At this critical moment in history, a time of global conflict, Ramsey Clark, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Michael Ratner, Lynne Stewart, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other luminaries of the left have joined together to fight what they call “our common oppressor,” the United States government.

They contend:

The house is on fire and we are all living in it. The United States government and its dependent organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have responded to the fire… by pouring more oil on it. They call it “democratic nation building”—a fancy name for the perpetual wars, theft of the commons, exploding economic inequalities, weakening civil liberties (including the introduction of torture), and the intensifying degradation and outright destruction of our natural environment that lie hidden behind “free” trade and the promise (seldom fulfilled) of a “free” election. Billions of people outside America want this madness to stop, but what can they do? Our new and independent organization, the International Endowment for Democracy (I.E.D.), believes it will only stop if democratic nation building (the real thing, not the oil) is applied to the U.S., which is the country most responsible for these frightening global developments, and that people everywhere can play a role in bringing it about.

Their web site is here.