Endgame Vol.1 (65 page)

This is what we do.

Later that night, I dreamt I was fighting a lich: a user of magic who had been not living, not dead for several thousand years. In this dream I had magic, too, but of a different sort, and each time he tried to freeze me in place, or suck away my life—as he had done to so many others, and as he must do if he is to continue to not-live, not-die—I struck him back twice as hard as he tried to strike me. He began to fear me, and then he began to weaken. Soon it became clear he was going to die. He kept fighting—because that was what he had done for so long—but suddenly I understood that not only was it my task to not let him kill me, and not only was it my task to kill him, but even more it was my task to release him from his undead state, to grant him the release that all undead
³⁵¹
secretly (even to themselves) desire. It was my task to teach him a lesson known to every tadpole, every raindrop, every sea anemone, every mountain, every elephant, every uncivilized human being: how to die. It was my task to finally and completely kill him.

This is what we must do.

But the dreams did not end there. Still later in the night, I was given a box of puppies, which I carried through a city. Although all of the puppies were from the same litter, many were tiny, smaller than the smallest runts I’ve ever seen. I had to hurry to return them to their mother. I searched and searched for a way out of the city, and at last reached a forest. There, their mother waited for them. I gave her back her children. Some, I knew, would live. And I knew that some would die.

This, I knew in the dream, is true as well for all of us—human and nonhuman alike—who are boxed up and separated from our source of sustenance, who are being killed by the fumes and emptiness of everything our cities represent and are. Some will live, and some will die. And I knew in the dream also that this is just as true for those of us who fight the system, those of us who fight the lich, those of us who do not merely dig tiny trenches in the barren sand below the big dams that need to be taken down: some of us will live and some of us will die.

Every individual who wants to save his humanity—and, indeed his skin—had better begin thinking dangerous thoughts about sabotage, resistance, rebellion, and the fraternity of all men [and women] everywhere. The mental attitude known as “negativism” is a good start.

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience.

Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of crimes.

AT THIS REMOVE, WHO ARE THE REAL HEROES OF THE THIRD REICH? Hitler, Bormann, Himmler, Goering? I think not: I don’t imagine many parents gift their male children with the first name Adolf anymore. You may as well call your kid Caligula. Those who ran the Third Reich are rightly reviled. So are their lieutenants, people like Frank, Eichmann, and Kaltenbrunner, people who were deservedly hanged for carrying out the evil (if the word
evil
is to mean anything at all, it must apply here) plans of their leaders. The same is true for the loyal generals, like Keitel and Jodl, both of whom were hanged for planning and waging aggressive war (U.S. generals would be well-served to read
Justice at Nuremberg
and other texts describing their own fate should justice ever befall them—that is, if they can stand how itchy this reading might make their own necks). And the same is true for their propagandists, like Goebbels and Streicher (to save capitalist journalists from actually having to venture into the unknown territory of performing independent research, I’ll just say right out that Goebbels killed himself, and Streicher was hanged for the effect his lies had on the furthering of atrocity).

No, the real heroes of the Third Reich are not the now-dead equivalents of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and company. Nor are they the also-dead equivalents of Gates, Hurwitz, Trump, and others whom we’re taught to admire and emulate. Nor are they the equivalents of Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Barbara Walters, and others who lie to us, distract us, while the world is murdered.

The real heroes of the Third Reich are those like Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche and Ewald Heinrich von Kleist, those who took it upon themselves to try through any means necessary to stop the evil in which they found themselves immersed. It is Count Claus Von Stauffenberg (killed by the Nazis July 20, 1944), who had lost an eye and an arm fighting for Germany, and still managed to plot and plan for years, and to plant the bomb that on July 20, 1944, nearly succeeded in killing Hitler. It is Ludwig Beck (killed by the Nazis July 20, 1944), who in 1938 resigned as Chief of the German General Staff rather than lead his country into war, after that becoming the spiritual leader of the native resistance. It is Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (tortured,
³⁵⁵
then killed by the Nazis April 9, 1945), leader of German military intelligence (the Abwehr), who made
sure his organization passed on full information to the Allies, and who did everything he could to take down the Nazis. It is the brilliant general (and field marshal) Erwin Rommell (forced by the Nazis to commit suicide October 14, 1944) who used his position of privilege to the advantage of the resistance. It is Hans Von Donhanyi (tortured, then killed by the Nazis April 9, 1945), an Abwehr agent who successfully led a group of Jews disguised as Abwehr agents to Switzerland. It is Hans Oster (tortured, then killed by the Nazis April 9, 1945), who used his position to provide explosives to the resistance. It is Jesuit Priest Alfred Delp (tortured, then killed by the Nazis February 2, 1945), who recognized the role the Christian church played in Hitler’s popular support,
³⁵⁶
and did everything he could to counter that, including advocating Hitler’s assassination. It is General Henning von Treskow, who had long worked toward the assassination of Hitler, and who blew himself up with a hand grenade after the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot, leaving us his final words, which we may wish to modernize and take to heart: “Now the whole world will attack us and abuse us. But I am still absolutely convinced that we have acted rightly. I believe Hitler to be not only the arch-enemy of Germany, but also the arch-enemy of the world. When in a few hours’ time I appear before the judgement seat of God to give an account of my deeds and omissions, I believe I shall be able to answer with a good conscience for what I have done in the struggle against Hitler. Just as God once promised Abraham that he would spare Sodom, if only ten just men could be found in it, so I hope God will not destroy Germany because of us. None of us can complain about his death. Whoever joined us, put on the shirt of Nessus. A man’s moral worth begins only when he is ready to give his life for his convictions.”
³⁵⁷

Six or seven years ago I gave testimony before several panels of the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Northwest Power Planning Council, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and other agencies overseeing the murder of the salmon. The ostensible purpose of these panels was for citizens to give representatives of government and industry input concerning the fact that dams on the Columbia and other rivers kill salmon. The real purpose was for all of us—myself included—to make ourselves feel good by pretending to do something useful while we stood by and watched salmon rapidly slide to extinction.

