Restoring America's values in actions not just words

If you never read another Blog post of mine, please read this one. It is something you can do without much effort to make a difference in our Country. I have taken the suggestions offered and have gone into action. I received this email from a friend and am printing it here in its entirety:

Re: Maj. General Taguba and Bugliosi's new book and our press..(see article dated July 3, 2008, below)

from fourwinds10.com
by Steve Bhaerman
Swami Beyondananda
http://wakeuplaughing.com/index.html

Date: Saturday, July 5, 2008, 10:28 AM

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How We Can Break the Soundless Barrier and Bring Down the Irony Curtain
July 3, 2008

In case you missed it, there was a front page story two weeks ago that
most newspapers -- like our own "liberal" San Francisco Chronicle --
treated as a no-page story. While those of us in the Bay Area were
offered a front page analysis of Tiger Woods' injury and the latest
doings of penguins at the zoo, a former commanding general in Iraq
accused the Bush Administration of war crimes.

You didn't hear about it? Well, obviously you weren't supposed to. In
the preface to a report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, Maj.
General Antonio Taguba (USA-Ret.), who led the U.S. Army's investigation
into the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal, wrote: "After years of
disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports
from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to
whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only
question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to
account."

So, let's see. An American general accuses the Commander-in-Chief of
committing war crimes, and it doesn't even make the news. The last time
an American general accused the President of committing war crimes was
... uh ... never. In other words, something truly new happens, and it's
not even "news." Our so-called "free press" is free to report freely on
any story it likes, provided it doesn't rock the ship of state. I've
said it before, but it -- sadly -- bears repeating. The main difference
between the corporate media and Pravda is that the Soviet citizens knew
they were being lied to.

We no longer have a free press. We have a brainwashing machine stuck on
spin.

So if we're wondering why impeachment and war crimes have gotten no
traction, well ... welcome to Not-See America, where the press makes it
easier and easier for Americans to "not see" what should be all too
obvious. Fortunately, as the "up -wising" continues, Americans across the
political spectrum are waking up and wising up. Unfortunately, they are
finding their voices intentionally silenced by a media monopoly that
does more than "cover" the most important stories of our day -- it
smothers them to death. I guess that's what they mean by "blanket
coverage."

However, there is one way to break the story of the most dangerous and
toxic regime in American history through the "soundless barrier." It can
be done without demonstrations (one of the lessons the powers in power
learned in the Vietnam War is to pay no attention to them), petitions,
civil disobedience, fasting, etc. It is using the two weapons we the
people still have in our arsenal -- the marketplace and the meeting
place.

Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who helped
convict the Manson family and wrote a book about it, "Helter Skelter"
(touted as the # 1 True Crime Bestseller of all time) has written a new
book called "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder".
(AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Prosecution-George-W-Bush-Murder/dp/159315481X ) In it, he
lays out what the book jacket describes as "a nonpartisan argument, free
from party lines, based upon hard facts and pure objectivity." In other
words, the very book America needs right now. Needless to say, finding a
review of this book ... well, it's like finding those weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.

Writes Suzanne O'Keeffe in the Huffington Post, "With the exception of
the valiant Democracy Now and C-Span ... there is a desert of coverage
about a meticulously researched case that surely ranks at the very top
of the scale for 'change.' Bugliosi said last night that he'd been told
it was now #12 on the NY Times Bestsellers List."

That's where we come in.

The job of the 70-100 million Americans who are hip to the neocon con is
to make sure that Vincent Bugliosi's new book replaces his old one as
the best-selling true crime book of all time, or at least our time. What
if during the ten day period between Independence Day and Bastille Day,
we the American people storm the gates of the marketplace and buy copies
of this book both on Amazon.com and at book stores? And then we read the
book, and discuss it on the outernet, with family, friends and
neighbors. Imagine if we were all familiar with the evidence, and the
implications. It would no longer matter what the mainstream media did or
did not report. We the people would become the story.

Here is a simple plan for the next ten days:

1. Buy or order your copy or copies of this book now. (I'm getting one
at Barnes & Nobles, and ordering another via Amazon, and I'm doing it
today.)=2 0In fact, buy two and give one to someone who promises to read
it.

2. If you're part of an activist political organization, or even a
professional or spiritual one, consider asking your constituency to do
the same. Paul Hawken estimates there are at the very least some 100,000
such organizations. As for the objection that this book is "political,"
I would suggest it is much, much bigger than politics, and is about the
most pivotal moral issue of our time. Dare to make people uncomfortable.
(There is a sad joke from the Holocaust era where two Jews are standing
in front of a Nazi firing squad. One shouts out to the S.S. officer,
"You rotten bastard, you will burn in hell!" Whereupon, his companion
next to him says, "Shhh! Don't make trouble.") Enough said.

