Window not only thing Broken

While I was in DC lobbying Congress and particiapting in demonstrations, friends in Milwaukee were marching too. Apparently some anarchists in the group broke a window to a Military Recruiting Station which really got attention. The local FOX6Blog was ablaze with right-wing questions and comments, this was mine.

Q: Do you think this is a fair way to protest the war? Or does this go beyond the scope of peaceful protests -- since there was property damage involved?

Is violating personal property a bad thing? I think everyone can agree it is, including cvac (a friend of the anarchists who bravely posted a comment on the blog- before being harrassed off the site). Does this go beyond the scope of peaceful protests? Obviously by the very name it does. But, is this a fair way to protest a war? Well here the big assumption is was this a fair war?

This is the real question as it holds the underpinnings to justify the actions of cvac's friends (right or wrong) and the intentions of the peacekeepers and even the basis for the righteous patriotic saber rattling posed by many of our bloggers.

By all accounts the war was unjust, as every day more information is brought into question by our 110th Congress. Justifications based on misinformation (lies), scrupulous partisan appointments and unethical removal of anyone against the leadership's agenda, rampant corruption and enrichment of corporate alliances through contracts and policy, all the way to improper legal actions by top officials, its becoming hard to remain a loyal Bush supporter, and harder to not deny this war has brought about near annihilation to the civilization in Iraq. So I guess its safe to say its not a fair war.

But what is also not fair or balanced, is our media's role in handling the information of our times. Not merely what it does or doesn't not show of the real images of war, but what it chooses to show instead. While we sit at home watching basketball and idol shows, our nation is acting like an imperial power, bringing sovereign nations to their knees and remaking them to suit "our" pleasure.

Media is giving us an "embedded" view that undergoes censorship from many levels. So rather than speaking truth to its people, our media provides a great distortion. But beyond that it also projects distraction and sense of comfort. It creates a shield to protect us from sinking to the carnal-levels of violence we subject our troops, prisoners and innocent iraqi/afghanni citizens to endure. By failing to tell the uncensored truth, it fails to inform us back home, of the full issues. Who is being killed, how many, how brutally and to what psychologically damning ends for our soldiers who have to carry out these policies?

Instead it shows TV dramas with torture and terrorism as themes. These shows wrap up neatly in an hour, or a season, but they make a spectacle the horrors and thereby desensitize us to the reality going on around us today. Our fears are cultivated to bring out responses and tolerances that we would not otherwise exhibit. Here in this Fox6Blog, we regularly see cries for capital punishment, eye for an eye, don't like it—move, or simply rash actions for dealing with complex problems. We've become a society who wants the answers to fit neatly in a time-slot between American Idol and Bones.

Cvec and her friends that call themselves anarchists are responding to a society that is increasingly losing touch with reality. Breaking the window may have been the best thing they could have done... it hurt no-one, but surely got attention.

So now what?

Do we continue to sit, wrapped in our flags of patriotism, holding our crosses or morality while we keep righteously typing our tuff decrees, eating junk food and drinking sodas, til Idol comes on when we plop down on the couch for the rest of the night? Or do we take this moment to move past the anger about a broken window... and perhaps begin to examine the broken part of our own lives?

From the fractured view given us by the media, we seldom see the true faces of the victims to our hostility... be they here, like the increasing numbers of people facing financial turmoil responding in desperation, or in Iraq, Palestine or Afghanistan. Last month, 6000 people died in a region no larger than Wisconsin. Women, children, young and old blown up, tortured, shot, or worse killed for a lack of access to things that were once available to them- even under the brutal former dictatorship. Our soldiers are overwhelmingly against occupation, many more have deserted than the leaders claim. Those that get home face atrocities like Walter Reed or worse, a system that spends all its efforts trying to justify excluding soldiers from the benefits they promised them in recruiting centers like the one in question. Of those Iraqi's left to poll, 90% are against US occupation; Our reconstruction efforts were a hoax to build bases and prisons, and our worst intentions have finally come to realization as we have rewritten Iraq's laws to require foreign Oil company oversight, the agribusiness to require foreign seed and fertilizer, even their business platform is to be built by foreign companies.

We have made a 21th century banana republic of the oldest civilization on earth. Extracting oil and money from the hands of those we came to "liberate". It is plain to see by those not looking at US media, our allies are disappearing as fast as our good will abroad. But at home, life remains peaceful, but for those pesky protesters. Why are a growing number of people angry?

Until we begin to behave like the citizens we are; Until we begin to hold our leadership and our media to a higher degree of accountability; Until we begin to hold our own actions of over-consumption and waste in-check; more windows will break, more burglaries will occur and more people will fear the urban visits.

