My 1.000th Post:Come Look Inside-Images of Iraq, Words of MLK

[chlamor]

By Rev. Martin Luther King

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.



“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” 



Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.



They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.



Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.



Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam-Iraq.



They must see Americans as strange liberators.



Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

[For PaisAn]

1. Chilling words and photos

It's important to see and to remember, thanks.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. I agree

Anybody who is for this war should see this and hear this speech (or read). Mr. King's voice ringing through your mind while you see these images. I know I'll never forget. Damn Bush to hell.

[bin.dare]

73. on reading the powerful words of MLK, i'm reminded ...

... of what was said of Marx but definitely applies to MLK also:

"During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names . . . while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it."

V.I Lenin, "The State and Revolution" in Selected Works, vol. 2, (Moscow: Progress, 1977), p. 240.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. That last image has to be seen by everyone who talks about the Democracy

we brought to Iraq. I cry every time I see it.

[seemslikeadream]

4. "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart

until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."



Kennedy Speech on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death
April 4, 1968, Indianapolis, Indiana


I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justic for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence their evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization -- black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rathe difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate to ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
http://members.iquest.net/~reboomer/kensp.htm

[seemslikeadream]

7. We must choose in this crucial moment of human history

A Time to Break Silence
Rev. Martin Luther King
4 April 1967

...

The Importance of Vietnam
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

[struggle4progress]

11. Here's part of the FBI file on CALC:

http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/clviet.htm

SLAD, I got so excited about posting excerpts from the Riverside Church speech, I didn't notice you'd already posted chunks of it!

:hi:

[seemslikeadream]

16. And I do not plan to cooperate with evil at any point

This quote comes from a speech Dr. King gave on January 14, 1968. He had visited Joan Baez and her mother in jail and he gave the speech outside the Santa Rita jail in California afterwards.

“And I do not plan to cooperate with evil at any point. Somebody said to me not too long ago,

“ ‘Dr. King don’t you think you are hurting your leadership by taking a stand against the war in Viet Nam? Aren’t people who once respected you going to loose respect for you? And aren’t you hurting the budget of your organization?’

“And I had to look at that person and say,

“‘I am sorry sir, you don’t know me. I am not a consensus leader. And I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion. Ultimately a genuine leader is not a of consensus but a molder of consensus.’

“On some positions cowardice asks the question, ‘is it safe?’

“Expediency asks the question, ‘is it is politic?’

“Vanity asks the question, ‘is it is popular?’

“But conscience asks the question, ‘is it right?’

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. And that is where I stand today and that is where I hope you will continue to stand so that we can speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters all over the world and righteousness like a mighty stream. And we will speed up the day when men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations will not rise up against nations neither they will not start a war anymore and I close by saying as we sing in the old Negro spiritual,

“I ain’t going to study war no more.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Singer Joan Baez in a Special On Civil Disobedience: Baez Recalls When King Visited Her in Prison, and We Play a Rare Recording of King's Remarks to Supporters Outside the Prison
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0313210

:hi: struggle4progress

[Tinoire]

45. That's my favorite speech by Martin

King was on a roll when they shot him- about to used his movement to end the war and about to join forces with Malcolm X to fight injustice.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

(snip)

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one "Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

(snip)


This Madness Must Cease


Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

(snip)

the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

(snip)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

:hug:

[seemslikeadream]

47. keep people in slavery for 244 years will thingify them - make them things

Where do we go from here?
Martin Luther King, Jr., SCLC Presidential Address,
16 August 1967


(snip)

...as we talk about Where do we go from here, that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, Who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question, Who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question, Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water? These are questions that must be asked.

Now, don't think that you have me in a bind today. I'm not talkingabout communism.

What I'm saying to you this morning is that communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.

If you will let me be a preacher just a little bit -- One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn't get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn't do. Jesus didn't say, Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that. He didn't say, Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery. He didn't say, Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively. He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic -- that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, Nicodemus, you must be born again.

He said, in other words, Your whole structure must be changed. A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will thingify them -- make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will ahve to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, America, you must be born again!

(snip)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/062.html




:hug:

[Tinoire]

48. Heart-breaking - and you know why

but thank you :hug:

America, you must be born again.

[Dark]

5. Oh, I just feel so great about being an American right now. n/t

[Just Me]

6. The corporacrats assassinated him for spreading this truth!!!

"They must see Americans as strange liberators."

