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March 7, 2007
4th and 40th Anniversary of STOP THE WAR! NOW!

I knew, 4 years ago, that our President was leading us into a war for profit. An eager, hungry demand to control the spigot of the world's energy reserves. As in a dream, I could foresee the privatization and profit of the corporations engaged in the supplying of and stealing from Americans, made possible by the corruption of war.

And it has come to pass. Fat, bloated portfolios of the uber wealthy, earned on the skimping deprivation of our volunteer military. Like a share croppers overseer, they collect, their cash while ignoring the rotting ceilings, devastated lives, and offer up the simplest of reasons. "Well, they volunteered didn't they?"

I knew my neighbors would turn away from and deny the horror that has befallen the Middle East. That they would paint over truth with patriotism. Patriotism fed on hate and intolerance.

I knew that 3165 flag draped cardboard cartons would be an abstract number with no real body inside without a grieving family. And they would still insist on holding on to some vague but fervent belief in an empty promise by a leader with no conscience.

I've been tortured daily with the reports of each new outrage. I have participated in what I once believed was my republic, my democracy. I voted, wrote my Senator, wrote my Congressmen, wrote my newspaper. I signed petitions, on-line and off. I even helped deliver a few thousand of the stupid things directly to Cliff Sterns Office.

I protested on the corners of Gainesville, and Tampa, and Orlando, and Tallahassee, and shook my fist many, many times, at the indifferent authority in Washington DC.

To what effect? NONE. To what end? No end in sight. For what? My name on a terrorist list somewhere? My civil rights erased before my disbelieving eyes?

My income halved, my children struggling to get by, having already been robbed of their future? My health compromised, my house lost. My, MY grandchildren HUNGRY? How can this BE in my America?

This WAR, this Administration, this Government, this INSANITY, is beyond rational belief.

I've come to the sorry conclusion that being "polite" and "framing" my message is a waste, a total waste of time, energy, and what little resources I have left.

I for one am ready to set something on fire. Even if it is me.

I have never, NEVER, been so embarrassed, so downright ashamed to be an AMERICAN. And I am not alone in this.

And before you tell me to love it or leave it, keep in mind that I can no longer LEAVE the US without a passport, without permission. And international treaties make it impossible and in some cases illegal for me to seek residency anywhere else.

I would gladly leave, tomorrow, if I could.

Knowing that I had done my all as an American Citizen to stop all of this, this, holocaust of a war on terror.

So, I'm going to DC for the 40th Anniversary of the MARCH ON THE PENTAGON, to do it all over again. And I'm taking as many of my Florida neighbors that can make it.

We are going to fill the Amtrak train to DC. We are filling every empty airline seat to DC. We are filling cars and vans and then renting more cars and vans, all of us sporting a Florida Tag and heading to DC. There will be a long line of American Patriots along Interstate 95. From Miami and Key West. From the Gulf Coast to the Panhandle going East, then North, ever North.

And we will join the hundreds of thousands more coming from 150 organizing centers across OUR America. We will take our silly signs, chant our childish chants, and cross the Potomac to the Pentagon. To tell them again, STOP THE WAR. NOW!

Will anyone even notice? Will it make a difference? Will it change a damn thing?

Yeah, it will change me. Just me. I'll know.

I will have done the best that I knew how to do. I will be able to mourn the loss of each life, Iraqi, American, British, all of them, dead or wounded, with a clear honest conscience.

I saw a holocaust and tried to stop it. Would that we all could say the same.

Faith Carr is a 51 year old exhausted political activist.
Resistance is Required Revolution is Possible

bob e
       Kiowa tribe   USMC   Vietnam Veteran (1965-1969  
       bob e doesn't ask what is right or wrong. . . .
                                   he asks is it healing or harmful
       His life and his work are about healing.
 
January, 2006 :  I believe there are a great many of us who truly care about peace and peacefulness - not only in ourselves but in the course of events that impact on all Human Beings. Our government is engaged in many events here in the United States and in the rest of the World that severely impact the ability and capability of Human Beings to experience peacefulness.
 
