inquisition of false Suspicion as brother turns in brother and sister casts out sister. He teaches us to evade these questions to “protect” us from his false Gods of Evil, Terror, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. He says we have great battles to win and he presents these battles as the Last Cosmic War to end all. But these wars may be his downfall and our opportunity. This is where the Righteous can stop his Plan and Final Solution.

First let us end the Inquisition, and let the Righteous unveil the unholy plans as they are read in between the lines of the televisual Armageddon unfolding before our eyes. It is possible that before the Very End, the Good forces of Planet Earth can intervene and triumph over the Destroyers. Believers and radical evangelicals, we know you have the faith to stand up and defend humanity! Rise up and speak, bring on the reformation, go out in the streets and Preach the gospel of Truth! The Righteous will prevail!

Remember—It is Our Word against theirs!
-Reverend EdMar

we want to live. (2002) volume 11 issue 2

OFD
Report #87.
We want to live.
From an address given by Office of Fatherland Defense Director EdMar
during the Liquor Park Nuclear Arms Fare

From June through September, the Lumpen Patriot Committee took part in the Operation Summer of Love campaign. An Office of Fatherland Defense (OFD) initiative, we discovered and allowed ourselves to bathe in the situations that emerged during that period in Chicago. Operation Summer of Love was intended to create public arts and civil society strategies that encourage dialogue, personal engagement, and consciousness raising. We believed Civil Society was crumbling by the weight of the Terror inflicted by the Administration of Doom, the Bush White House. The result: Our Agents threw parties. We launched arts spaces. Constructed installations. We immersed ourselves in street art to get our messages across. Tactical media campaigns were started. Films were made. Elevated Cinema, Bruner and Bay, Nipporn, Heaven Gallery, Fluxcore, and Buddy programs enabled Agents to enjoy each other and introduce us to the Next Wave of strategies. Operation Summer of Love was a successful reclamation of public space. Agents embraced the street with symbolic and real gestures of love. The resistance against the coming plague was mighty. Long Live the Summer of Love.

Woven throughout this positive campaign to create and protect our undercultures was the nagging dominance of the consensus reality by BushCult™. Their maneuvering since we began Operation Summer of Love has stupefied even the most cynical and jaded amongst us. We now collectively feel an even more intense disdain for Count Bushula and his Empire that is Striking Back. Their naked plans for world domination and total human destruction has seeped into the weather reports. Somehow without us knowing they have invaded our communities and have converted many of our neighbors and co-workers to their ways of thinking and it scares us. After a long hot summer of activities we, people who want to Live, are preparing ourselves to confront the real horrors facing us. It will not be easy. Agents be ready!

So where do we go from here? The banality of the Bush Terror Wars, a very sophisticated campaign of information manipulation and the daily manufacturing of consent, has modified us all. The incessant drums of war and the advertised diversions to kill are invoking despair and confusion amongst many the OFD agents and their families. The modification process has made us susceptible to being overtaken by the Undead army of Bush warriors.

The current campaigns remind us of the Gulf War over a decade ago. Back then CNNBCIA was a very important device in unleashing the video game total war of no casualties and safe virtual death. Powerful agencies conspired to bring us lie after lie, and we bit their bullets. The TV war stunned viewers into complacency. It energized the zombies among us, and they took over. Now the programming of hate is to be found in every media outlet. It is hard to tune it out. “You will go to war or else, you will go to war. Or we will kill you in your sleep at home; you will go to War because we say so. You will go to war or you are going to be unemployed.“ The message has converted many. You cannot tell if your co-workers are human anymore. Shopping has been difficult. Does that guy in Aisle 7 support Bush? How about that cashier over there. Does she support a war in Iraq? Everyone is suspect. The television is transforming us. The Orcs can now run in daylight.

We must all retune our devices and ignore the zombies among us that support the Great Leader’s wars and unflinchingly defend this Commander in Thief and his Goblin Army.

All the love it or leave types are to be deleted from your everyday. You are to focus.