Here’s the testimony I gave at one such panel:

“In 1839 Elkanah Walker wrote in his diary, ‘It is astonishing the number of
salmon which ascend the Columbia yearly and the quantity taken by the Indians. ’ He continued, ‘It is an interesting sight to see them pass a rapid. The number was so great that there were hundreds constantly out of the water.’ In 1930 the
Coeur d’Alene Press
wrote, ‘Millions of chinook salmon today lashed into whiteness the waters of northwest streams as they battled thru the rapids.’ The article went on to say that ‘the scene is the same in every northwest river.’
The Spokesman-Review
noted that at Kettle Falls, ‘the silver horde was attacking the falls at a rate of from 400 to 600 an hour.’

“And now? In order to serve commerce this culture dammed the rivers of the Columbia watershed. Local groups and individuals—including those who knew the salmon most intimately, the Indians—fought against the federal government and the river industries, but dams were built, and now most runs of salmon in the Northwest and California are extinct or on the verge.

“The destruction of the salmon is not unique. It is the story of this culture. After a leak of poisonous gas from Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal, India, killed up to fifteen thousand human beings and injured up to five hundred thousand, an anguished doctor made the common-sense proclamation that the company ‘shouldn’t be permitted to make poison for which there is no antidote.’ That’s what dams have been since the beginning: ‘a poison for which there is no antidote.’

“In order to make the cultural pattern perfectly clear, here are more poisons this culture has created without creating antidotes: It created the toxic mess at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation with no consideration for how to clean it up; before the first atomic bomb’s detonation, scientists feared the explosion would create a chain reaction destroying the atmosphere, yet they proceeded; this culture has clearcut its way across this continent—indeed across the planet—with no thought to an inability to restore those forests; politicians do their damnedest to allow pollution of aquifers with no clue how to clean them up; global warming, the ozone hole, acid rain, and other results of technological ‘progress’ are examples of poisons for which there are no antidotes.

“Why does this culture do this? One reason is that within this culture knowledge and technological ‘progress’ are driven by fiscal profitability. This fiscal profitability inevitably involves forcing others to pay for the economic activities of the producers. The Downwinders��and all humans and nonhumans who will live in eastern Washington for the next 250,000 years—pay for Hanford with their health; those who drink from Spokane’s aquifer pay with their health for the economic activities of those who pollute it; the salmon and those of us who would have eaten them—or merely watched them climb
Kettle Falls—pay for the profits of the industries that have turned the rivers into a series of lakes.

“Recently, Senator Slade Gorton commented on salmon: ‘There is a cost beyond which you just have to say very regrettably we have to let species or subspecies go extinct.’ I would turn that statement around: There is a cost beyond which you just have to let destructive pieces of technology go extinct. There is a cost beyond which you have to let a treasonous collaboration between government and industry go extinct. There is a cost beyond which you have to let destructive worldviews go extinct. There is a cost beyond which you have to let civilization go extinct. The extinction of the salmon is not a price I’m willing to pay to support the irrigators, barging industry, aluminum industry, and producers of electricity, each of which is fighting desperately to cause salmon to go extinct.

“It may be incorrect to say outright that dams are ‘a poison for which there is no antidote.’ There is a realistic way to save salmon. I’m not speaking, of course, of the runs already extinct. The culture will forever carry that crime on our collective conscience. But other runs can be saved by a simple expedient. Remove dams that kill salmon. Blow them up. Even from a strictly economic perspective (in other words, from a perspective that ignores life), the dams aren’t necessary: Randy Hardy, Bonneville Power Administration Head, admits there is a ‘glut of power on the market at rates lower than’ that of the dams. Yet instead of removing dams the Administration’s response is to approach state and federal governments to request further subsidies. The public pays to kill the salmon. Corporate interests obstruct the removal of dams just as dams stand in the way of salmon on their way to spawn. For years politicians have studied the salmon to death, with each study revealing what we already know, that dams kill salmon. We’ve known this forever: laws were passed during the reigns of both Richard the Lionheart and Robert I (Robert the Bruce) in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries forbidding the erection of fixtures that would impede the passage of salmon on rivers and streams.
³⁵⁸

“Steve Clark of the Bureau of Reclamation gave us the real reason for the studies, when he said that he wished that salmon would go extinct so that we can ‘get on with living.’

“Industry representatives at this and other panels have repeatedly stressed the need for proven solutions. I will give them a proven solution: blow the dams and allow the Columbia to once again be a wild river. It is time for us to stop studies that have been a mere stalling tactic on the part of politicians and the business interests they represent. It is time to find a way to remove the
dams—dams that are killing salmon—so that we, and the salmon, can get on with living.”