For me to maintain the level of higher peace, the level of inner peace, and the level of peacefulness around me - sometimes I find that I must walk outside into the chaos. This walk does not come from self-righteous piousness, nor from an ego that says my way is the right way. This walk comes from a feeling that rides on my Spirit, that is carried in the Winds - a feeling from the Ancient Ones that speaks to me to add my voice, to add my Self, to add my Spirit to the Walk of Peace.
 
To paraphrase Pooh, “I am a man of little brain.”
    However, I am a man who has walked in the fire of war.
        I am one of many who has walked through the blackness of battle where
         nothing exists save fight.
              And I am one of these warriors who has lived to find peace,
                       peacefulness, and a hope for fewer wars.
                       A hope for fewer deaths.
                       A hope for more Human Beings to experience peace and peacefulness.

So I offer some writings to you and to those who share similar ideas and ideals. To those who stand tall with signs and slogans.    

To those who stand quietly in vigil offering light to the darkness.     

To those who beat the Drums so that the heartbeat of the Earth is heard and felt by all.

I am not a writer. I do not offer my words for judgment. I am a Human who has lived many lives in this Life. Sometimes I am able to bring memories, feelings, dreams, desires, pain and happiness to words. It helps me.  It helps me to sometimes share them with Humans who are on a similar Path of Light & Life.

Share them as you will. Know that when I light my Prayer Fire, know that when I sing the Songs of Blessings, know that you and those who join you are in the Words that rise with the Smoke and ride on the Winds.

I thank you sincerely for this gracious offering of sharing a part of my Peace and Peacefulness.

this is a good day. heiay-chennshou.

I am grateful for the blessings of this Earth Walk.

I have been given many gifts during this living.

I have been given many visions during this living.

I have been given great strength during this living.

I have been given great love during this living.

I have been given great teaching during this living.

I am grateful for the protection and guidance of the Spirits during this living.

I am grateful for the light of the Fire and the Power of the Smoke during this living.

I am grateful to have walked the Path of the Ancestors during this living.

I am grateful to have heard the voices of the Ancestors during this living.

I am grateful for the destiny the creator has given me for this living.

I am grateful to share this day of living with all things and all beings.

this is a good day. blessings from the Creator, GrandMother, GrandFather.     7-16-98

* * * * * * * *
Please share this gift from Jim Caron-Davis with everyone. 
This is Jim's impression of our evening together in Inverness on October 26th, 2005, honoring the 2000 soldiers who had fallen in Iraq by that date.  It is a powerful reminder of the depth and breadth of these lives lost, the profound absences to their families, friends, communities, to all of us.  Like Jim, there are others of us who cannot throw away the lists of those names we called.  There is a preciousness to each one that we now appreciate in a different way than before we spoke their names.  Where is your list?
                                                           Number 2000

 

In the black pocket

of my windbreaker

I keep a list of the

84 names of the Florida dead

jammed with a leaf-sized list

of hundreds of other dead.

 

The black pocket

dark as a tomb.

The black pocket

seals off faint light

of the waxy taper

I hold in my cold hands

as the last names are

pronounced.

 

Black nylon windbreaker

black as a thick plastic

zippered body bag carrying

a numbered corpse

1998,1999,2000.

 

Military intelligence

does not list who was 2000.

Military intelligence

desires no martyr.

Military intelligence

wants no hero name

emblazoned in headlines.

 

Military intelligence

has forgotten how

effectively we have

learned to forget;

how quickly

a laugh track stifles

a tear for 2000.

Better yet, a mystery

diverts anger’s march

toward action.

 

Anger blown away

like so many fallen leaves;

blown away like so many

body parts;

scattered like empty

black plastic bags

in a military mortuary.

 

I carry their names

In my pocket

When I walk my dog

At midnight.

 

They go with me to church

And the convenience

Store for gas and soda.

 

What lists did 2000 carry?

Shopping lists?

Friends to Hug?