We have a tough task. Post Bush Coup 2000 - 9/11 Redux, we must contend with the Bush Ghoul/Oil Posse- a group of armed trogdylites with nuclear weapons. We are fearful that the unveiling horror film trilogy featuring this undead vampyric cabal will seek to kill everyone in order to convert as many of us as he can to his army of undead warriors. We encourage all OFD Agents to participate in weekly Help US Lord™ prayer circles throughout North America and pray that the Lord™ will help us defeat the Bush plague and his war on humanity. Some say the Garlic can help us ward them off for two more years. But do not count on it. In the meantime our scientists are developing vaccines for everything.
In between prayer circles and email campaigns to Congressmen not yet bitten by the ColdVampyricWarriors we are constantly looking for evidence that other worlds are possible. We discover solace and inspiration reading alternative perspectives and tales of resistance and justice in reports submitted from agents abroad. Intelligence from the Office of Fatherland Defense reveals that the movement is repulsed by the insanity being broadcast in our homes and in our heads and is leaving the couches. We are gathering and opposing the Bush Stormtroopers and the Corporate Commandos in the streets whenever they emerge in sunlight. Movement forces show up at their Temples and gather with pitchforks and torches to scare the frankenmonsters away. Others are holding meetings to plan resistance parties and bake sales for the revolution. There is evidence that the corporate criminals are being hunted down. Some believe the Bush Army is even running out of Black magic! There are even reports that even people living in America are aware that the opportunists in the White House are not human. This is our opening.

We ask all agents to rekindle the recruitment process. You can stop the Orcish armies on your block and put up signs of protest against the unholy invasion. Use your existing apparatus and cell groups to engage the enemy in the streets with sanity and morality and maybe some friendly robots. Propagate the messages learned from Operation Summer of Love: create culture and live. Do not fear the Undead. You have the ability to thwart the Terror Wars and stop the Wars against Humankind. We want to live and they cannot kill us all.

Operation: Summer of Love
On May 22, 2002, Office of Fatherland Defense Director Ed “Lalo” Mar addressed employees
in the Office of Fatherland Defense Auditorium
on the Agency’s Strategic Cultural Direction.
The following are excerpts from the Director’s address regarding the current crisis.

First, the threat environment is growing more diverse, complex, and dangerous; the surveillance state, disappearance of civil liberties, repression of the culture, ending of democratic freedoms. It's easier and easier for elites to have a serious impact, with less visibility and warning. The potential for surprise has increased enormously.
Everything we do will have as its primary goal the strengthening of our two most fundamental capabilities: cultural revolution and defending freedom. These are the activities that determine whether or not we serve our customers day in and day out.

We are in the cultural espionage business. We are going to stay in the cultural espionage business. Agent operations have been our backbone for 50 years, and clandestine cultural operations have consistently yielded invaluable public value. I will not let that change.

The challenges facing HUMINT [human intelligence] are great. Some of our most important targets – lawless corporations, the imperial state, social repression, and fascists in government, to name a few – are hard to get at. We confront technologies that present unprecedented challenges to our ability to operate under cover. And we must combat a wider array of counterintelligence and disinformation concerns like the media monopolies and state gestapo.

All of this means we will have to mount increasingly complex and tactical operations. At the same time, we have must also be prepared to meet the inescapable demands to surge. We have to have the agility and the flexibility to surge without hollowing out the hard target operations that must remain our principal focus. There is room for tactical and general deployment of ideas, global justice, human rights, and democratic principals.

To meet these challenges, we will rebuild our field strength. Over the next few years, we will increase the number of our operations officers. We will augment existing stations and increase the number of our stations and bases. And we will see to it that they have the communications infrastructure they need to support their operations.

At the core, our success depends on our people. We will establish a recruitment program that parallels the very best in private industry. We will bring the best and the brightest people into OFD day after day, month after month and prove we have a mission and system of rewards in place to give them the incentive to stay.

In light of our need for incentives I am pleased to announce our 2002 tactical media campaign for public safety, Operation Summer of Love. Our pilot program begins June 2002 in Chicago and it represents a major paradigm shift to confront corporate control of the public domain, state repression of humanity, and to celebrate our freedoms while we still have them.