Indeed. If U.S. multi-national corporations can't profit by starving them, the military will be sent in to destroy them.

*sigh*

[struggle4progress]

8. MLK on apartheid S. Africa: Human Rights Day 1965

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Let My People Go"
Speech on South Africa, Human Rights Day,
December 10th, 1965,
Hunter College, New York City

<snip> We are in an era in which the issue of human rights is the central question confronting all nations. In this complex struggle an obvious but little appreciated fact has gained attention-the large majority of the human race is non-white-yet it is that large majority which lives in hideous poverty. While millions enjoy an unexampled opulence in developed nations, ten thousand people die of hunger each and every day of the year in the undeveloped world. <snip>

Once more, we read of tortures in jails with electric devices, suicides among prisoners, forced confessions, while in the outside community ruthless persecution of editors, religious leaders, and political opponents suppress free speech -and a free press. <snip>

Civilization has come a long way; it still has far to go, and it cannot afford to be set back by resolute, wicked men. <snip>

http://www.rfksa.org/speeches/speech.php?id=14

This speech continued to motivate the US anti-apartheid movement for decades ...

[trudyco]

9. What a strong message for your thousandth post...nt

[struggle4progress]

10. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence. MLK. Riverside Church. 4/4/67

<snip> The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." <snip>

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. <snip>

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. <snip>

In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. <snip>

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. <snip>

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. <snip>

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. <snip>

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." <snip>

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:

Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. <snip>

We must move past indecision to action. <snip>

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

This speech is perhaps really the one thing that finally hardened the hearts of his enemies so that they began to plot his death ...

[ConsAreLiars]

12. Thank you - audio links to "Beyond Vietnam" speech

First another excerpt from: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The full audio is at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/mp3clips/politicalspeeches/mlkagainstvietnam.mp3

Some shorter links, with a music bacground, suitable for distribution to some of your friends with limited attention spans, can be found at: http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/mlk-vietnam_speech_audio.html

These are the mp3 links Ben Frank provides:
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk1-truth.mp3
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk2-waronpoor.mp3
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk2-waronpoor.mp3
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk4-applauded.mp3
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk5-godislove.mp3
http://ftp.radio4all.net/pub/archive/05.29.04/mlk6-now_isthetime.mp3

Share them - his words as as true today as ever, and his voice needs to be heard by all those who haven't heard them.

More audio worth sharing can be found on this age: http://www.benfrank.net/nuke/Free_Peace_mp3s.html

[ultraist]

13. Beautiful photo essay...and heartwrenching...

powerful words

[Octafish]

14. What a Nobel Prize Winner Thinks: PEACE.

A great speech. Substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam" and it could be today.

Would that Dr. King were with us in body, too.



A Time to Break Silence

by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.


SNIP...

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the north. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

CONTINUED...

http://www.deanza.edu/faculty/swensson/king.html

PS: Most moving and brilliant post, chlamor! Thank you for a great thread, too!

[Minstrel Boy]

15. I was just reading "Beyond Vietnam" again tonight.

What struck me was the line, "tomorrow is today." As urgent as the message was in 1967, it's so much moreso now.

[LibertyorDeath]

17. Heart breaking

I spent an evening at http://fallujapictures.blogspot.com/ and came away devastated at the inhumanity & cruelty being done to the Iraqi civilians.

We've been abandoned by the MSM they were never in our corner to begin with but when they willfully do not report this they are complicit imo.

Thanks for such a thoughtful 1000th post


Rest in Peace Martin Luther King

[chlamor]

18. Dispensable "Gooks" Dispensable "Arabs" Dispensable "Blacks"

King knew of the atrocities that our GIs were ordered to commit in the name of “anti-communism.” He saw the connections between the killing of dispensable “gooks” on the battlefields of Southeast Asia and the oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and lynching of “dispensable blacks” in America. 

[ConsAreLiars]

19. kick, because

this is worth more than the GD "top 20" combined.

