Call Out The Instigator
I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon —and you know he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in. I can’t sit back and let this BushCo drag our country further down into the murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the rest of the world with them!
Read Call Out The Instigator
by Cindy Sheehan
July 3, 2007 ~ CommonDreams.org
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Keith Olbermann says Bush & Cheney Should Resign
Keith Olbermann’s impassioned plea to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday evening, during the “special comment” segment of his news show “Countdown,” was succinct: “resign.”
and
Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.
and
I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.
I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.
I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.
I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.
I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.
I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.
Watch the video: Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign
by Keith Olbermann ~ July 3, 2007 ~ MSNBC Countdown on Truthout
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Once Upon America
John Cory provides a sobering reality check on how the Fourth of July “with its parades and “what America means to me” essays, and picnics and fireworks, and all those pretty speeches about freedom and democracy and the true meaning of Independence Day” is “all a facade. A lie.” Modern America now spies on its citizens, conducts warrantless wiretaps, suspends habeas corpus, creates “free speech zones” to corral protestors out of sight of sensitive royal eyes, and politicizes the very justice system meant to protect people’s rights by turning it into a fraternity of God-fearing Republican conservatism.
Read Once Upon America
by John Cory ~ t r u t h o u t ~ July 4, 2007
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
On July 4, Put Away the Flags
Is not nationalism — that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder — one of the great evils of our time?
and
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government’s lies.
Read On July 4, Put Away the Flags
by Howard Zinn ~ Progressive Media Project ~ July 4, 2007
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Don’t Look Gay: Why American Men Are Afraid of Intimacy with Each Other
Why do adolescent boys often leave empty seats between each other when they go to the movies? It’s a product of the culture of male homophobia in America which pushes men to avoid intimacy and gay stereotypes.
and
My students and I often consider whether various kinds of fuss over sexual orientation actually are indirect ways of addressing more basic issues of gender, the ways that a particular society defines the appropriate behavior of males and of females. We examine the ways that negative stereotypes of gay men, for example, not only stigmatize those males considered gay, but also coerce all men to stay within the boundaries of culturally prescribed “male behavior,” lest they be thought queer. It’s common in our culture for a gay male to be thought “unmanly,” but it’s not inevitable that this equation be in force, or even that sexuality be viewed as a simple question of one or the other, gay or straight, with bisexuality in the middle ground.
Such, however, has been our society’s obsession with sexual orientation — and with “appropriate” manliness — that an association with gayness came to include certain occupations, words, gestures, and items of apparel, as well as one male’s willingness to express intimacy with another. The greater the scorn heaped upon gay males, the more that all males have been discouraged from displaying behavior associated with gayness — with anything resembling intimacy heading the list of taboos.
Don’t Look Gay: Why American Men Are Afraid of Intimacy with Each Other
by John Ibson ~ American Sexuality / Alternet ~ July 4, 2007