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Contrary
to what Bush continues to claim, neither he nor the congress or the courts
are the Deciders - we the people hold the ultimate power, over who decides
what in the United States! The chess pieces on the board of government are
only appointed or elected officials, and so long as they fulfill the needs
and desires of the citizens in this land, they serve us: When that changes
drastically as it has since the last elections, then consequences must
follow.
The ship of state has become a
rusting and sinking luxury vessel riddled with holes: rudderless and
captain-less we now float on a sea of corruption and lies. The turbulent
waters where that ship is adrift had their corrupt beginnings in the fifty
years of war against the Palestinians in the Middle East. The failure by
this government to hold Israel accountable for her crimes against those
people, and now against the entire Arab world; is the source that
generates so much of the hatred and death both "over there" and "over
here." (1)
Congress has more than played a
part in keeping these duplicitous policies in force. Having voted, in this
first month for the National I.D. Card that restricts the travel, the
privacy and the freedom of all Americans: and for giving Social Security
to people-without-papers, while striking down a requirement that would
have made English the national language of this country-this is tantamount
to the French, not speaking French, or the Spanish not speaking Spanish in
their own countries: The public may soon begin to wonder whose country
this really is-ours or whichever flavor-of-the-month needs to be courted
by Washington? (2)
Today, the Congress is still
watering down another version of a non-binding gesture that they want to
send to Bush-instead of something that would obligate the Dictator to
"own the wars" he started, and get out of Iraq now. Instead of
listening to either the voters in November or to the new so-called
Congress-the self-professed "decider" has chosen to not only add troops in
Iraq, but he is stepping up his efforts to provoke yet another phony war:
this time with Iran. He obviously thinks he is secure in blasting his way
through his own permanently failed diplomatic gestures, while his thugs
continue to churn out the same tired lies and innuendos that he and his
criminal cabal generated to get into Iraq in the first place. The
self-appointed one has forgotten that he took an oath to protect and
defend Americans first: an oath that would include keeping his promises on
Katrina, making sure that Americans had jobs and that their retirements
would be protected from government's unending appetite to steal their
benefits that they earned over a lifetime of work. Not-to-mention, a fair
and affordable way to obtain medical care (not just access to insurance);
a believable education for our children, not just a bunch of slogans with
no money that are turning American youth into idiots with no past, no
present possibilities, and especially no future! What the hell is going on
in this nation-have we no say in anything that this so-called government
is doing in any area of our lives?
People here, just like people
almost everywhere else are entitled to live their lives free from the
corrupt government interference that each of us must navigate through -
just "to live another day"!
These things may seem small
individually, but collectively they comprise the destruction of the
Republic and the end of a way of life! This government obviously sees all
of this from exactly the opposite position: some even see this as the
birth pangs of a glorious New Empire. But when the celebrations end and
reality returns; it appears that all that has been accomplished is the
selling of America to the blood-lust of AIPAC, and to the New World
Order-as only the latest burnt-offering of yet another failed state to
bolster their grip on the rest of the world. "Entitlements" are
one thing, but the theft of this democracy, this way of life, and of this
form of government are not things that any nation worth the name can
tolerate for long. (3)
It's not surprising that they've
gotten as far as they have-because so many prefer not to know what's
happening now, or what really happened in the immediate past that created
this monstrous nightmare in the first place. But from here on in things
must change: or the temporary wounds they've inflicted on the limbs of
this "democracy" shall soon become gangrenous and need to be
amputated. (4)
This is not only about us this is
about the survival of the planet. Thanks to our pre-occupations with
ourselves alone, we have allowed the global environment to be added to the
endangered list. We have only watched while language itself has been
turned inside out: so that now war is seen as peace and "lies"
are now construed to be "truth." The very names of government
agencies have been upended, to rape and plunder the environment under the
aegis of The Environmental Protection Agency. Or in Health and Human
Services (HHS), which has become the arbiter over the death and denial of
human services to most of those who have the courage to darken their
doors.
Under this government's
privatization of even government itself, as well as the military: Great
strides have been made - huge strides to add to what they've already
destroyed while they've pocketed the spoils from so many previous ventures
into their meticulous dissection of the Prison System, the Educational
system, and the Insurance Industries - all privatized for extreme profits
to the few, at the expense of everything that these areas of life were
created to serve. The head of the Justice System recently was asked to
explain torture, and the US use of that, in front of a Senate committee -
they got no answer at all, from Gonzalez. There is virtually no area of
this nation that is currently functioning for the benefit of ordinary
citizens: Why is the public still not enraged?
Of course the public can cite the
excuse that: "Hey - nobody told me!" That might have worked, had
there not been so many alternative ways to find out exactly what is going
on. The media is as complicit if not more so in trying to continue to hide
what's really going on: So many half-told stories, so many half-hearted or
incomplete investigations that take a back seat to gossip & games, not
to mention all the outright lies. The compact between this government and
the people of this nation requires the involvement of the people at all
levels-and the government has seen to it that its control over the
population is so damned complicated and overarching that it becomes
virtually impossible to fight them on all the garbage they continue to
shove down our throats daily.
This tactic needs to be fought in
another way, because this is not just about money or health, or the
environment or the WARS: this is about the very survival of each and every
one of us. We need to return to the basics of what is right and what is
obviously just more from the "GREED is GOOD" crowd left over
from the Reagan years. The US public's opinions and needs are not
represented in government or by government; but are instead twisted by
lobbyists and thieves to become "for the criminal government's
designs" regardless of how these decisions will affect those of us
that make government possible. This policy has to be stopped!
The infrastructure of this nation
is in total disrepair, and there are no jobs that pay a decent wage. The
government, if it were a functioning institution, could create programs
that could employ virtually all the unemployed in rebuilding the
infrastructure of America-by putting everyone back to work on rebuilding
this nation: instead of selling off our freeways to foreign governments
and letting everything else just go to hell. The same kind of "rescue"
could be and SHOULD BE taking place in New Orleans but instead we are told
to "just go shopping"! Again: Where's the OUTRAGE? The USA is
spending $8.7 Billion dollars a month in Iraq, and that's only what we
know about. Fraud is running like an unchecked flood through the secretly
appropriated funds, at last count nearly $40 Billion was misspent, and no
one is even being charged with a crime, what would happen to you or me -
if we misspent $40 Billion dollars of the government's money?
Perhaps Molly Ivins said it best
in her final column today:
"We are the people who run
this country. We are the deciders. And every single day one of us needs to
step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise Hell... We
need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding "Stop
it, now."
Jim Kirwan
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