[NNN0LHI]

20. One of the best posts I ever ever seen at DU. Right at the top

Many people think Dr. King was murdered for his stand on civil rights. That is what our government wants us to believe. I remember when he was assassinated. At that time most people capable of rational thought knew damn well that it was his position on the Vietnam war was the real reason. Let the truth prevail. I wish we had religious leaders in this era who had the guts to stand up and tell the truth as Dr. King did. Unfortunately we don't. That tells me a lot about the "supposed" religious leaders of today. They are no better than Boosh and his cabal. They should be ashamed of themselves. But they are not. I hope they burn in the hell that they preach to us about. They are nothing but worthless tools. Notice how the same ones who are running around this board telling us how "great" the pope was are avoiding this thread like the plague? That tells me a lot about them too. Thanks for posting this chlamor.

Don

[Tsiyu]

21. Congrats on your postcount

and kudos to you for this touching post.

I wish I could force every damned Repuke to read it and see what it is they so fervently support: bloodlust and hatred and sorrow.

Kicked :kick: and nominated...

[NNN0LHI]

23. Unfortunately it is not all Republicans n/t

[Tsiyu]

24. true enough n/t

[seemslikeadream]

22. MAKE IT PLAIN

...

But very seriously, it goes through life; the drum major instinct is real. (Yes) And you know what else it causes to happen? It often causes us to live above our means. (Make it plain) It's nothing but the drum major instinct. Do you ever see people buy cars that they can't even begin to buy in terms of their income? (Amen) You've seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don't earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. (Make it plain) But it feeds a repressed ego.

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn't cost more than about twenty-five hundred. That's just good economics. And if it's a family of two, and both members of the family make ten thousand dollars, they would have to make out with one car. That would be good economics, although it's often inconvenient. But so often, haven't you seen people making five thousand dollars a year and driving a car that costs six thousand? And they wonder why their ends never meet. That's a fact.

Now the economists also say that your house shouldn't cost—if you're buying a house, it shouldn't cost more than twice your income. That's based on the economy and how you would make ends meet. So, if you have an income of five thousand dollars, it's kind of difficult in this society. But say it's a family with an income of ten thousand dollars, the house shouldn't cost much more than twenty thousand. Well, I've seen folk making ten thousand dollars, living in a forty- and fifty-thousand-dollar house. And you know they just barely make it. They get a check every month somewhere, and they owe all of that out before it comes in. Never have anything to put away for rainy days.

But now the problem is, it is the drum major instinct. And you know, you see people over and over again with the drum major instinct taking them over. And they just live their lives trying to outdo the Joneses. (Amen) They got to get this coat because this particular coat is a little better and a little better-looking than Mary's coat. And I got to drive this car because it's something about this car that makes my car a little better than my neighbor's car. (Amen) I know a man who used to live in a thirty-five-thousand-dollar house. And other people started building thirty-five-thousand-dollar houses, so he built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house. And then somebody else built a seventy-five-thousand-dollar house, and he built a hundred-thousand-dollar house. And I don't know where he's going to end up if he's going to live his life trying to keep up with the Joneses.

There comes a time that the drum major instinct can become destructive. (Make it plain) And that's where I want to move now. I want to move to the point of saying that if this instinct is not harnessed, it becomes a very dangerous, pernicious instinct. For instance, if it isn’t harnessed, it causes one's personality to become distorted. I guess that's the most damaging aspect of it: what it does to the personality. If it isn't harnessed, you will end up day in and day out trying to deal with your ego problem by boasting. Have you ever heard people that—you know, and I'm sure you've met them—that really become sickening because they just sit up all the time talking about themselves. (Amen) And they just boast and boast and boast, and that's the person who has not harnessed the drum major instinct.

And then it does other things to the personality. It causes you to lie about who you know sometimes. (Amen, Make it plain) There are some people who are influence peddlers. And in their attempt to deal with the drum major instinct, they have to try to identify with the so-called big-name people. (Yeah, Make it plain) And if you're not careful, they will make you think they know somebody that they don't really know. (Amen) They know them well, they sip tea with them, and they this-and-that. That happens to people.


The Drum Major Instinct
http://www.africanamericans.com/MLKTheDrumMajorInstinct.htm

[chlamor]

26. America's Soul is Totally Poisoned

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Iraq.

[checks-n-balances]

36. The best sermon I've EVER heard is this one - VERY positive, really

The disciples, James & John, were arguing about who was the greatest, especially in God's eyes. Here's my favorite part:

One would have thought that Jesus would have said, "You are out of your place. You are selfish. Why would you raise such a question?"

