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Moratorium
By Cindy Sheehan
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. So let's strengthen our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Okay, so the first person of color has been sworn in as 44th President of the USA. I am proud of my country for looking past color and FINALLY electing a non-white. Maybe one day we can have a non-male?
There has been a lot of talk about hope over the course of an insufferably long campaign. Hope is such a hard to grasp, kumbaya, kind of a word…and it means different things to different people. Someone's greatest hope might be to cure cancer; while another's may be to raid another country for its oil; or another's may just be to have a paycheck come Friday.
Hope is a pretty word, but it doesn't pay your bills or feed your family. What I am seeing in my many conversations with people who have misplaced (in my opinion) their hopes in Obama is that they are hoping against hope that he is going to turn out better than he really is.
I am proposing, now, a 100-day moratorium on the word hope to see what the policies will actually be. Before we put that word on ice for 100 days, here is what I am hoping an Obama administration will do:
• Close Guantanamo (and other illegal and immoral detention facilities) and punish those (Dick and George) who opened it
• Declare an end to the phony "war on terror."
• Begin to withdraw ALL troops from Iraq AND not double the size of troops strength i Afghanistan (the burial place of Empires) but begin to withdraw those troops, also.
• Repeal the USA PATRIOT ACT (which he voted to reauthorize).
• Restore habeas corpus.
• Demand that Israel put a permanent moratorium on killing Palestinians for a step in the direction of true peace in the Middle East.
• Put into place economic policies that won't make things worse.
• Support the repeal the FISA Modernization Act (which he voted for).
• Support the repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and support same-gender marriage.
This is definitely an aggressive agenda, but it could all be accomplished with a stroke of his mighty pen and would not cost a cent, and in most cases save the American tax payers lots of Benjamins.
The new First Lady of the Empire was fond of saying this during the campaign: "Everything begins and ends with hope." I disagree. Everything good begins when a citizen sees a need that must be addressed and only ends after a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
We have a lot of hard work ahead of us and for our political/social/peace movements to have any integrity or credibility we must do the hard work of change not allow a hard to define emotion take its place.
I hope Obama is not the pig of war and tool of the Robber class that he seems to me to be, but he sure is fluent in the language and action of Empire.
In conclusion, I hope that if any good comes out of an Obama regime, that we will all finally realize that there is no such thing as Democrat or Republican. It is all a game. In actuality, there is Robber class vs. Robbed class. That is the great divide in this country. Which do you belong to?
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Dear Cindy,
I am just appalled at all the new information that is coming forward regarding the detainees at GTMO, so I am forming a organization to help them. Since our President has seen the light regarding the people held there, it is our job to step up again and help them.
The plan is after they are released from their torturers and brought here to the US we must fight not to have them put in any more prisons. After all they have done nothing wrong. Being held by the warmongers BUSH/CHENEY makes it a definient that they have been wrongly accussed.
We are currently in contact with Murtha and he agrees with and will bring it to the new administrations attention. He has already stated how he would have no problem putting them in his district. So any of you Murtha district people please get a hold of his office. The sooner the better.
So what we need is volunteers to house this detainees while in the US. Since we, with like minds, live all over the US, we should have more than enough homes for them to stay while fighting the fradulant charges brought against them by the evil, warmongering BUSH/CHENNEY administration.
Preferably we would like homes with children, because having been away from their own children for so long, it will make their stay at our homes even more comfortable. We are hoping that we could find many homes with differing religious backgrounds also. We can all agree that just because the previous adminstration said that they are religious zelots, it is definetely another lie.
They will also need some counseling. After being held at GTMO for so long without any evidence, it is a given that they have been illegally tortured so their pychological wellbeing is very important. I don't remember what website but it said the Chenney was down at GTMO himself either torturing or teaching their torturers their techniques. I am sure one of you know what site that was. Please forward it to me.
We as a team will have to work out all of the details. But we have worked so hard in getting this govt. to release them it is really just the tip of the iceberg what we are required to due for them.
Well, I for one am very excited that we are on our way to having them home here with us!! My children really can't wait.
So if you would please respond and get in touch with your local representatives we can get the ball rolling.
That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.
Dear God in heaven....you can't be serious about this!
Respectfully, that's a bad idea.
Let's also include:
Stop the planned escalation in Afghanistan (this would be a blow to the illegal funding for the US black ops through the control of the poppies over the Taliban's recent usurpation of the crop.)
