Getting Mike Gravel's Irish Up

From People's Voice

[Orlando, Fl. October 27, 2007] As a veteran of justice and peace marches, my estimate is that 3,000 concerned justice and peace patriotic Americans and 50 counter demonstrators took it to the streets of Orlando on a humid overcast Saturday. A comrade from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a member of the Steering Committee of United for Peace and Justice, Omar Masri, American Lebanese, kicked off the happening and roused the crowd, "I f-----g believe in peace! 70% of Americans say NO more occupation of Iraq, bring back the troops! Power to the people and we will not be silent! End the occupation now!"

Mike Gravel, Alaskan Senator from 1969-1980, who successfully filibustered against the draft and played a key role in the release of the Pentagon Papers was also the very first candidate to announce his running for the next President of the U.S.A. This reporter met Gravel for the first time in D.C. last November at the first conference of progressive Christians speaking out on the Crossleft web site http://www.instituteforprogressivechristianity.org we got along just fine then; but I got his Irish up just before the March actually began.

While on stage, Gravel admitted, "You bet I am angry! If you have a heart you would be angry too!...It boggles the mind how one human being can kill and dismember another's body and Congress sits in their air conditioned office and says it's just Foreign Policy [when] its murder!

"Our education system is in the toilet, our tax system is corrupt and our infrastructure is tumbling and we consume more energy than anybody else! The U.S.A., the great free country has imprisoned six times per capita more than Hitler had in prison in 1938!

"I don't have any power now; I don't know if there was a conspiracy in 9/11, but if I am elected president I will use subpoena powers and have a Commission [to investigate] and will put their butts in jail for perjury! Bush, Cheney and all down the line- we should be impeaching them right now! We made a mistake when I was young by not putting Nixon in jail!

"Do you know that the Minutemen were insurgents? Insurgents are those that fight for their country! 80% of Iraqis want us to leave! I offered a proposal to Congress-a way to get out of Iraq; all we need is leadership! Hillary Clinton is Bush light and is bought lock stock and barrel by the Industrial Military Complex!"

Senator Hillary Clinton has also taken $54, 618.00 from Pro-Israel PAC donors between 2005-2006 [page 22, July 2007, The Washington Report On Middle East Affairs]

"New York's junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is expected to snare the lion's share of the Jewish community's substantial political donations in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination…money from Jewish donors constitutes about half the donations given to national Democratic candidates…Clinton will get most of the Jewish community's money, "first, because she's going to receive the lion's share of all [Democratic] political money, and second, because she and her husband are enormously popular with the Jewish community," said Democratic strategist Steve Rabinowitz, a Clinton supporter…Clinton, he said, "has personally proved herself to the Jewish community on Israel… http://www.forward.com/articles/ hillary-the-favorite-in-race-for-jewish-donations/

"During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered on December 11, hosted by Yeshiva University, Clinton prattled, "I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer]…in each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia…It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel ..." http://www.counterpunch.org/frank01032006.html

President George Washington warned in his Farewell Address of Sept. 17, 1796, "The nation which indulges toward another...is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils."

This reporter caught the last twenty minutes of Sen. Gravel's radio interview that was conducted while 97 year old Peg McIntyre, Founder of Grandparents for Peace reminded the crowd that, "We can't even begin to imagine the human suffering of the over four million displaced Iraqi's feel…Negotiations and diplomacy are our tools and reconciliation and reconstruction are our goals. No more wars ever!"

Senator Gravel reminded Central Florida radio listeners, "If we go to war with Iran, I promise you everyone of us will suffer a world wide depression! 20-30% of the worlds energy [will be cut off] and that's the best side; the worst is it will trigger a nuclear exchange!

"This is the same situation as WWI; everyone is armed to teeth and the fool in the White House is ready to light the match and Congress is supine! Even General Sanchez admitted the war in Iraq is all about the oil!

"We have helped make the world crazy! The U.S. is responsible for 46% of the worlds weaponry, France and Britain 5% each and Japan 4%...Lieberman's resolution has released the four horsemen of the Apocalypse…we have lost our moral compass!

"Terrorism has been with us since the beginning of civilization and it's a criminal act that must be rooted out with a police force! Interpol has a data base of seven million stolen pass ports. Does America access that data base? No! Our intelligence is so stupid!

"…Corporate censorship; NBC; war profiteers are trying to silence my voice…GE is the largest member of the Industrial Military Complex and they picked on the wrong guy! I will not be silenced!"

After Senator Gravel's radio interview concluded this reporter got in his face and said, "I will not be silenced either and I noted how you cited America, Britain, France and Japan as the major players in weapons of destruction, but why didn't you mention Israel, the third largest exporter of weapons of destruction?

"Why don't you talk about how forty years ago the USS LIBERTY was targeted and our sailors were cold bloodily murdered by Israel and the survivors were told to shut up by our government, threatened with court-martial and worse?

"What about Vanunu who has been told to shut up by the government of Israel?"

Gravel got red in the face and his Irish was most certainly up as he responded, "What do you want me to do about it?"

My Irish was up too and I retorted, "I want you to do something! Talk about it!"

Immediately, Gravel's handlers whisked him away for his photo op and one of his boys asked me for my card and tried to silence me by stating, "A representative will be in touch."

This reporter is not holding her breath and will not be silenced or give up in the pursuit of taking back America by we the people for I "hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it." -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence

"The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine

On with that revolution!

And may we the people all take to the streets and Internet and DO SOMETHING for,"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." -- George Washington, 1787

DO SOMETHING!

The National Initiative for Democracy:

http://www.ni4d.us/

Is a proposed law developed by The Democracy Foundation, over the past decade, along with a plan to get it enacted by the people (not by the government) creating, for the first time, a government "by you, the people."

The National Initiative includes a constitutional amendment and a federal statute that equips the people with the central power of government, lawmaking. As lawmakers, the people in every government jurisdiction of the United States become a new Check in our system of Checks and Balances designed to control the abuses of government.

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October 28, 2007 © Copyright Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor http://www.wearewideawake.org/ Author Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory, Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu." Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged.