Memorial Day Manifesto: 2007
Mon May 28, 2007 at 05:49:23 AM PDT
Ten score and eighteen years ago, a few deep thinking, wealthy white landowners penned the United States Constitution. Its first three words – "We the People" -affirm that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens.
Article I affirms that all legislative powers "shall be vested in a Congress" who ideally would represent "we the people" and not corporate interests.
"...Peace in the Middle East is not going to be achieved at gunpoint. It is going to be achieved by negotiations, by people working together; and that process may be ugly, dirty and slow, but it is the only process that will work. To create additional hardship and suffering for the Palestinians is simply going to guarantee more desperate, angry men who are fully determined that they will go forth to kill Israelis or Americans or anybody else...
"Our purpose here...should be to look to the well-being of the United States, craft a policy which is good for this country. And that policy can only be one which is good for Israel and for the Palestinian people, one which is fair to all, one which puts the United States as a friend and an honest broker of peace to both parties where we can be so accepted..." Rep. John Dingell (D-MI-15) May 2006.
Last week, United for Peace and Justice, the nation's largest antiwar coalition, flooded Capitol Hill with phone calls demanding Congress vote no to another $96 billion for the war in Iraq.
UFPJ National Coordinator Leslie Cagan commented, "We know the switchboards have been jammed and Congress is hearing the message from voters loud and clear: Stop funding this war and bring the troops home. The problem is, most members of Congress are not listening to the people who elected them." [1]
A moral compass is MIA in a Congress where Democrats and Republicans who opposed the escalation of the number of troops in Iraq, never the less, still funded it. Congress has the power to end the war; they need the desire and political will to accomplish what they were elected to do. We the people must light that fire, for
We 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 14, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
The October 2006 edition of The Lancet, a British Medical Journal, concluded that 654,965 Iraqis, [about 500 people a day] have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003. [2]
Nearly 4,000 Americans have also perished and the number of people dying in Iraq has risen on an annual basis.
Fifteen million U.S.A. tax dollars a day provide Israel the means to continue its 40 years of occupation of Palestine; while International Law states occupation is to be temporary.
"Every day, the U.S gives more than $7,023,288 to the Israeli government and military (and at least $108 billion since 1948), but provides nothing to the Palestinians...The indirect or consequential costs to the American taxpayer as a result of Washington's blind support for Israel exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel." [3]
Candidate Bush claimed his favorite philosopher was Jesus. Actually following the philosophy Jesus taught, would result in a nonviolent, humble, contrite and forgiving soul.
2,000 years ago a few, thoughtful, committed social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian Jewish road warriors rose up and challenged the injustices inflicted upon the poor and oppressed by the empire and occupying force at that time: Rome.
2,000 years ago the empire crucified many thoughtful, committed social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian Jews-and pagans- who rose up and challenged the injustices inflicted upon the poor, the oppressed, those without a voice and representation.
Imagine if during the dramatic disengagement in Gaza in the summer of 2005, a global Marshall Plan had been implemented.
Imagine if the 50-70% unemployment rate in Gaza had been addressed by providing fruit bearing trees, cisterns, and irrigation supplies that would give the refugees something to do on top of the soil since Israel still maintained-and still does- all control of land, air and sea borders.
Imagine transforming the open air prison into food producing land and how that would transform hearts and minds. It would also provide a future with hope for the majority of Gaza residents are under the age of twenty. Only twenty-five olive trees can sustain the average sized Palestinian family of five.
Imagine a foreign policy that would build security and a chance for a future with hope for the poverty stricken people in impoverished countries, and not use them as cheap labor pools for corporate interests.
The well being of every American depends on the well being of every other person and all the earth.
The well being of every Israeli depends on the well being of every Palestinian.
Imagine a Memorial Day in America when we no longer celebrate or make war, but have become peacemakers, and as Christ claimed; it is they who are the children of God.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine
"You must give birth to your dreams and images; They are the future waiting to be born; FEAR NOT the strangeness you feel; the future must enter you, long before it happens."-Rilke
- http://www.unitedforpeace.org/...
- http://www.cnn.com/...
- http://www.ifamericansknew.org/...