Love to make?

Leaves to rake?

 

Was 2000 thinking

Of the list

At that last moment?

 

I carry their names

In my black, zippered pocket.

Jim Caron-Davis   October, 2005

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We exist for one reason: TO STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ!
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER AND THERE IS SO MUCH TO KNOW AND LEARN! 

Another Invented Enemy?     A Call for a New Peace Movement

by Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone*

Why do U.S. elites invent so many enemies?    And how do they do it?

Former U.S. "friends" Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein were recently metamorphosed into Evil Monsters. Now former Yugoslav servant of the I.M.F., President Slobodan Milosevic, is the new Evil One. It was so much simpler when the U.S.S.R. was the Evil Empire! While the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its corporate and media friends [1] keep inventing enemies to bomb, let's consider their need for these enemies. This need has at least three sources. Continued cold war-level arms spending, on which so many congressional elections depend, lacks justification since the U.S.S.R.'s collapse. And then U.S.-sponsored global expansion of free markets is supposed to spread wealth, but since it provokes resistance by its actual effect of deepening global poverty, U.S. willingness to bomb needs to be regularly demonstrated. As Bill himself said: "If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key....That's what this Kosovo thing is all about." [2] Finally, foreign wars are a dandy diversion of our attention from our leaders' inability to solve grave problems here at home.

Historically Americans have opposed foreign interventions. But we are being trapped in Orwell's 1984. In that novel having external enemies was a way to govern. It didn't matter if the enemy was invented. Indeed the ruling circles of the fictional nation "Oceania" and its enemies all secretly knew their enemies were invented. But just having enemies allowed these elites both to marginalize political opponents as traitors and to dominate their domestic populations. This was because most citizens could be made to heed patriotism's drum roll by inventing an enemy.

Other writers in this booklet tell of the real agenda behind NATO's war against the current Evil Other. Here we focus on the mechanism of the trick for fooling Americans into focusing on designated enemies. When informed leaders slap the label "Evil" on someone on national TV, commiting our youth to armed opposition to them, it is hard to resist believing there's something to it. But such elaborate and lethal performances rely on a psychological mechanism of projection. Virtually anyone can fill the role of Other. But when we find something unacceptable, conflictual, or just ambiguous in ourselves this ambiguity can magically become by projection an Evil feature of this Other. This Evil Other is by definition an enemy, and constituting another as enemy automatically awards the status of Good to Us.

If we subjectively accept this bestowal of Goodness on us everything gets easy: we need not learn why the Other is Evil. The media, seeking only to confirm the Evil, finds enough. This works because our culture is Manichean: Evil is anything (even positive change) which disturbs the present; the status quo is Goodness itself. Amidst such opposites, if we reject ambiguity in ourselves a "place" or "role" for the Evil Other is opened. Auditions can begin. The projection industry can crank up.

Consider the ambiguity in the query: is a society racist that jails almost a third of its black males? We are saved from real anti-racist change of the status quo, or any honest reflection on this query, if the hint of Evil in us is projected onto the Other. Milosevic's "racist" and "genocidal" nationalism absorbs all the hate we feel for a racism which our system cannot solve and our leaders won't address. Only after the war started did the media tell us how carefully Serb nationalism had been provoked at Rambouillet by U.S. negotiators who "deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept." [3]

The Evil which our elites point to in those Others absolutizes our status quo as Good, not only hiding our own institutionalized racism but also the elites' foot on our necks. Massively taken up by the media, this projection becomes Truth. Those who see through it are isolated since search on the internet or in alternative media is needed just to get the facts. Meanwhile, death is rained on an invented enemy in righteous moral purity. In the moral fury of projection ("Hitler" and "the Holocaust" are invoked) it matters little if civilian targets are criminally bombed, ecological disaster wrought, and Milosevic preserved as enemy-in-waiting. The projection fooled or marginalized enough Americans for elites to prosecute an illegal war that had been denied congressional approval. Yet responsibility for the criminal war lies much more with those who scripted the role of Evil Other than with Serbians who played assigned roles or with those (perhaps few) fooled by the media show at home.

