Click on the post for the details of the four vigils in the Madison area in support of Mrs. Sheehan, the Gold Star Mom who is camped out in Crawford, Texas, protesting the current U.S. involvement in Iraq that resulted in the death of her son.
The local vigil in Evansville will be at Hwy 14 and M at 7:30PM.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
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To Kill An American
ReplyDeleteI received this from Spirit of America and I just had to share.
To Kill an American
"You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.
So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is... so they would know when they found one:"
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish,
Polish, Russian or Greek.
An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani,
or Afghan.
An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache,
Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or
Muslim.
In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The
only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of
them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will
answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming
to speak for the government and for God.
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the
world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of
Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person to
the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every
other nation in the world in their time of need.
When the Soviet army overran Afghanistan 20 years ago, Americans came
with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any
other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best
music, the best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the
least!
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your
tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the
homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built
America.
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September
11, 2001, earning a better life for their families. I've been told
that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other
countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided
and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must.
Hitler did.
So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every
bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.
But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans
are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the
embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that
spirit, everywhere, is an American.
Author unknown
Posted by Athena at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (3)
Seeing is Believing
I may not agree entirely with
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AN ANATOMY OF TODAY’S TERRORISM
THE MANUFACTURE OF MINDLESS MURDERERS
INCOMPETENCE COMES TO OUR DEFENSE
THE WAR AGAINST THE MIND
THE IDEOLOGY OF HATE
THE BOSNIA & KOSOVO CONFLICTS
“TIME BOMBS” IN OUR SCHOOLS
PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS UNDERMINE OUR SECURITY
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The purpose of this website is to provide an anatomy of terrorism, one which is not being discussed in the media. It is, however, one that contributes considerable sense to what has been to date, almost entirely unfathomable.
It is an anatomy that the world ignores at its very real peril.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN ANATOMY OF TODAY'S TERRORISM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"While these acts of unspeakable evil defy our comprehension, we must retain our certainty that these are the cowardly actions of weak and insane minds, minds that have been psychologically indoctrinated to feel nothing about the mass murder of innocent lives."
Jan Eastgate
President
Citizens Commission on Human Rights International
In the wake of the horrific recent terrorist attacks in the United States, there are many questions that remain unanswered. However, there is one unnerving question that is on everyone's mind.
"What sort of human being can be so cold-heartedly cruel and violently destructive of others and self, methodically planning and executing mass murder and suicide, with no apparent sense of the sheer inhumanity of their plan?"
While the words may vary, the essential question remains the same. Put more simply, "What sort of person is capable of such evil?"
This unthinkably hellish act has assaulted far more than innocent lives and our physical environment; it has assaulted our very senses. There is however, a way to face up to even the utterly unconfrontable: compare it to events with which we are already familiar — in effect, take a gradient approach to it. For the truth is, we have been here before, only to a more isolated or lesser degree.
Consider the insanity of Hitler's "final solution" and Nazi design, which terrorized the world 60 years ago, or Karadzic's or Milosevic's equally insane "ethnic cleansing" and terrorist purges in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 90's. While we may be emotionally insulated from these horrors by time or geography, the similarities are apparent.
But consider also that on April 20, 1999, in Colorado, USA, Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting spree, killing 12 students and one teacher, wounding 23 others, and finally shooting themselves.
While on a comparatively minor scale, how is this similar to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC? What about inexplicable and unexpected violence, terror, innocent victims, death, destruction and the suicide of the protagonists, to name a few? And again, we asked the demoralizing question, "What sort of person is capable of such evil?"
Today, "experts" tell us that such terror merchants are not insane, mad or irrational. Is a terrorist therefore born with an innate impulse to butcher thousands of innocent people and terrorize millions more, while harboring a suicidal impulse? Is a terrorist someone of specific nationality, race or religion?
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AN ANATOMY OF TODAY'S TERRORISM - next
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Who Really Is To Blame for London’s Blasts of Terror?
