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Saturday, January 11, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND
"The first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
- - Martin Luthur King
RHINO HERE:
Time for this vegetarian to eat some crow. The article I posted Friday entitled, "Sweden Providing Platform for U.S. Officials Cowed by Bush" seems to have been a hoax. Guess I need to turn up my hoaximeter. The writer may have been partially inspired by the man who jumped ship in the 60's & leaked "The Pentagon Papers", Daniel Ellsberg. Writing about recent leaks of specifics on U.S. war plans he said, "There is great dissent and that is clearly the major reason for the leaking. It is clear that the administration is filled with people who believe this is reckless, unnecessary, foolish ... I am using every opportunity to say to people in the government who are in the position that I was then, and who know that their president is lying us into a wrongful and reckless war, to do what I wish I had done in 1964-65: to go to Congress and the press with documents and tell the truth. That would be a risk but there are times when big risks are worth that to save a lot of lives."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,857052,00.htm
In spite of having faced 12 felonies & a possible 115 years in jail while the President of the U.S. had an almost psychopathic desire to ruin him, Daniel Ellsberg is now a healthy 71, lives comfortably in Berkeley, California and has just finished a cross country tour promoting his new book, Secrets. Seems being a political dissident can actually treat a person quite well. In fact, Reuters News Service reports,
"Taking part in protests and demonstrations can be good for your physical and mental health, a new British study suggests. Psychologists at the University of Sussex found that people who get involved in campaigns, strikes and political demonstrations experience an improvement in psychological well-being that can help them overcome stress, pain, anxiety and depression. The finding fits in with other studies suggesting that positive experiences and feeling part of a group can have beneficial effects on health. 'Collective actions, such as protests, strikes, occupations and demonstrations, are less common in the UK than they were perhaps 20 years ago,' researcher Dr. John Drury said in a statement. 'The take-home message from this research therefore might be that people should get more involved in campaigns, struggles and social movements, not only in the wider interest of social change but also for their own personal good.'"
http://thunderbay.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/2599.php
And everyone knows that laughing is good for what ails ya. So take some healthy political dissent, and mix in some clever humor, and get healthy reading "This Modern World", a cartoon strip featured each week on Salon dot com. Created by Tom Tomorrow, like "Doonesbury" & "Boondocks" , "This Modern World" pulls no punches on tellin' it like it is.
THE MOST CURRENT "THIS MODERN WORLD" FEATURES PAT ROBERTSON & JERRY FALWELL
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2003/01/06/tomo/index.html
"THIS MODERN WORLD" ARCHIVES (SEARCHABLE BY TOPIC)
http://dir.salon.com/topics/tom_tomorrow/index.html
TOM TOMORROW'S BLOG
http://www.thismodernworld.com/
SOME INTERESTING TV APPEARANCES THIS WEEKEND:
== SATURDAY - Larry King will be interviewing Sean Penn about his trip to Iraq.
== SUNDAY - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on NBC's "Meet The Press". Besides discussing the Republican Senate Agenda, Bush Tax Cut, Iraq & North Korea, this will be his first opportunity to answer criticism about his corporate connections. Here's a link to a National Public Radio story from this last week dealing with Frist's health industry connections:
http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=906153
== MONDAY - Ralph Nader joins Crossfire as a special guest co-host on the left weighing in on the economy & the emerging 2004 presidential field. To submit questions & comments for Ralph Nader and/or Tucker Carlson, go to:
http://CNN.com/CROSSFIRE
Finally, what could serve as a Sabbath sermon, an excerpt from the Swearing-In Ceremony of Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, who has proposed the need for the U.S. to create a Department of Peace.
8:24:37 AM 
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Cleveland, Ohio - Sunday, January 5, 2003
.... Iraq has not committed any act of aggression against the United States. Iraq was not responsible for 911. No credible evidence exists linking Iraq to Al Queda's role in 911. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attack on our nation. The United Nations has yet to establish that Iraq has usable weapons of mass destruction. There is no intelligence that Iraq has the ability to strike at the United States. According to the CIA, Iraq has no intention to attack America, but will defend itself if attacked.
Why then, is our nation prepared to send three hundred thousand of our young men and women into house to house combat in the streets of Baghdad and Basra? Why is our nation prepared to spend $200 billion or more of our hard-earned tax dollars for the destruction of Iraq? Why is our nation preparing to use the most powerful military machine in history to wage an assault against the people of Iraq, to destroy their houses and buildings, to wipe out their water and electric systems and to block their access to food and medical supplies?
There is no answer which can separate itself from oil economics, profit requirements of arms trade, or distorted notions of empire-building. War with Iraq is wrong. But if war is prosecuted further in Iraq, we must be prepared to advance the cause of peace in this country. We must be prepared to stand up, to speak out, to organize, to march, to demand an end to the war, or to demand an end to an administration which insists on war.
It is urgent we oppose this war. It will dominate our nation's priorities. It will threaten Social Security. It will threaten Medicare. It will block a prescription drug benefit for the elderly. It will stop America from providing jobs for all, health care for all, education for all. There are some who believe that it is unpatriotic to challenge the Administration on the war. They believe it is politically wiser to debate the economy. But how can one reasonably separate war from the budget, war from the economy, war from America's ability to meet the needs of the people of this nation?
The Administration's own top economic adviser said the war could cost up to $200 billion. Our federal budget is already close to a $200 billion deficit due to huge tax cuts for the wealthy. Remember when we had a budget surplus? Each time the administration talks about war, fear is created and when fear goes up, the market goes down. War will mean a sharp increase in oil prices, which will hurt jobs in manufacturing and transportation. One economic study with a worst-case scenario puts the cost of an all-out war, plus long-term occupation of Iraq at $1.6 trillion. You cannot separate war from the economy. You cannot separate war from America's future, from its role in the world and its ability to meet the needs of our own people here at home.
We need to ask the questions: Why does America have hundreds of billions to ruin the health and take the lives of innocent people in Iraq but no money to provide health care for all Americans? Why would America spend hundreds of billions to retire Saddam Hussein, but no money to protect the retirement security of its own people? Why does America have money to blow up bridges over the Euphrates River in Iraq, but no money to build up bridges over the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland?
The path America must take is one of peace which leads to prosperity. It is one which understands that creating a structure of peace ensures that economic structures can be sound, affirmative of human needs and restorative of human values. This is the dream of a Department of Peace which can help America take the first step towards making nonviolence an organizing principle in our society - - making the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a reality - - and working to make war itself a thing of the past. It is this ethic of peace seeking and peace building which will cause us to take down weapons from the heavens and work to create a heaven on earth full of new possibilities....
CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH'S DEPARTMENT OF PEACE DOCUMENTS
http://www.house.gov/kucinich/action/peace.htm
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8:05:16 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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