Article: happy holidays

happy holidays My heart is heavy this holiday season. From the profiteering off of war, death and destruction to the profiteering from child-slave-labor to the refusal of our government to provide equal protections for our citizens whoever they are, to the lack of concern shown by our government to our war veterans and to victims of rape and disaster alike, to the loss of our privacy rights, we are a country that has lost its moral conscience. Already, only the presidential candidates with enough money to buy television time are allowed to debate. The others having been labelled inconsequential by the monolithic mass media. Now the media have been allowed to consolidate further. And yet there is no outrage. No protests. Your daily newspaper will soon carry the same blather as Fox News, lots and lots of distraction with no substance. Or is that just how you prefer it, America? Does it comfort you to look away? To pretend to be blind to the hypocrisy, the lies, the corruption, the death, the crippling, the torture, the murder? Who would Jesus kill today? Does it comfort you to be blind to our soldiers' lifeless bodies arriving back to us daily? Our government "protects" us from the disturbing images and tells us that to shop is to be patriotic. Consequently, our soldiers receive no public recognition for their ultimate sacrifice. No public mourning or thanks. Is it more comfortable for you to watch Dancing with the Stars and America's Next Top Model and another OJ trial? Because these events have SO MUCH to do with how you will live your life, or not, as the case may be, in the years ahead, or how your children will live theirs. I wonder how many will wish they could speak, when it is no longer allowed. I choose to speak now. While it is still allegedly tolerated. I am unafraid of the free trip to Cuba. We send our sons and daughters to the other side of the world to die, or become disabled, or traumatized, and for what? To liberate Iraqis? You're a fool. To protect us from terrorism? Yeah, right. Because our pea-brain president likes to see stuff blow up? Remember, this is the man who on February 8, 2004 declared, "I am a WAR PRESIDENT. I make decisions here in the Oval Office on foreign policy matters with WAR ON MY MIND." So who knows? And perhaps the sons and daughters who die on the other side of the planet have it better than the ones who will remain. The dead are thankfully free from the horrors of war, from the poisoned radioactive munitions they are forced to use and from other disabling injuries. Look at what we're leaving those who remain. A scorched, drained, polluted, wrecked planet. A battlefield in the Middle East that may be radioactive and uninhabitable for generations. A country without values that provides insufficient care for its veterans and their families. A huge bill for this foolishness that we've allowed to continue for the last 7 years. And a worthless currency with which to try to pay it off. I am here to tell you folks, that unless YOU PERSONALLY are making a ton of money off of this war, you have been had! There may have been "terrorists" who flew planes into buildings on 9/11. But a couple dozen guys living in a cave did not accomplish all of what happened that day on their own. The buildings did not vaporize because they were hit by planes. The buildings that took over 6 years to build did not disintegrate by themselves in 10 seconds like you were led to believe. Or is it acceptable now for me to refuse to go to work in a steel-frame high-rise building, for fear that it may suddenly vaporize? How long before 9/11 were the explosive charges planted in World Trade Center buildings 1, 2 and 7? What insurance company accepted the liability for the tens of thousands of people who worked in those buildings daily, and where explosive charges had been planted? Many of you believed the lies about 9/11. Many of you believed the lies about the war. Many of you said "SORRY EVERYBODY" after Dictator Bush stole the election again in 2004, yet we still have a spineless Congress that refuses to act, and a Neocon judicial branch that's going to be with us for a very long time. And we have evidence that the election in 2008 is gearing up to have some of the same problems as the elections in 2000 and 2004. In Ohio and Colorado and Colorado and Ohio and Florida, just for starters. So, yammer on about how Christmas is a wonderful American holiday while I prefer to wish you "happy holidays". Yammer on like Mitt Romney did about how I should accept his beliefs while he belittles mine. Or yammer on as Fox News did that every American president has been a Christian -- when in fact, 6 of them were not. What other lies do you believe that Fox News has told you? Yammer on about which Republican candidate will be strongest on "defense" -- excuse me, they're really talking about "offense", aren't they? Or about who will complete the Mexican-American Wall first, a concept as disgusting to me as the Berlin Wall or the Detroit/Grosse Pointe Park Wall. Yammer on about everything other than bringing the criminals to justice, until you can't anymore. Because the criminals will no longer allow it. Because AT&T and Verison will not send your message if it is critical of the criminals. Because all of your rights will be gone. Given up willingly -- for absolutely nothing in return -- to your phony, fascist leaders. The ones who raped the United States Treasury and sent our sons and daughters to die, to make themselves and their friends rich. The ones who will not be impeached by this Congress. The ones who could easily be pardoned by a President Clinton, or Giuliani, or Huckabee, or Romney, or McCain (or even a President Obama or Edwards or Paul). Dictator Bush and his cronies have committed WAR CRIMES and TREASONOUS acts, and I don't care what some phony Attorney General would prefer to call it. They are guilty of some of the SAME CRIMES that the Japanese were held accountable for after World War II, and more. And the ones who refuse to act, including to date much of the present Congress and several Presidential candidates, could be complicit in WAR CRIMES and TREASON. So, we have a choice America, if it's not already too late. But, for what it's worth, we can try belatedly, to go after the criminals, the torturers, the illegal wiretappers, the murderers, and those who choose to shield them, and hold them to justice. Just like Dictator Bush said he would hold the terrorists and those who choose to shield them to justice. Or we can allow them to carry on. We can make believe, as the Germans made believe that they were unaware of the contents of those railroad cars. We too can look away from the unpleasant truth. We can allow ourselves to be distracted by the bright shiny object in the corner. We can be complicit in the crimes of our government. And we can hang right beside them. happy holidays "To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor." -Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.