ReplyDeleteBy Nick Cohen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Face up to the truth
We all know who was to blame for Thursday’s murders… and it wasn’t Bush and Blair
Nick Cohen Sunday July 10, 2005
Observer
The instinctive response of a significant portion of the rich world’s intelligentsia to the murder of innocents on 11 September was anything but robust. A few, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, were delighted. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was ‘the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,’ declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams. Others saw it as a blow for justice rather than art. They persuaded themselves that al-Qaeda was made up of anti-imperialist insurgents who were avenging the wrongs of the poor. ‘The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?’ asked Dario Fo. Rosie Boycott seemed to agree. ‘The West should take the blame for pushing people in Third World countries to the end of their tether,’ she wrote.
In these bleak days, it’s worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that ‘we had it coming’. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.
All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we’ve got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair’s fault but there wouldn’t be indiscriminate murder because ‘the threat’ was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him.
I’d say the ‘power of nightmares’ side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it’s better to stick with the wider delusion.
On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren’t the real murderers but the Prime Minister. I’m not thinking of George Galloway and the other saluters of Saddam, but of upright men and women who sat down to write letters to respectable newspapers within minutes of hearing the news.
‘Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,’ wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God’s sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda. ‘Let’s stop this murder and put on trial those criminals who are within our jurisdiction,’ began Patrick Daly of south London in an apparently promising letter to the Independent. But, inevitably, he didn’t mean the bombers. ‘Let’s start with the British government.’
And so it went on. At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq. As with fascism, it takes a resolute dunderheadedness to put all the responsibility on democratic governments for its existence.
I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.
But it’s a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.
Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.
Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I’m afraid that’s what the record shows.
The only plausible excuse for 11 September was that it was a protest against America’s support for Israel. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden’s statements revealed that he was obsessed with the American troops defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein and had barely said a word about Palestine.
After the Bali bombings, the conventional wisdom was that the Australians had been blown to pieces as a punishment for their government’s support for Bush. No one thought for a moment about the Australian forces which stopped Indonesian militias rampaging through East Timor, a small country Indonesia had invaded in 1975 with the backing of the US. Yet when bin Laden spoke, he said it was Australia’s anti-imperialist intervention to free a largely Catholic population from a largely Muslim occupying power which had bugged him.
East Timor was a great cause of the left until the Australians made it an embarrassment. So, too, was the suffering of the victims of Saddam, until the tyrant made the mistake of invading Kuwait and becoming America’s enemy. In the past two years in Iraq, UN and Red Cross workers have been massacred, trade unionists assassinated, school children and aid workers kidnapped and decapitated and countless people who happened to be on the wrong bus or on the wrong street at the wrong time paid for their mistake with their lives.
What can the survivors do? Not a lot according to a Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He told bin Laden that the northern Kurds may be Sunni but ‘Islam’s voice has died out among them’ and they’d been infiltrated by Jews. The southern Shia were ‘a sect of treachery’ while any Arab, Kurd, Shia or Sunni who believed in a democratic Iraq was a heretic.
Our options are as limited When Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested for the Bali bombings, he was asked how the families of the dead could avoid the fate of their relatives. ‘Please convert to Islam,’ he replied. But as the past 40 years have shown, Islamism is mainly concerned with killing and oppressing Muslims.
In his intervention before last year’s American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. ‘I consider him to be neutral,’ he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can’t see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter?
There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Cohen is a Columnist for the Observer in London
educate your self on terrorism and you will see why we are at war today
ReplyDeleteCandlelight vigils protest war in Iraq
ReplyDeleteA show of support for soldier's mother Cindy Sheehan
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; Posted: 10:43 p.m. EDT (02:43 GMT)
Norman Bott takes part in a candlelight vigil in front of the White House on Wednesday.
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq got under way Wednesday in a national effort spurred by one mother's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch.
The vigils were urged by Cindy Sheehan, who has become the icon of the anti-war movement since she started a protest August 6 in memory of her son Casey, who died in Iraq last year.
Sheehan says she will camp outside Bush's ranch until his monthlong vacation ends, or he meets with her and other grieving families.
Bush has said he sympathizes with Sheehan but has made no indication he will meet with her. Two top Bush administration officials talked to Sheehan the day she started her camp, and she and other families met with Bush shortly after her son's death.