But that isn't what Jesus did; he did something altogether different. He said in substance, "Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well, you ought to be. If you're going to be my disciple, you must be." But he reordered priorities. And he said, "Yes, don't give up this instinct. It's a good instinct if you use it right. (Yes) It's a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it. Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do."

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, "Now brethren, I can't give you greatness. And really, I can't make you first." This is what Jesus said to James and John. "You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared." (Amen)

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) That's a new definition of greatness.

And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, (Everybody) because everybody can serve. (Amen) You don't have to have a college degree to serve. (All right) You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. (Amen) You only need a heart full of grace, (Yes, sir, Amen) a soul generated by love. (Yes) And you can be that servant.

-His speech on Vietnam speaks truth to power,about evil & injustice
-This sermon assures us that we can all serve - that's why we're here
-The last speech he gave in Memphis tells us to have courage, and not to be afraid

("He has showed you...what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" - Micah 6:8)

He was calling on our better selves to do all of these things. These are true biblical themes - the most important ones in the Bible. But they are "generic" enough to apply to those of any faith or spirituality (including those who profess no faith).

The differences between MLK, Jr. and the "Christian" leaders today are so obvious, aren't they?

I love all three of these speeches and sermons, and this is a wonderful thread. A really thoughtful and appropriate way, today, to commemorate 1,000 posts.

Thanks -
Peace/Shalom/Saalem

[babylonsister]

25. So damn sad, and so avoidable. nt

[seemslikeadream]

27. "We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees" - Harry Belafonte

Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
"We Have Got To Bring Corporate America To Its Knees" - Harry Belafonte on Racism, Poverty, John Kerry, War and Resistance

...

Along with his rise to worldwide stardom, he became deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1956, he met the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the two quickly became friends.

Belafonte sent money to bail Dr. King out of the Birmingham City Jail and raised thousands of dollars to release other imprisoned protesters. He financed the Freedom Rides, and supported voter-registration drives and helped to organize the March on Washington in 1963.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/1410245



MAKE IT PLAIN

[LibertyorDeath]

28. From a sergeant with the Third Marine Battalion

“We kill innocent Iraqi civilians all the time. That’s the way it is. I believe they need to withdraw all foreign military troops in Iraq right away. And I say this about other soldiers: to avoid punishment or reprisals by the military, they don’t want to talk and admit that killing terrorists is not our mission. It’s to kill innocent civilians.”

That’s the way the Il Manifesto interview with Jimmy Massey went. He’s from the little town of Waynesville, North Carolina. He has decided to draw back the veil of silence from the “noble mission” in Iraq. Discharged from the Marine Corps for medical reasons, he has written a diary, “Cowboys from Hell,” which will be published at the end of the summer.

“What was your rank in Iraq?”

“I was a sergeant with the Third Marine Battalion during the invasion, in the spring of 2003.”

http://www.sfbayview.com/030905/amarine030905.shtml

[chlamor]

29. Goats in Falluja

[Bouncy Ball]

30. "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

You cannot let an injustice stand anywhere, or it will threaten all justice. We can have NO justice.

[chlamor]

31. This is what the Iraqis are living every minute of every day

[Camaro32323]

32. pretty sad some of them

[seemslikeadream]

33. They don't get it, I wanna scream

You took me to the restaurant where we first met
You knocked a future shock crowbar upside my head
I got caught with the stop of the tick-tock, tick-tock clock
When you told me what you knew

Lost in the moment
The day that the music stopped
And I do remember you

Drawing patterns with a cork on the tablecloth
Promising volcanic change of plot
Where will this lead us - I'm scared of the storm
The outsiders are gathering, a new day is born

I tried to tell you I am not afraid
You looked up and saw it all across my face
So am I with you or am I against
I don't think it's that easy - we're lost in regret

Now I'm trying to remember
The feeling when the music stopped
When you told me what you knew

Lost in the moment
The day that the music stopped
And I do remember you

Drawing patterns with a cork on the tablecloth
Promising volcanic change of plot
Where does this leave us - I'm scared of the storm
The outsiders are gathering, a new day is born

Drawing patterns with a cork on the tablecloth
Promising volcanic change of plot
Where does this leave us - I'm scared of the storm
The outsiders are gathering, a new day is born

