Wise Words

According to Jim Hightower, it looks like the Bush-Cheney cabal are serious about going to war with Iran.

Here are some suggestions for taking action:

"We the People have to be the leaders. More than ever, we have to get noisy. We can't just wring our hands -- there are things we can do:

• First, connect with our allies in Congress, including the 22 senators who voted against the Kyl-Lieberman surrender to Bush (list available here). Let antiwar lawmakers know you're behind them, ask them to get still noisier on this, and ask that they develop an inside-outside strategy to rally and focus our national outrage against expanding Bush's Iraq disaster into Iran.
• Second, demand that your Congress critters (whatever their stripe) use all their congressional powers (to control spending, launch investigations, declare war, etc.) to say that the president can take no preemptive military action against Iran without a full, constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress.
• Third, connect with any and all of the savvy grassroots groups in this issue's "Do Something" box. Use their information, sign all of their petitions, spread their materials, and join their actions.
• Fourth, talk, talk, talk, and talk some more -- in church, at school, with your neighbors and coworkers, at town hall meetings, in family phone calls or visits, on talk radio, at candidate forums, in supermarket check-out lines... wherever you can find an ear. The vast majority of Americans have not heard what Bush is up to, and they won't like it. The most effective way to reach them and activate them is by personal contact -- i.e., you. Talk to someone about it every day.
• Fifth, don't let Democrats waffle. Iraq was Bush's war (and his political debacle), but Iran would be a product of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and they will be responsible either for allowing it...or for stopping it.
• Sixth, come up with your own action idea, and let the rest of us know how we can support and spread it.

Be brave. Be loud. Your country needs you."

Getting Stoned

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.

Bob Dylan

Yesterday, Iranian President Ahmadinejad proclaimed there are "no homosexuals in Iran."

This may be true since Iranian law is governed by Islamic (Sharia) law -- or God's law as it is written in the Koran.

Since the Koran (like the Old Testament of the Bible) calls for the stoning to death of gays and lesbians – simply for BEING gay or lesbian, it should come as no surprise that Iranian gays and lesbians try to stay invisible.

And, it logically follows that, except for God himself, what is not visible does not exist!

In America, at this writing, LGBTQ people have the right to live. Of course we are still struggling for certain rights – for example, equality -- but we are able to walk around without the expectation of being stoned to death for being out and open.

That being said, it is important that we remain vigilant to the real threat that there IS a very strong movement in the US to shift our form of government from the secular to a Christian Nation governed by Biblical law.

President Bush has even instituted in his administration, a department of Faith Based Communities Initiatives (FBCI) to “level the playing field” so that religious organizations have equal access to Federal funds.

Never mind that the FBCI is in direct conflict with the Constitutional directive to maintain a separation between matters of State and Church.

The founders of our Republic had a good reason for their desire to create a wall between the function of government and religious belief:

“The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and were executed as heretics.”

Today, the LGBTQ Community has good reason to fear the reemergence of a Christian Nation. If you haven’t read the Bible – especially the Old Testament – you may not know what is in store – not just for gays and lesbians – but for all Americans who eat pork, wear clothes made of different cloth, commit adultery, and experience other mundane and everyday happenings.

Ahmadinejad’s words should stand as a reminder that we must not take our role as citizens lightly.

Every one of us has much to lose when we do not act on our rights as citizens.

For decades, Americans have been dumbed-down to such an extent that we do not know and are not even taught, our civic and political history. Most Americans have never read the Constitution and therefore they are unaware of the rights and freedoms that are slipping away.

Those in power do not want us to understand our history. They prefer to “encase and concretize the human mind in an intellectual penitentiary” so that citizens will not know whether or when to rise up.

We are caught in a cycle of sound-bites and catch phrases that allow us to drift ever closer to a theocratic governing system.

We watch American Idol and are willing to lose our rights, liberties and freedoms as long as the government is doing so in an effort to “keep us safe.”

The questions that need to be asked are:

• Do you place a desire to be entertained and feelings of (false) security over liberty and freedom?
  

• If so, are you willing to go back to the stoned-age?

Weapons of Total Distraction

Lots of juicy headlines in the news these days:

• Idaho Senator Larry Craig caught with his pants down cruising for gay sex in an airport men's room;
• Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales -- both resigning under the cloud of multiple Congressional and other Federal investigations;
• White House press secretary Tony Snow and Senator John Warner, both announcing their imminent retirements yesterday;
• The 10th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana;
• The 2nd anniversary of hurricane Katrina;
• Big Democratic donor, Norman Hsu, on the lam;
• The 2008 presidential election and whatever any of the 20 or so candidates said, ate or did;
• Will Fred Thompson announce his candidacy or not;
• War in Iraq;
• War in Afghanistan;
• Sub prime mortgages, the roller-coaster stock market, and the ever-widening wage-gap
  

Even if we ignore the melodrama of today's news, in our own lives there are many distractions in these last days of summer -- Labor Day weekend, starting school, and so on.

In the meantime, while we've been focusing on all these other things, George Bush and Dick Cheney have ramped up their war rhetoric against Iran:

• US Battleships and Bombers are at the ready.
• No new Congressional resolution necessary since Bush declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are a terrorist organization.
• Bush and Cheney believe they must "take out" Iran's nuclear program before leaving office.

And after we bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, what will happen?

Iran is a Shia Nation and the Iraqi population are 60% Shia. Thus the majority of Iraqis -- who we are supposedly trying to bomb into submission -- will naturally identify with Shia victims in Iran and will no doubt despise us even more than they do now. From Lebanon to Oman and beyond, the Shia will be understandably united in their sense of victimization.

And even if we were to crush their mortal enemy, the Shias, don't expect Iraq’s Sunni population to react any better. Whatever their feelings about Iran, they have been very clear about their hatred of a Western presence and expansion of U.S. operations in the Muslim world.

Don't believe us? Ask bin Laden.

The entire world will respond with revulsion. From Europe to Japan there will be much discussion about how to best distance oneself and protect oneself from a USA gone nuts.

Its almost as if Bush and Cheney want to create the perfect climate to foment perpetual war...

Now why would they want to do that?

Who gains from such a thing?

We know who will lose... the rest of us.

After all of the propaganda oozing from this Administration, how are we expected to believe that such distracting headlines are not intended to keep us from noticing under which shell the truth hides?