More than 1,600 vigils were planned from coast to coast Wednesday, according to the organizers, liberal advocacy groups MoveOn.org, Political Action, TrueMajority and Democracy for America. A large vigil was also set at Paris' Peace Wall, a glass monument near the Eiffel Tower that says "peace" in 32 languages.
As the sun set in Crawford, about 100 protesters lit candles and placed them in plastic cups to shield them from the breeze. They gathered around a wooden, flag-draped coffin.
In Concord, New Hampshire about 150 people stood shoulder-to-shoulder Wednesday outside the Statehouse holding candles and signs supporting Sheehan.
Karen Braz, 50, brought a pink votive cup shaped like flower petals and a sign that read "Moms for Peace."
"My son is 26. It could've been him," she said, her voice breaking.
Sheehan's critics
Some critics say Sheehan is exploiting her son's death to promote a left-wing agenda supported by her and groups with which she associates. They say scores of Americans, including relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq, support Bush and his plans to keep troops there.
FreeRepublic.com, which holds rallies to support troops and to counter anti-war demonstrations, planned to hold a pro-Bush rally Wednesday night at the same time and same Washington, D.C., park as a candlelight vigil there.
"For us the organizers of the vigil are phony-baloney, betraying the sacrifices that those, men and women make in Iraq, by demanding that we pull our troops out now and leave Iraq to go to hell," said Kristinn Taylor, co-leader of the group's Washington, D.C., chapter. "This is a publicity stunt."
Some 200 people took part in a peace vigil in Cincinnati's Fountain Square. Many carried candles but were told not to light them because of potential harm to the downtown landmark. Demonstrators softly sang "Give Peace A Chance" and lined one side of the square with signs, drawing honks of support from some passing motorists.
In Hawaii Kalihi Valley resident Charmaine Crockett expected at least 140 people to gather Wednesday evening in the backyard of her hilltop house to light candles in sympathy for Sheehan.
"I'm very moved by one person making a difference," Crockett said. "This isn't an anti-war protest. The beauty of it lies in its silence ... And I never expected it to get this large."
Several dozen people gathered in front of the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, for the vigil there.
Carol Berglund, 56, of Madison, had a sign attached to the back of her bicycle reading, "It's time for peace. Stop the war."
"I don't think we ever should have gone there. I think it's immoral to be the starters of a war, to be the aggressors," Berglund said.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
I am very impressed with the turn out last night in Evansville for the candlelight vigil. Congratulations to all who turned out for this and for taking a stand. George Bush has no conscious, or he would meet with Cindy again and discuss the real issues of this war, not offering his ' form letter' type condolence's. To anony who thinks we should 'educate' our selves on terrorism, you need to get your head out of what ever hole you had it stuck in, and wake up to the fact that George Bush is a liar, and is responsible for 1000's of deaths based on his LIES.
ReplyDeleteAnd your son was home schooled by you.
ReplyDeleteActually I think it was more of a
ReplyDeleteignorant comment. My sister home schooled both her kids, One is a Proud U.W. grad, and the other is a Junior at the U.W. Madison and she is pursueing a law degree. Many Many benefits to home schooling. The public schools have gotten way to involved in politics and the kids have suffered. WE moved here two years ago are kids are 12 and 15 and we drive them to school everyday in Madison as opposed to having them go to school in the Evansville School district. I WOULD home school my kids if I had no other options before I would allow them to go school in this district. Like I stated in my opening post Ignorant comment by anony.
I also wonder what the people of Evansville are going to think of there school, when they are hit with a law suit for discrimination and illegal practices ( not following laws regarding a child with special needs). It's going to be interesting to see how they climb out of that hole. This is not gossip, this is actually in the works. To give you a idea of how serious these charges are, most lawyers will not take a on a civil case againest a school district unless they are 90% they can win. Hopefully this will bring changes with how the Evansville school district deals with children with special needs. Room for great improvement.