3. Call the news editor at your local paper -- call, don't write -- and
politely yet firmly request that he or she cover the story of Bugliosi's
book, the story of Gen. Taguba's history-making charges, or this other
story about the George Bush War Crimes Conference that will convene this
September at the Massachusetts School of law in Andover. Remind them of
the responsibility of the press, and ask them what they will tell their
grandchildren when they are asked what role they played during America's
darkest days. To get the ball rolling, for those folks in the San
Francisco area, the World and National News editor is Brad Brown, and
his direct line is (415) 777-70 74. I suggest we make these calls right
after this July 4th weekend. Again ... polite yet firm.

4. Contact your favorite radio hosts on Air America (they may already be
covering it), and NPR, who like the Democratic Party has responded to
the Bush Administration playing hard ball by playing hardly-have-balls.
Speaking of media, the one mainstream magazine that has continuously
spoken out against the Bush regime -- long before it was as safe as it
is now -- is Vanity Fair. If you need to see an example of what is
innocuously called "water boarding" (sounds like something you do in
gentle surf), here is Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens (who has been a
vociferous supporter of the so-called War on Terror) being
water-boarded. It may be helpful in putting torture "in the face" of
those who have the luxury of turning away from it.

5. Ultimately, the most constructive way to deal with the mainstream
media is to do an end run around them, and make ourselves the story.
First step is to declare independence from mainstream news, and "buy"our
truth elsewhere. That's why it's so important to read and discuss the
book in groups, so that a new and necessary moral courage may emerge.
This is not about showing up somewhere with a bunch of signs. This is
about empowering a field of heart-based truth so powerful that the wall
of lies shatters and crumbles from its own weight.

Two more thoughts. First, I am fully aware there ar e bad guys out there.
It's the bad guy "in here" I'm concerned about, the one who justifies
doing bad things because we are the good guys. Not to mention learning
directly from the bad guys how best to do bad.

We can no longer afford to practice terror in order to "defeat" it. As
we are learning in every area from biology to psychology to
spirituality, it is always more efficient, effective and beneficial to
build health instead of trying to destroy illness.

Second thought is in regards to the cabal of sociopathogens that has had
its death grip on America. In the documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys
in the Room, we see the two non-heroes, Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay,
running their number until the very last second. They look, act and
sound like legitimate business folk until the manacles are slapped on
and they are frog-walked to the paddy wagon. We can expect Bush, Cheney,
Rumsfeld and the rest to play it legit until the very end.

But just as surely as the Iron Curtain came down, the Irony Curtain must
come down, too.

The wall of lies will topple just as the Berlin Wall did two decades
ago. Only this time, it will be we the people who topple it from the
bottom up. It is the only way it can happen

Happy Independence Day.

P.S. Finally, if you find nothing to laugh at in these serious times,
try this. It's a video clip from The Onion, called "Bush Tours America
to Survey Devastation Caused by His Presidency."

May we continue to re-grow America from the grassroots up, reconstitute
the Constitution and establish government of, by and for the people
where the government does our bidding, not the bidding of the highest
bidder.

Deja Vu all over again

I started Blogging back in May of 2005. The reason was that I was deeply concerned over the direction this country was taking and was being promoted by the Bush Administration. Today, a new story was reported by the NY Times. Here is their quote: "Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001."

The story is important to read so please click on this link and read it before you read any additional comments.

Back when I started Blogging in 2005, one of my first Blogs seemed appropriate to repost here today, given I was concerned then about violations to the Geneva Convention. If I, a person of average intelligence could deduce then, something was drastically wrong with our government, as so many others concluded, how did we slip into so much compliance and allow this degradation of our country to take place? Why weren't there protesters in the streets, as there had been in prior years? Why have the American people gone so silent and labeled someone like Dennis Kucinich "a kook," when he has shown more backbone than most of Congress and all the Senate? Here is what I wrote back in 2005:

May 2005. Where are all the street protesters?

As we approach June 4th , the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, and I reflect on our own history of student protests, it got me to wonder where are today's student protesters, as certainly there are many disturbing trends in America today, threatening the very fabric of our democracy as we search for bipartisanship in Congress and a more humble America in our rhetoric abroad and at home. But we still seem very arrogant as a nation with little understanding of the very cultures we are trying to change. I am not talking about Iraq here. I am talking about the "Divided" States of America, that's right, the good ole D.S.A., one nation, (partly) under God, very divisible, with liberty (until we can change those Senate Rules), and justice for (a few).