Once Mancheaism is fixed in the rhetoric of U.S. leaders and media, alternatives to the Good U.S. must be or be made to be mere forms of the Evil Other. There can be no Good alternatives. Under Tito Yugoslavia had a potent, independent kind of worker self-managed socialism. Stalin was outraged. Capitalist countries were alarmed. Led in the 1960s by Yugoslavia, Cuba, and Algeria, the "non-aligned" nations made space for non-Stalinist socialism. As a Good "third way" this movement above all had to be crushed. If a socialist country isn't Stalinist (Yugoslavia and Cuba), it can be made so. When after Tito's death, Yugoslavia ran up debts, its socialism became vulnerable. IMF and World Bank "structural adjustment" programs moved in. Dismantling began with Croatia's and Slovenia's independence, aided by Milosevic-style Serb nationalism. Result: the independent-minded Serb citizenry which had resisted the I.M.F against Milosevic and rejected both Stalin and NATO, had to be bombed into borrowing money and submitting to the global profit system. NATO's war over, demands to divert the world's huge arms budgets to a system free of poverty must be forestalled. Peace cannot be allowed for long. War must be the norm. So we are now to support intervention in East Timor.

As wrongs to U.S. workers are deepened by elite action these workers may be asked to project their resulting problems onto new Evil Others. When Social Security is about to be privatized or campaign finance reform again defeated, Bradley or Bush may grab the TV to denounce "discovery" of atrocities by the "Marxist" Colombian guerillas, an Evil demanding armed intervention by the U.S. or U.N.

Get ready. If this analysis is true, what follows? The alternative to positing ourselves as Good that follows from projection is not positing ourselves as Evil. It is instead to first expose the device by which government/media elites try to manipulate us into forgetting the real changes needed to address our problems at home. Granted these problems -- a racist criminal justice system; phony democracy due to corporate money; huge increases in the "working poor" due to class polarization; an out-of-control environmental crisis; a foreign policy to depress wages at home by armed intervention abroad, etc. --are not easily solved.

But making Milosevic, Hussein and Noriega the Evil Other is an easy road to sainthood that actually conceals our power to solve our problems. No soul-searching for Evil in us is needed. The American people are fine. It's the projection scam that needs changing: our leaders and their profit system. First the lies tried on us need denouncing by "speaking truth to power" as the saying goes. But this needs doing in public and in the media if possible, since our strength is in our fellow citizens. Media challenges to the next demonization, demands for democratic process before intervening, and questioning the real aims -- these all help block intervention build-up.

In effect we need a new peace movement that restores traditional U.S. non-interventionism. "Free market" global capital that goes wherever misery is greatest and labor cheapest hurts both U.S. and foreign workers-- directly in paychecks, indirectly in environmental ruin. This profit system compels the needy to accept peanuts, it flees from or punishes assertions of worker rights, and it spreads malnutrition and death by recycling poverty. In 1998 UNICEF reported "nearly 12 million children under five...die each year in developing countries mainly from preventable causes." [4] We are amidst low-intensity mass killing, annual mini-Holocausts by alterable market mechanisms which grinds the landless poor under the heel of the wealthy. Though war-like, immoral, and unsustainable, this is the legal status quo. To disturb it is to "disturb the peace," hence to do Evil.

How can a peace movement stop this "Good" system?

First of all, we must set projection aside and face reality: the profit system's smooth working, with its normal and workaday mass killing, is policed and enforced by U.S. interventionism (U.N. and NATO are covers), mostly with U.S. taxpayers' money. This must cease. If workers' rights at home and abroad are to be protected, all U.S., NATO and U.N. interventions should be firmly opposed in principle and without exception until the system is fundamentally changed to serve human needs instead of profit.

Secondly, a new world needs building. NATO should be dismantled and its participants' arms budgets devoted first to reparations to Serbs and then to human needs at home and abroad. Domestic sources of war in race, gender, and class conflicts need addressing. Just getting the present system off the backs of the world's poor will be an enormous gift. They could then get their land back and feed themselves. The goal of a peaceful world can unify all humans since it springs from a single global source: human need. Such a peace movement will be obvious to itself if, at the next intervention, invitiations to project Evil are declined in favor of concrete projects to meet human from below will then have begun.

*Betsy Bowman is an independent scholar living in New York City. Bob Stone, a co-founder of the Radical Philosophy Association, teaches at C.W. Post Center of Long Island University.

1- Despite personnel changes, this coalition's sociology is unchanged since the Vietnam War. See William Domhoff "Who Made American Foreign Policy, 1945-1963?" in Corporations and the Cold War, ed. D. Horowitz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).

2- Quoted in Benjamin Schwartz and Christopher Lane, "The Case Against Intervention in Kosovo," The Nation, April 19, 1999.

3- Quote of a senior U.S. State Deptartment official, in The Nation, June 14, 1999.

4- "The State of the World's Children 1998," published by the United Nations Children's Fund, forward by Kofi Annan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 11.

* * * * * * * * * * * *
 
2005 Nobel Prize Recipient Harold Pinter:     

" I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all.   It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man."

        The dignity of man. . . . . Indeed, that is what is at stake, our very dignity as human beings.  For the past ten months in Inverness on Thursday evenings, a group of peace vigilants have stood together in front of the old county courthouse. There have been somber candlelight vigils commemorating our fallen soldiers. There have been timely demonstrations -- Mother's Day, and back in March marking the beginning of the fourth year of this despicable war. There was the sad day we lost our 2000th soldier.   We have twice stood and called the names of all our lost soldiers -- speaking names, imagining families, feeling the incomprehensible grief of knowing our soldiers are dying for no noble cause, are not defending freedom, are doing their duties as honorable soldiers should and do, but knowing this is not a cause worthy of the loss of even one.

       Other evenings we have made special signs reminding our neighbors of the corruption that runs rampant in Washington and calling on our own culpable Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite to do the right thing for a change, to tell the truth, to admit taking huge sums of money from special interests, to fess up to voting for cuts to veterans programs while claiming to be the serviceman's friend.