The outsiders are gathering, a new day is born
The outsiders are gathering

A man walks away when every muscle says to stay
How many yesterdays - they each weigh heavy
Who says what changes may come?
Who says what we call home?
I know you see right through me, my luminescence fades
The dusk provides an antidote, I am not afraid
I've been a million times in my mind
This is really just a technicality, frailty, reality

Uh, it's time to breathe, time to believe
Let it go and run towards the sea
They don't teach that, they don't know what you mean
They don't understand, they don't know what you mean
They don't get it, I wanna scream
I wanna breathe again, I wanna dream
I wanna float a quote from Martin Luther King
I am not afraid
I am not afraid
I am not afraid

I am not afraid
I am not afraid
I am not afraid
I am not afraid

-R.E.M. with Q-Tip
The Outsiders


excerpt from Martin Luther King speech at the Holt Street Baptist Church during the Montgomery Bus Boycott (5th December, 1955):

"I want to say that with all of our actions we must stick together. Unity is the great need of the hour. And if we are united, we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve. And don't let anybody frighten you. We are not afraid of what we are doing, because we are doing it within the law."

excerpt from MLK speech delivered on April 3rd, 1968, the night before he was assasinated:

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!"

--------

SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILED STAFF REPORTS
ON INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE
RIGHTS OF AMERICANS
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CASE STUDY

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIb.htm

[Octafish]

37. COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO in the 60s

excerpted from the book

WAR AT HOME

by Brian Glick

EXCERPT...

COINTELPRO's targets were not, however, limited to Black militants. Many other activists who wanted to end U.S. intervention abroad or institute racial, gender, and class justice at home also came under attack. Cesar Chavez, Fathers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Rev. Jesse Jackson, David Dellinger, officials of the American Friends Service Committee and the National Council of Churches, and other leading pacifists were high on the list, as were projects directly protected by the First Amendment, such as anti-war teach-ins, progressive bookstores, independent filmmakers, and alternative newspapers and news services. Martin Luther King, Jr., world-renowned prophet of non violence, was the object of sustained FBI assault. King was marked, barely a month before his murder, for elimination as a potential "messiah" who could "unify and electrify" the Black movement.

Ultimately, FBI documents disclosed six major official counterintelligence programs (as well as non-COINTELPRO covert operations against Native American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Iranian, and other activists):

1) "Communist Party-USA" (1956-71): This was the first and largest program, which contributed to the Party's decline in the late 1950s and was used in the early and mid-1960s mainly against civil rights, civil liberties, and peace activists. Its targets during the latter period included Martin Luther King, Jr., the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, Women's Strike for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, and the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy.

2) "Groups Seeking Independence for Puerto Rico" (1960-71): Initially hidden from congressional investigators, and still one of the least well known, this program functioned to disrupt, discredit, and factionalize the island's main centers of anti-colonial resistance, especially the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) and Socialist League (LSP). It also appears to have targeted groups fighting for human rights for Puerto Ricans living in the United States, such as the Young Lords Party.

3) "Border Coverage Program" (1960-71): This program of covert operations against radical Mexican organizations was similarly concealed from Congress. The few documents released to date do not indicate how much the FBI used it against 1960s Chicano activists such as the Brown Berets, the Crusade for Justice (Colorado), La Alianza (New Mexico), and the Chicano Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam (Los Angeles), which are known to have been infiltrated and repressed by other government agencies.

4) "Socialist Workers Party" (1961-69): In addition to ongoing attacks on the SWP and its youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance, this program operated against whomever those groups supported or worked with, especially Malcolm X and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

5) "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" (1967-71): This was the vehicle for the Bureau's all-out assault on Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the late 1960s), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam ("Black Muslims"), the National Welfare Rights Organization, the League of Black Revolutionary Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the Congress of African People, Black student unions, and many local Black churches and community organizations struggling for decent living conditions, justice, equality, and empowerment.

6) "New Left" (1968-71): A program to destroy Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Peace and Freedom Party, the Institute for Policy Studies, and a broad range of anti-war, anti-racist, student, GI, veteran, feminist, lesbian, gay, environmental, Marxist, and anarchist groups, as well as the network of food co-ops, health clinics, child care centers, schools, bookstores, newspapers, community centers, street theaters, rock groups, and communes that formed the infrastructure of the counter-culture.