There was once a time of idealism, of standing up and being taken seriously by society, a conscience for all of us. This was the time of Student protests. Students protested the Vietnam war, the May 4th, 1970 Kent State shootings, Tiananmen Square and support for democracy in China, the outrage at the Chinese Government’s reaction to the protests and some recent protests of the Iraq war in selective cities.

As a nation, we have a lot to be angry about with our government. First there was the misleading “intelligence” of the lead up to the Iraq invasion and then the letters of former White House General Counsel and current Attorney General, Roberto Gonzales, regarding new interpretations of what is and what is not torture. Then the pronouncements by our President that certain prisoners would not necessarily be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Convention. Add to this more recent assertion about additional abuse in Guantanamo and the shameless deceit to get recruits on High School campuses to enlist, and you wonder what it takes to get Student protesters engaged again. There have been some protests of the Iraq war but they fade away quickly. What captures the focus and attention of the bulk of our students today? Could it be survival, as the job market still looks bleak? Or is it just apathy? What do you think? I don’t think they care much about what the Senate is proposing in its Nuclear Option to end the filibuster and allow judicial nominations through who by the minority see as extreme in their views. Stay tuned."

Headline from Serbia could just as well be from U.S.

The headline and story: "Bosnian Serb police chief turned over to UN court" First some details from the story:

Jun 21st, 2008 | BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serb authorities Saturday turned over an ex-Bosnian Serb police chief to the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.

Stojan Zupljanin was arrested in the town of Pancevo last week after nine years on the run. A Belgrade court on Friday rejected his appeal against extradition.

"Stojan upljanin was transferred today into the tribunal's custody, after evading justice for more than eight years," the court in The Hague, Netherlands, confirmed. Details of the transfer routinely are not disclosed.

Serbia has been under pressure from the European Union to turn over suspects to the international tribunal, which has charged Zupljanin with war crimes for allegedly overseeing Serb-run prison camps where thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The EU has stressed that all the suspects sought by the tribunal must be arrested and extradited if Belgrade wants to move closer to the 27-nation bloc." (Click here for the entire story posted on Salon.com.)

You could substitute the name Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney or Bush, for that matter, for that of the Serbian Police Chief or former President Slobodan Milosevic, it is possible the same story could play out here, based upon suspected approved torture techniques from our government and played out in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The question I put to you is this, do we as citizens have the courage to consider this request if it were made of us? Would we be willing to turn over any of our citizens to be tried in the World Court at the Hague in the Netherlands? We insist other countries do, as does the EU make similar requests, as they have in this example. We must elevate our morality and sense of justice, instead of entitlement, to consider these larger questions. I would love to hear from you as to what you believe we should do faced with a similar request from other governments or the U.N. Leave a comment.

More proof of U.S. War Crimes authorized by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

From the headlines today, "For the most extensive medical study of former U.S. detainees published so far, Physicians for Human Rights had doctors and mental health professionals examine 11 former prisoners. The group alleges finding evidence of U.S. torture and war crimes and accuses U.S. military health professionals of allowing the abuse of detainees, denying them medical care and providing confidential medical information to interrogators that they then exploited.

"Some of these men really are, several years later, very severely scarred," said Barry Rosenfeld, a psychology professor at Fordham University who conducted psychological tests on six of the 11 detainees covered by the study. "It's a testimony to how bad those conditions were and how personal the abuse was."

One Iraqi prisoner, identified only as Yasser, reported being subjected to electric shocks three times and being sodomized with a stick. His thumbs bore round scars consistent with shocking, according to the report obtained by The Associated Press. He would not allow a full rectal exam." To read the complete story click here.

The World is building a case against Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for War Crimes while the Congress finally took the first steps to impeach the President & Vice President when Rep. Dennis Kucinich read the Articles of Impeachment on the floor of Congress last week. We have been a little late to this party as a nation of free people, but the world has been moving forward steadily.

The day will come in the next few years under a Barack Obama or John McCain Presidency, when we will be asked to hand these individuals over to the World Court to be held on War Crimes charges. Under a McCain Presidency, we would never even consider this as it would be declared not to have jurisdiction over any U.S. citizen. An Obama Presidency would also be pressed to turn over at least Rumsfeld to the World Court. My hope would be that we would have a different kind of politic and Presidency under Obama and that he would give this request serious consideration and would consider this to heal the rift of the World community with the U.S. But remember this, the time is coming and as a nation we must consider this option, especially if we ask every other country in the world to hand over their suspected War Criminals to the World Court.