         Some weeks there are 10 of us, other nights 30 or more, but every week we are there. Included in our numbers are veterans from every branch of our armed forces, ministers, teachers, attorneys, postmen, social workers, businessmen, realtors, doctors, nurses, artists, photographers, wives, girlfriends, mothers and fathers, relatives of active duty servicepeople. One night a young Army sergeant who recently returned from Afghanistan stood vigil with us, holding a sign showing the number of soldiers lost since the invasion of Iraq -- her husband is currently there and stationed at one of the bases she described as the "most permanent non-permanent base I've ever seen."     
            There are two candidates for the Democratic spot on the November ballot in our 5th Congressional district and we've been proud to have both of them stand with us, demonstrating their continuing and consistent opposition to this illegal war. And ours is not the first vigil these men have participated in -- both were standing up for peace even before the invasion of Iraq. Frankly, a candidate who doesn't oppose this war shouldn't dare show his or her face and would be swimming against the overwhelming current of public opinion in which over 60% of Americans state their will to end the war and bring our soldiers home.
           One evening a gentleman pulled up as we were setting up our signs and flags and luminaries and asked how much Al Queda was paying us to be there! He suggested that the terrorists were thrilled to see us there. I thought it was interesting that he is so egocentric as to think there is a terrorist alive who even knows that old court house exists!
          Two weeks ago a very angry young man stood out in the street in front of us and yelled that he had just gotten back from Iraq and, "I loved every minute of it."
          Across the street from us a group of our neighbors have begun a "counter protest" that professses patriotism, allegiance to our president, support of our troops, and they have signs that say things like, "Remember 9/11" and "America doesn't cut and run, we stay until the victory's won," and "Freedom = Victory." When one of the veterans in our group walked over to ask when the sacrifice of American lives and resources would be enough to satisfy them, a young man who identified himself as an Iraq vet said, "If 5 little Iraqi children can grow up with their God given right to live in a democracy and it costs 500,000 American soldiers' lives, it's worth it." When our friend returned and told us of this comment, the wave of sadness that flooded all of us was palpable and profound.
          Of course we wonder if these patriots have heard the president's own words clearly denying any connection between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. These devoted citizens express their conviction that they "would rather fight them there than fight them here." We wonder if these good Americans can clarify how a band of some 10,000 (official estimates) or even 20,000 (wild projection) rabid terrorists without an air force or a navy or tanks or troop transports of humvees would get to our shores and mount this fearsome invasion.  
     Perhaps saddest of all is the belief that if we leave this war of aggression now, if we heed the more than 60% of Americans who believe it's time to bring our soldiers home, if we listen to the 70% of our troops in Iraq who know this war is a mistake, if we honor the 80% of Iraqis who want us to end this outrageous occupation of their nation, if we stop this madness we are somehow dishonoring the sacrifices of the thousands of American soldiers who have already died.  How in God's name can losing more American soldiers in an ignoble cause, a war created by this administration as a means of satisfying their greed, a war that is bleeding our treasury and our souls. . . . how can stopping that madness demean us anymore than the illegal, immoral, and unAmerican actions of a president drunk with power?  Save our soldiers.  Bring them home now.  Those who have died did so as honorable soldiers fighting in a dishonorable war.  We are all dishonored by more deaths.  We are all responsible for allowing this madness to continue.  President Bush perpetrates his lies and charades as a leader.  He is nothing more than a pathetic, greedy war president who ought to hang his head in remorse as he has shamed us all -- all Americans who believe in what America is supposed to represent -- freedom, justice, compassion, generosity.  Now we are merely harbingers of hell -- spreading death, destruction, deceit, and dread through a despot who long ago sold his soul to corporate profits and personal greed for power.  Shame on him.  And shame on those of us who haven't the strength to admit when our leaders and we have erred.     Beverley Wiskow  Mother's Day 2006
 
* * * * * * * *
The Fundamentalist Agenda
 
It is absolutely natural, ancient, and powerful—but the liberal impulse makes us humane.
By Davidson Loehr

The most famous definition of fundamentalism is H. L. Mencken's: a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun. There's something to this. Fundamentalism is too fearful, too restrictive, too lacking in faith to provide a home for the human spirit to soar or for human societies to blossom.

But there are far more fundamental things to understand about fundamentalism, especially in this age of terrorism. An adequate understanding also includes some inescapable and uncomfortable critiques of America's cultural liberalism of the last four decades. The attacks on September 11, 2001, provided us a rare revelation about fundamentalism that arrived in two installments.

Read the entire piece: http://www.uuworld.org/2004/01/feature2.html

* * * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * * 

February 2006 letter to the Editor from our own Lee Cloward. 

Dear Editor:

How dare leading Republicans brand ANGER as undemocratic or un-American!  

Real patriots have every reason to be angry when they see our governmental trinity being dismantled by greed and power.  In fact, it is our responsibility to struggle against any King George who seeks to terrorize us into submission to his arbitrary authority.  

It is our responsibility to be ANGRY!  
 
It is our responsibility to know what our government is doing to protect us from its power!  We are on the road to a totalitarian government, and only our anger can stop it.
   
Jesus angrily whipped the moneychangers from his temple.  Jesus refused to bow to the corrupt government which allowed his people to be misled.  He proposed only two requirements for his people:  Obey the law (the Ten Commandments), and Love our neighbors.  Must we force Him to die for our sins in perpetuity?
   
Do we truly believe the words “In God We Trust”?  Has our present government shown by its actions that it is not preparing to “terrorize” us to protect us from “terror”? Why not declare a war against “sin,” a war in which we practice our enemy’s “sins” to defeat our foe?  In the name of the God most of us presume to worship, we must now become angry enough to whip the moneychangers out of our temples of government.  
   