7) "White Hate Groups" (1964-71): This unique "program" functioned largely as a component of the FBI's operations against the progressive activists who were COINTELPRO's main targets. Under the cover of being even-handed and going after violent right-wing groups, the FBI actually gave covert aid to the Ku Klux Klan, Minutemen, Nazis, and other racist vigilantes. These groups received substantial funds, information, and protection-and suffered only token FBI harassment-so long as they directed their violence against COINTELPRO targets. They were not subjected to serious disruption unless they breached this tacit under standing and attacked established business and political leaders.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/COINTELPRO60s_WAH.html



It's no coincidence the same NAZIs pop up.

[seemslikeadream]

41. Prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant

nationalist movement ... Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammad all aspire to this position....


...


Dear BISHOP:

It pains me to have to write this letter to call to your attention a matter which, if brought to public light, may cause the church a great deal of embarrassment. I wish to remain anonymous with regard to the information because in divulging it I may have violated a trust. I feel, however, that what I am writing is important enough that my conscience is clear.

Specifically, I'm referring to the fact that Reverend and Mrs. are associating with leaders of the Black Panther Party. I recently heard through a close friend of Reverend that he is a revolutionist who advocates overthrowing the Government of the United States and that he has turned over a sizable sum of money to the Panthers. I can present no evidence of fact but is it possible Reverend is being influenced by Communists? Some statements he has made both in church and out have led me to believe he is either a Communist himself, or so left-wing that the only thing he lacks is a card.

I beseech you to counsel with Reverend and relay our concern over his political philosophies which among other things involves association with a known revolutionist, , head of the Black Panther Party in New Haven. I truly believe Reverend to be a good man, but his fellow men have caused him to go overboard and he now needs a guiding light which only you can provide.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Christian. 119

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIc.htm

[chlamor]

42. What you can do

• Demonstrate and leaflet during tax season and on the last day of filing, Friday, April 15, 2005, at the IRS or a post office.

• Bring the Stop the Merchants of Death Speakers Tour to your community to learn more about corporations profiting from the war and military occupation, paid for by your tax dollars. See www.warresisters.org/merchants_death.htm or call [phone].
• Write the President and your representative and senators and demand that the military budget be cut.
• Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Send all of them copies of this flyer.

• Refuse to pay all or part of your income tax. Though illegal, thousands of Americans are openly participating in this form of protest. You can take control of your paycheck and avoid contributing to the military. Contact us for information or referral to a war tax resistance counselor near you, and check out www.warresisters.org/wtr.htm.

• Contribute resisted tax money to an organization working to help people (e.g., day care centers, health clinics, food banks, housing programs, human rights organizations) or to an alternative fund that pools tax money from resisters and gives grants to human needs and peace groups.

• Contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, PO Box 150553, Brooklyn, NY 11215, [phone]; email: [e-mail]. Support the Peace Tax Fund bill to allow 100% of your taxes to fund nonmilitary programs: [phone]

[DistressedAmerican]

34. chlamor, thanks again for the kind words earlier.

This is a very powerful post.

I found the following quote most useful in my current mental state. It sums up my stress amazingly well.

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak."

Keep speaking people! :pals:

[Straight Shooter]

35. Oh, how I wish we had a powerful voice of a true believer

Thank you for a most excellent 1,000th post, chlamor. :thumbsup:

Reverend King spoke from the heart, from his soul. His compassion was real, his message was filled with truth. He was not a morally "pure" man, for he had his failings, but he sought justice for all. Silence is consent, he said. It was true then; it is true now.

The majestic voice of Reverend King sends chills up and down my spine. He makes me want to believe that there can be peace and justice.

Reverend King, even from his grave, towers like a colossus above the squeaking, grating voices and rat-scampering feet of self-serving Christian "leaders" like Falwell, Robertson, and the oh-so-pious pontificating george w. bush.