This will not go away if we watch more tv. It will require sacrifice and compassion... things many hear about during their weekly church services, but fail to put to practice. If we were to behave more like the Christ and less like the Christians, we might begin to see that violence does not solve problems as well as love does.

Behind the Mold

We've been hearing all this talk of the rancid conditions at some of the Water Reed Hospital buildings where our Brave Fighting Men and Women who've suffered in battle come to be healed. We feel outraged that Mold, Rat Poop, Leaks etc... are not taken care of as we pour Trillions into the "War On Terror"

It would seem that the real "Terror" awaits our injured soldiers when they arrive home to receive "safe modern medical treatment".... WRONG! ... Not in the BushCo "exit is not an option" military, where denial isn't only the answer to reality on the ground in Iraq, its the policy for benefits, compensation, and healing back at home. But heck, many of our citizens loyally defend his actions, if only because they have no idea what's really going on, when watching mainstream media for our views.

How many continue to defend, even as more ugly truths come to light? They protest almost as defiantly as the Pentagon leaders, who spin their propaganda until they've stuck their foot so far in their mouths, they're chewin on their boot straps! Over and over again Leaders deny their actions until proof reaches critical mass —then they say it was a "few bad apples" like Abu Graib, Guantanimo and even Fallujah, where White Phosphorus was used to indiscriminately kill men, women, children and animals in the most horrifying way imaginable.

The chemical, orignally dropped by parachute to light up night skies the battlefields in Vietnam, was discovered to cause horrific trauma to flesh when just traces of the dust comes in contact. Skin burns to bone without effecting fabric. People, and animals melt to death, or worse if it is inhaled. (you may also remember it was precisely such action (gasing civilians) that got Saddam a quick trip to the Gallows Pole- for less fatalities and with less vicious means of mass murder than BushCo's "WhiskeyPete") but again, who's watching eh?


Well heres the next, believe it or not, for you "logic-lovin" patriots who seem to gloss over facts on your way to assert that Clinton got a Blojwob! Guess who's been recently put in charge of maintenance of Walter Reed in an effort to "privatize" yet another public service to make it "less expensive" ?? Francis Harvey took the fall by getting fired for his lack of oversight of War Profiteer — IAP Worldwide Services who received a 5 year 120 Million Dollar Contract to —( let-r-rot )— er provide services to Walter Reed Medical Center.

Yeah, I been to Home Depot lately and their cleaning solutions and paint prices are through-the-roof ! ! No wonder IAP couldn't mop the floors and scrub the walls... that cuts deep into the profits... but you think they might have gotten a discount card at the Depot cuz their CEO only recently left from Halliburton—you know, the Vice President's company —er formercompany. IAP was formed to help share the "burden" of redistributing the tax-payer's money to yet another war-profiteer. (wonder if he leaves his lights on in his mansions like Al Gore?)

Who's gonna be first to start talkin bout Clinton?

The Wombat

www.global-mindshift.org



This is your wake-up ... its real simple

just listen to the wombat and show him to your friends!

Bush Logic

All right, let me see if I understand the pResident's logic correct.


We ignored the United Nations
in order to make clear to Saddam Hussein
that the United Nations cannot be ignored.

We waged war to preserve the UN's ability to avert war.

The paramount principle was that the UN's word must be taken seriously,
and if we have to subvert its word to guarantee that it is, then we will.

Peace is too important not to take up arms to defend.


Did I get that right?


Furthermore, if the only way to bring democracy to Iraq
was to destroy the democracy of the Security Council,
then we are honor bound to do that too.

Why? Because democracy, as WE define it,
is too important to be stopped by a little thing
like democracy as THEY define it.


Also, in dealing with a man who endured no dissension at home,
we could not afford dissension among ourselves.

We had to speak with one voice against Saddam Hussein's
failure to allow opposing voices to be heard.


We sent our gathered might to the Persian Gulf to make the point
that might does not make right,
as Saddam seemed to think it did.

And we twisted the arms of the opposition
till it agreed to let us oust a regime
that twisted the arms of the opposition.


We went in to rid the world of a ruler
who used weapons
that indiscriminately killed people,
by using that weapons indiscriminately kill people.


We kidnapped and tortured people
to stop a regime that regularly
kidnapped and tortured people.


We could not leave in power,
a dictator who ignored his own people.
And if our people, and people elsewhere in the world,
fail to understand that, then we have no choice but to ignore them.


Yeah, lets go get Iran!