Also,
Stop Hamas from killing Fatah agents and give Palestinian women equal rights. Yeah, eveyone forgets that Hamas is also a thuggish-macho-violent bunch, not just a quixotic bunch of do-gooders. Hamas killed 70 Fatah representatives in Gaza right after the resumption of rocket-firing and Israeli genocide. Also, when the Israeli's bombed a kingpin Hamas agent it was reported in the CS Monitor that several of his wives and children were also killed. No call for equal and civil rights for Gazan women who suffer from sharia from any progressive journalists?
108th, 109th, 110th, 111th, Congresses' never bothered to impeach Bushco, never even bothered to hold a hearing on the 39 serious articles of impeachment on file presented by Rep Dennis Kucinich. Not even one district attorney, state attorney general, or the US attorney general have yet indicted or prosecuted Bushco for anything, but yet the new president is expected to correct everything like yesterday. Bushco's words ring true that congress never impeached so everything they did was ok. Those words are bound to echo in infamy through the ages. There is one last hope for law and justice for a trampled on nation. Bugliosi has indicated grieving families can file civil suits in court against Bush for the pain, suffering, and damages he caused when their loved ones got killed in his Iraq war based on false pretenses, his big lies. Casey can't fight any longer but if Mom goes after the culprits in court that might restore some sense of justice for all those who perished on Bush's untruthful mission in Iraq.
...as Democrat or Republican--not in that office, anyway. If Slick Willy didn't teach the people that when he hijacked the "Republican" agenda, if watching Dennis get stabbed in the back by fellow Democrats during his campaign didn't teach them, if LBJ (and even JFK and poor Jimmy) didn't, then I'm afraid nothing will--yet they hope. I wish I could hope like that--I'd sure breathe a lot easier.
But it's all a game, like you said, and the Robber class is going to win every time unless there's a massive turnaround of thinking in this country, and I don't see that happening just because Obama is the first person of color to be President.
If it had been his ex-minister instead, the one he ran away from when the going got good, then there might be some room for hope. Unless something like that does happen, though, we will always elect to be left in our denial--then hope for change.
R Ap
Most people have been hoodwinked ever since that two bit B movie actor that had a chimp for a side kick took over (Ronnie RayGun). Carter tried to grow the fuck up this lazy and spoiled Country, but Ronnie showed flash and shiny and the mouthbreathers just swooned in delight. Jimmy put solar panels on the White House and Big Oil RayGun promptly tore them down. Carter warned of big government bureaucracy and meant it but every one got duped by stupid assed Ronnie's platitudes about "government being the problem" and then spent our shit sideways. And as much as the fucking delusional Hillbots are, Slick Willie deregulated the Banks (taa daaa!), the Telco's (hello new FISA!) and that giant sucking sound of jobs leaving America (per Ross Perot) via NAFTA was his cute little pony too. I'd like to shoot that shittin' little pony dead in the fuckin' brainpan.
I was hoping that Barack and Wright were doing a little barbershop shuck & jive to throw off the repugs, but it's not coming to fruit, if that was indeed their plan (though you got to admit that it took the repube's teeth away when he started acting a "fool" and Barack put the smackdown on him). I still think they planned that, and maybe Barack's just not got all his pieces in place, quite yet...
Well, now that the world community is starting to weigh in, perhaps they'll take the brunt of criticism on prosecuting the animals that just left. That would leave Barack with a lot of political currency to push through the corrective steps necessary to return this goddamned Country to some semblance to a Democratic Republic again. We'll see, hunh?
What a bunch of morons!
EW
What say you?
ARREST BUSHCO & RICO PNAC/FARA AIPAC...PNAC is Bush/Cheney's "Helter Skelter" !
UNITE IN SOLIDARITY !!!
...EW, if they wanted Ronnie up there, they'll probably insist on getting W. Wouldn't that just put the icing on the cake--Chicken Hawk warrior of the Robber class; Godfather face of the NWO, smirking out on the "free" world?
Pray it don't happen.
R Ap
...(and I hope you're right about him not having all his pieces in place yet). That's about all that's left for us, for now--that, and getting behind what Cindy laid out here. I get behind her with whatever cash I can spare for her Soap Box, and whatever words I can come up with to back her up when she comes out here. Other than that, I'm at wits end on what to do.
Keep at it, brother.
R Ap