[Lisabtrucking]

38. So that's what liberation looks like. Republicans should be proud. n/t

[chlamor]

39. Blowing holes in the Children-Blowing holes in the Ozone

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm



Current Military, $558B:Military Personnel $109B, Operation and Maintenance $154B, Procurement $81B, Research and Development $68B, Construction $7B, Family Housing $4B, Retired Pay $46B, DoE Nuclear Weapons $17B, NASA (50%) $8B, International Security $8B, Homeland Sec. (50%) $16B, Ex. Off. Pres. $78, Misc. $4B, “Allowance for Anticipated Supplemental” (Iraq) $25B
UNBUDGETTED: $85B (est.):Most of the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is not included in the President’s Budget but the Administration has announced it will seek this money as supplemental appropriations later in year as it has in the past two years

Past Military, $384B: Veterans’ Benefits $70B; Interest on National Debt (80% estimated to be created by military spending) $314B

[jojo54]

40. Photots like this make me want to scream.....

then punch out every stinking one of the freepers who are responsible for these atrocities. A lot of crap goes on, here at home and abroad, so why add to it with some lame ass excuse of a war???

btw chlamor, congrats on the 1,000th post.

[donheld]

43. I think the majority of Merikans

have had there conscience removed.

[chlamor]

44. And For What-And For Whom

[chlamor]

46. Mother and Child

[chlamor]

49. Your taxes at work

[lastliberalintexas]

50. What an incredible post

And I admit to being unable to look at pictures from the war most of the time. I only wish that the "supporters" of the war could be made to see such images for an hour every single day. Especially the pictures of the children.

[frictionlessO]

51. Far and away the best use of a 1000th post Ive seen.

This is why I can't and wont get upset about pie throwers, right now every Neocon, Corporatist, Fundie Fried war supporter is responsible for what we see in these photos. Not Saddam not Zarqawi and most certainly not Bin Laden. The war hogs are damn lucky thats all their getting for now.

Sorry for that... I am just as angry as anyone at everyone who is supporting this atrocity.

[chlamor]

52. Where are we going?-Where have we been?

[chlamor]

53. They Must Buy Seeds from Monsanto- Stealing Life

"As part of sweeping "economic restructuring" implemented by the Bush Administration in Iraq, Iraqi farmers will no longer be permitted to save their seeds, which include seeds the Iraqis themselves have developed over hundreds of years. Instead, they will be forced to buy seeds from US corporations. That is because in recent years, transnational corporations have patented and now own many seed varieties originated or developed by indigenous peoples. In a short time, Iraq will be living under the new American credo:
Pay Monsanto, or starve ."

"The American Administrator of the Iraqi CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) government, Paul Bremer, updated Iraq's intellectual property law to 'meet current internationally-recognized standards of protection'. The updated law makes saving seeds for next year's harvest, practiced by 97% of Iraqi farmers in 2002, and is the standard farming practice for thousands of years across human civilizations, to be now illegal.. Instead, farmers will have to obtain a yearly license for genetically modified (GM) seeds from American corporations. These GM seeds have typically been modified from seeds developed over thousands of generations by indigenous farmers like the Iraqis, and shared freely like agricultural 'open source.'"
According to Order 81, paragraph 66 - , issued by L. Paul Bremer , the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving seeds and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors.

<snip>

Written in massively intricate legalese, Order 81 directs the reader at Article 14, paragraph 2 to paragraph of Article 4, which states any variety that is different from any other known variety may be registered in any country and become a protected variety of seed - thus defaulting it into the "protected class" of seeds and prohibiting the Iraqis from reusing them the following season. Every year, the Iraqis must destroy any seed they have, and repurchase seeds from an authorized supplier, or face fines, penalties and/or jail time."
www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KHA501A.html

[chlamor]

54. Cry For a Nation

[Donailin]

55. Congratulations on your count, and what a thoughtful way to

commemorate it. Good job.

[Rockerdem]

56. Congrats on #1000, chlamor. Perfect topic too

[brettdale]

57. send these to CNN, Faux, ABC,CBS,NBC,BBC,TVNZ,

and ask them , "In your Iraq coverage I have seen Bush talk about Freedom, the statue of Saddam falling down, Aid Workers giving out food, Bombs falling on insurgents, but I havent seen any images like these, how come?

[chlamor]

58. A day of infamy

[chlamor]

59. The Sledgehammer and the Ant

[chlamor]

60. Suffer the Children

[seemslikeadream]

63. I'm a child of the universe

I'm a child from South Africa
I'm a child of Vietnam

I'm a child of Northern Ireland

I'm a small boy with blood on his hands.
Yes
I'm a child of the universe

Yes
I'm a child of the universe -
You can see me on the TV everynight

Always there to join in someone else's fight.
I never asked to be born
I never asked to die

I'm an endless dream
a dream-machine that cannot reason why.
Yes
I'm a child of the universe

Yes
I'm a child of the universe -
You can see me on the TV everynight:
I'm the child next door 3.000 miles away.
I'm a child from South Africa
I'm a child of Vietnam

I never asked to be born
I never asked to die

You can see me on the TV every day:
I'm the child next door 3.000 miles away.