Only then can we truly claim to be God-fearing Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

                Sincerely yours,
                             Lee Cloward

* * * * * * * * * *

 "The President Ought to be Ashamed"
  By Eric Boehlert     Salon                       Friday 21 November 2003

Former Sen. Max Cleland blasts Bush's "Nixonian" stonewalling of the 9/11 commission, his "lies" about Iraq, and his flight-suit photo op on the USS Lincoln after "hiding out" during Vietnam.

 

A Vietnam Vet's Appraisal of Bush    By CHARLIE EHLEN

Published on CounterPunch: Dec. 26th, 2005

 

From a former Marine, a view of the Bush administration's

handling of the War and other things.

 

Charlie is a true defender of the Constitution and speaks out in his

first contribution to CounterPunch. An honest perspective from one of us.

 

Read his article here:  http://www.counterpunch.org/ehlen12262005.html

 

Charlie Ehlen lives in Glenmora, Louisiana. He can be reached at:

cehlen@netzero.com 

  

* * * * * * * * * *

JAN MORELS - Central Florida Vets for Peace

IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO WAVE A FLAG

http://cflveteransforpeace.org/wordpress/2005/12/23/its-not-enough-to-wave-a-flag/

 

If we are to achieve any goals, we must take it beyond the street corners.

It’s not hard these days to find signs that the American public is fed up with the war and want it to end.

There are bumper stickers on cars of family members of soldiers who are in perils way in Iraq and Afganistan.

There are signs in the windows of mothers whose only prayer is that their sons or daughters are safe and will come home soon.

There are people on street corners expressing their frustration and anger at the government and pleading for an end to the hostilities.

 

Young people flashing Peace Signs as they pass by.

There are prayers in the hearts and minds of so many that they

can wake up one morning very soon and find that it has ended.

 

All of these things are important to those seeking an end to war,

but how much effect are they having on those who control the

war machine? Is there more to do?

 

The answer to the first question is unfortunately, very little effect.

Bush keeps asking for more money and Congress keeps approving

his requests. The few in Congress that oppose the war find little

empathy when it is time to vote on matters that may bring an end

to the fighting.

 

What about the second question. What else is there to do?

What will bring the war machine to its knees?

 

Each of us has a solemn duty:

  • an obligation to profess at every opportunity our dismay;
  • to take a stand when it is not particularly popular;
  • to always question without fear when we are confronted with those who do not understand our belief;
  • to politely and quietly assert our views and question those who oppose them;
  • to be at all times sure that we can make a difference even it is only a small one;
  • to cherish every victory and resolve to be victorious again and again;
  • to keep informed in the matters that shape our nations policies and always
  • question then if they stray from the path to peace.

 

There is no shortcut. I wish there were, but we must keep our resolve

firm at every turn and with determination in our hearts, make new allies,

and make more new allies. There is too much as stake not to.
 
***************

Jeff Webb on Ginnt-Dead-Weight's Doublespeak on the war

Please don't allow tolerance of opposing ideas to become another casualty of this war. Now that would be disrespectful to the troops and what they are really fighting to preserve.

--Reach Jeff Webb, Hernando editor of editorials, at webb@sptimes.com or 352 754-6123.

http://sptimes.com/2006/01/09/Citrus/Protesting_the_war_an.shtml 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

Facing a Nameless War 

For over two years now, we've been fighting a war without a name. By Tom Engelhardt October 21, 2005

 

 

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=30163

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The lawlessness of Bush's spying on US Citizens http://alternet.org/story/29995/

"Stay the Course' "   November 30, 2005   http://www.ips-dc.org/comment/leaver_tp1.htm

Justin Raimondo  AntiWar.com   "The World's Most Dangerous Man - It's George Bush"   http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8185

 

Robert Dreyfuss & Tom Engelhardt   "Bush's Deadly Dance with Islamic Theocrats    11/30/05    http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8181


 

 

Rape at Abu Ghraib

American Progres Action Fund: THIS IS NOT A PLAN November 30, 2005

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