ReplyDeleteTo anony your comment about the home schooling was stupid, that is like someone making to you about how many times you have been married, or how many people you have slept with. Those things are nobody's business but yours, isn't it funny how some people are so secretive about their own lives, but love to talk about others. I also think that people that don't have kids, have the right to judge how people who do have kids, raise there kids. Grow up.
ReplyDeleteI do this to often, I need to proof read better, I meant to say, people who do not have kids, do not have the right to judge how people who do have kids raise them. I am trying to do to many things at one time. sorry
ReplyDeleteGeorge Bush has done nothing but lie and mislead the american public. He has spent millions of dollars on over seas affairs, wars, but we have people sleeping on the street, going hungry. I wonder how far the money would have gone for the things are country needs. He has not taken care of the issues of medical care, social security or job security.
ReplyDeleteThe home school comments don't seem to have a point. The only thing I can think of is that the gards had a spelling error, typo,etc. But I think everyone on here has read their own post and realized they made a mistake. It's not like you proof these blogs the way you would proof a research paper or a formal letter. Getting back on topic (somewhat) and referencing comments on the other Cindy Sheehan post. I think David Gregory does a better job of hosting Hardball than Chris Matthews. He actually pursues things and asks some tough questions on both sides of the issue. If you saw Hardball tonight, Melanie Morgan couldn't do much but say Sheehan is a creation of the media and roll her eyes and say "Oh your bringing up the old he lied about going to war thing again." I think there is enough evidence that congress was misled into war by BUSH and his cronies and people aren't buying their arguments anymore. Let's hope for some change in 06. There are no checks and balances when the same people control both houses of congress, the presidency and are working to load the courts in their favor. Vote for change in 2006!
ReplyDeleteI will agree with Mark the home school remarks were off the subject, and were brought up by ANONY. I think the reason ANONY posted what they did is because they are finding it harder and harder to defend bush, however where is the spelling error? I guess really when reading the posts Anony, was trying to insinuate that there is something wrong with home schooling, when in fact there is nothing wrong with it. It was only brought up because of ANONY.
ReplyDeleteI don't seem to be finding any spelling errors either. But I am always look forward to Mark's comments.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see any. I saw lisabump correct her own post and wondered if maybe anony was being overly critical of someone's elses post for something other than the main point of the post. I know I have caught errors after the fact in my own posts. Personally, I thought the post about the gards son previously being interested in the military was an interesting post.
ReplyDeleteI think it illustrates why the Military is having recruiting issues. I think if all the things we were told turned out to be true (WMD, Iraq tied to 9/11 and Al Quada,etc.), people would be willing to take the risk and join.
ReplyDeleteSome people will try to turn the anti-war stance into anti-troop. I do support the troops. I have sent care packages multiple times to the middle east through various groups. And I think it is noble what the troops are doing. They are following the orders of the commander in chief without question, like they are supposed to. They are very brave to put themselves in harms way and I respect that. I just think the administration didn't do enough early on to support them. They let General Shinshecki go because he said they needed about 100,000 more troops to adequately secure the country. Seems like everyone that disagreed with the administration was given walking papers and the people who constructed this mess were promoted or given medals of honor (Wolfowitz, Perle, Bremer, Rice). In the past week they finally are relunctantly admitting that the planning was bad, and starting to think about more realistic goals. I don't support the war, because I do support the troops. If it is unrealistic to ever accomplish anything in Iraq, we should leave, rather than "staying the course" for another 10 years and then admitting we were wrong after losing many more lives. I also think giving contracts to local Iraqi's that needed the jobs would have gone a long way instead of letting Halliburton take all the contracts and mismanage rebuilding Iraq. If the infrastructure had been repaired quickly, that would have gone a long way to settling Iraqi dissent.
I can't see this war ending anytime soon. And I wouldn't want to be the person who runs for president and inherits this mess.
ReplyDeleteI have to feel for any parent who is out there with a child over sea's or a child who is considering the military. Its a shame when we as a country have to sit back and have serious questions as to what our president is doing and if he is lying or not. But Bush has shown he can not be trusted, and I think the recruiting numbers are going to show for sometime the distrust of Bush and his administation.
ReplyDelete