[chlamor]

61. On the streets of Falluja

[chlamor]

62. Dying for the Beast

[Eloriel]

64. Bulldozing trees

One of the many atrocities that moved and outraged me about Iraq was the purposeful destruction of some of their olive groves, generations old. There's been so much destruction it is soul-numbing to even contemplate.

Congratulations on your 1000 posts, Chlamor. You've made an incredibly positive impression on me during your brief (so far) sojourn here. Glad your thoughtful, articulate self is with us.

[chlamor]

65. "Children Deserve Protection"

A propaganda billboard in Baghdad reads “Children Deserve Protection” and encourages people to snitch on resistance fighters. On a related note, the malnutrition rate of Iraqi children, which was already very high, has more than doubled under US occupation and is now among the worst in the world.

[chlamor]

66. a pipeline near Kirkuk

A pipeline near Kirkuk was sabotaged on the 4th.

[chlamor]

67. Effigies of Blair, Hussein and Bush

Effigies of Blair, Hussein, and Bush all wearing chains, nooses and prison jump suits at former location of the famous Saddam stutue.

[LeftHander]

68. Thanks...for reminding us of Bush's "Culture of Life"

It shows us what Bush's culture of life REALLY is....

A culture of lies.

[chlamor]

69. Out

[chlamor]

70. Car Bombings- Balls of Fire

BAGHDAD: Two car bombs ripped through a crowded street on Thursday in front of an Interior Ministry office in central Baghdad, killing 18 people and wounding some three dozen others while 13 more people died across the country as violence continued.

[seemslikeadream]

75. MARCH FOR JUSTICE

http://www.marchforjustice.com/Fallujah22.swf

[chlamor]

71. Sexualized Violence Against Iraqi Women

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=11094&hd=0&size=1&l=x

[chlamor]

72. War

Violence against nature and violence against women. It's all connected.

[seemslikeadream]

74. And it's true we are immune

Sunday Bloody Sunday
I can't believe the news today
I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long? how long must we sing this song?
How long? how long?
'Cause tonight we can be as one - tonight

Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall

Sunday, bloody Sunday
Sunday, bloody Sunday --

And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won?
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart

Sunday, bloody Sunday
Sunday, bloody Sunday

How long? how long must we sing this song?
How long? how long?
'Cause tonight we can be as one - tonight
Tonight

Tonight, tonight


Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away
I'll wipe your tears away
I'll wipe your tears away

I'll wipe your bloodshot eyes

Sunday, bloody Sunday

And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die

The real battle yet begun

To claim the victory Jesus won

On Sunday, bloody Sunday
Sunday, bloody Sunday

[chlamor]

76. US Abuse and Killing of Innocent Iraqi Civilians

April 16, 2005


This horrible and very dramatic story of US abuse and killings of innocent Iraqi civilians, published at http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Articles.htm#Tarmiya and http://www.uruknet.info/?p=11112, has reached the military in Iraq. A major Bob Bateman is furious and tries to deny the facts. Just read his mail underneath and feel the anger of a GI. Now I understand why the Iraqi author of that article wanted to keep anonymity... It's dangerous out there, with all those wild US animals around. And this major Bateman says he "lives" there, he doesn't say he's "stationed" there. So it's obvious that he intends to stay more permanently. Poor Iraqi's.

I can assure everyone that the horrible story of this Iraqi family is true. I have no reasons whatsoever to doubt the credibility of the author, who is a well known and respected Iraqi person.

Here is some more evidence of the facts, by the way. These are pictures of "K", the one who was shot one bullet in his mouth, and the bullet went out the back of his neck. His body was thrown in the farm.

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=11154&hd=0&size=1&l=x

[driver8]

77. I have two small children, and these photos bring tears to my

eyes every time I see them. I cannot imagine the horror that these people are going through. It is beyond sad...

[chlamor]

78. Gold is the Reason for the Wars they Wage