This large-scale culture hack is a challenge to the current “oil group” state-media alliance presentation of the War on Terrorism™. The Orwellian Strength Through Ignorance ploy must be challenged. We have the strength and the numbers to defeat the tactics of the wagers of “endless war” and unveil their motives.

The Summer of Love campaign includes public arts and civil society strategies that encourage public dialogue, personal engagement and conciousness raising. This reclamation of public space should embrace the street with symbolic and real gestures of love and resistance. As always we will perform our duties with perfection on target and on mission.

Advocated tactics in this information campaign remain unconventional: graffiti, stencil and poster campaigns, public street vending, smiling at strangers, playing boomboxes with the New Sound on the streets, public displays of affection, picnics in parks, skateboarding in restricted areas, leaf-letting, elevated cinemas, matchmaking, skill sharing, dismantling of surveillance systems, television occupation, summer bar-b-ques, random hugging, planting gardens, pirate radio, open engagement with desire and other more technical practices.

It is your duty to report to your station officers to initiate tactical operations in your neighborhood and street. Station Chiefs are briefed to provide details for your role in the New Strategic Cultural Revolution. Operation Summer of Love depends on our total participation for ultimate success.

We are all officers of Fatherland Defense. It is up to each and every one of us to prove our system, our civil society, our country is always ready to fight against the Terror of Terror. Ask not what your country can do to support terror but what can you do to foment love.

The Office of Fatherland Defense requires all operatives to register and report their specific duties and practice throughout the Summer of Love Campaign period. Mission briefings and project updates can be found at:
www.lumpen.com/fatherland/summeroflove.html

The following is an edited version of Our Dear Leader Bush’s State of the Union address:
Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished guests, fellow citizens, as we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.

When I called our troops into action, I did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill. And tonight, thanks to them, we are winning the war on terror.

Thanks to the work of our law enforcement officials and coalition partners, hundreds of terrorists have been arrested, yet tens of thousands of trained terrorists are still at large. These enemies view the entire world as a battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are. So long as training camps operate, so long as nations harbor terrorists, freedom is at risk and America and our allies must not, and will not, allow it.

Our military has put the terror training camps of Afghanistan out of business, yet camps still exist in at least a dozen countries. A terrorist underworld -- including groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Jaish-i-Mohammed -- operates in remote jungles and deserts, and hides in the centers of large cities.

Many nations are acting forcefully. Pakistan is now cracking down on terror, and I admire the strong leadership of President Musharraf. But some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will. Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.

Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September 11, but we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.
Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people's hope for freedom.

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. We will work closely with our coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack.

And all nations should know: America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.

We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.

Our war on terror is well begun, but it is only begun. This campaign may not be finished on our watch, yet it must be and it will be waged on our watch.
We can't stop short. If we stopped now, leaving terror camps intact and terror states unchecked, our sense of security would be false and temporary. History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom's fight.

Homeland security will make America not only stronger but in many ways better. Knowledge gained from bioterrorism research will improve public health. Stronger police and fire departments will mean safer neighborhoods. Stricter border enforcement will help combat illegal drugs.

For too long our culture has said, "If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll." In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a Nation that serves goals larger than self. We have been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass.

In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries. America is working with Russia, China, and India in ways we never have before to achieve peace and prosperity. In every region, free markets and free trade and free societies are proving their power to lift lives. Together with friends and allies from Europe to Asia, from Africa to Latin America, we will demonstrate that the forces of terror cannot stop the momentum of freedom.
The last time I spoke here, I expressed the hope that life would return to normal. In some ways, it has. In others, it never will. Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them. We've come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed.

Beyond all differences of race or creed, we are one country, mourning together and facing danger together. Deep in the American character, there is honor, and it is stronger than cynicism. Many have discovered again that even in tragedy, especially in tragedy, God is near.

In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive decade in the history of liberty -- that we have been called to a unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice more clear or consequential.
Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice -- made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life.
Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.

Thank you, thank you all, and may God bless.