WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"We're on a mission from God." Jake Blues/John Belushi
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
Photo of George shown here and in web site banner courtesy of Debbie Hill, 2000.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
The best way to view yesterday's disappointing House vote is to compare it to the way the House voted on January 9, 2009 for House Resolution 34-which recognized only Israel's right to defend itself, reaffirmed the United States' strong support for Israel and the so-called Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process' -which has NOT produced what is required for peace: justice, equal human rights and an end to the occupation.
HR 34: Yes-390 No-5
HR 867: Yes-344 No-36
Thus, 46 fewer Yes's and 31 more No's is progress.
A little History of WHY Congress votes the way they do via a book review:
Director for the Institute of Research Middle East Policy, Grant F. Smith's, Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal,
exposed how US Middle East policy has been formulated and thrives due
to the dearth of relevant reporting on AIPAC's activities.
It begins with Senator Fulbright's on target questions to
Jewish-Agency-funded US foreign agents who did not register with the
Justice Department or disclose their true financing, funding flows and
covert activities and illuminates how AIPAC: the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee operates "within a murky nexus regulated by four
important but seldom enforced US laws." [1]
The lax
enforcement of The Logan Act, The Foreign Agents Registration Act/FARA,
the 1917 Espionage Act, Thompson Memorandum guidelines for prosecuting
corporate crime coupled with the fear of being labeled anti-Semitic and
a media who have failed at their commission to seek and report the
truth have all colluded to exert an undue influence over Congress and
thus; we the people of America to be "under the de facto influence of a
powerful foreign interest." [2]
Smith documents how AIPAC-a
constellation of individuals and organizations that make up the "Israel
lobby" continue to actively steer USA foreign policy in a militant and
pro-Israel only direction.
Senator Fulbright's concerns over
activities of unregistered foreign agents who worked to influence
public opinion and policy resulted in the 1963 Senate Foreign Relations
Committee hearings to investigate the Jewish Agency and uncovered the
"conduit" operation run by the American Zionist Council. In 1959, The
American Zionist Council was renamed AIPAC.
Within eight
years, the Council received over a half a million "from the Jewish
Agency to create a favorable opinion in this country for Israeli
government policies. The Senate investigation closed down the conduit,
but the extensive propaganda activities still go on…[and] by 1998, "US
aid to Israel exceeded $3 billion a year, the highest amount of US aid
given to any country." [3]
"AIPAC's illegal tactics harm
America…[and] corporate crime inflicts far more damage on society than
all street crime combined…Harvard economist Thomas Stauffer estimated
the total cost of [the] prolonged conflict in the Middle East at $3
trillion [in 2002 USA dollars and he] lays a good deal of the blame for
this at the doorstep of AIPAC." [4]
On George
Washington's birth date, his Farewell Address has been read aloud in
Congress ever since 1896. However, his warning has not yet seeped into
the consciousness of our elected officials, to "Observe good faith and
justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and
passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that, in
place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be
cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred
or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate
attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.
Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an
imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest
exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the
former in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate
justification."
It has been said that the root of all
evil is the love of money, and most nefarious are the consequences of
nearly two-trillion American dollars which have reaped "special trade
advantages, and preferential contracts. U.S. aid to Israel cost some
275,000 American jobs each year...Additional known items include loan
guarantees-which the U.S. most probably will be forced to cover-special
contracts for Israeli firms, legal and illegal transfers of marketable
U.S. military technology, de facto exemption from U.S. trade protection
provisions, and discounted sales or free transfers of U.S. military
equipment…net purchases by U.S. parties of Israel Bonds, adds at least
$40 billion to the total…U.S. jobs and exports have been affected,
adding to costs and losses…As U.S. relations with Mid East countries
deteriorated, trade was lost. Worsening political relations resulted in
the loss of hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs…thanks to the Israel
lobby." [5]
Smith's epic public service tome also
illuminates how money laundering of over 50 billion US dollars to
"charitable" organizations and massive covert activities has enabled
the ongoing building of the illegal and apartheid Israeli settlements
which have expropriated legally owned Palestinian land. Today, a
quarter of a million Jewish settlers, most all of which have no
historical tie to the Holy Land, have created facts on the ground to
disable a viable contiguous Palestinian state.
On November
21, 2005, top U.S. law enforcement officials attended a briefing
organized by the Council for the National Interest regarding how
charities "such as B'nai B'rith and Hadassah were in direct control of
the World Zionist Organization and directly linked to a massive
money-laundering operation…[and the settlements are] an indirect
generator of terrorism against the United States…[also] Israel never
signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty [which prohibits] U.S.
assistance to any country trafficking in nuclear enrichments equipment
or technology outside of international safeguards." [6]
Every
American politician is aware of Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons
development, stockpile, and launch capabilities, but due to the
influence of AIPAC "it is business as usual in Washington: criminal
wrongdoing continues to corrupt America's core values, rule of law, and
Middle East policy, as the Israel lobby's cross-hairs shift almost
completely to Iran." [7]
On July 3, 2008, former
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul stated, "I hear members of
Congress saying 'if we could only nuke them' and that the atmosphere in
Congress indicates that a military strike on Iran has already been
condoned." [8]
Referring to House Congressional Resolution 362
Paul called the 'Virtual Iran War Resolution', "an absolute blockade of
the entire country of Iran, [that will] punish any country or any
business group around the world if they trade with Iran." [9]
In
1976, the Symington Amendment was adopted to fortify and extend the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It prohibited US assistance to any
country trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology
outside of international safeguards.
The world learned about
Israel's secret underground nuclear weapons facility in 1986 due to
Mordechai Vanunu's photographic evidence, but the American government
ignores this elephant in the world and has refused to insist Israel
allow international inspection of their nuclear weapons facilities.
The
American government's double standards and Israel's negation of
international law, UN resolutions, and denial of equal human rights for
Palestinians are all at the root of instability in the Middle East.
Beginning
in the 1990's and even more so after 9/11, US politicians blind
allegiance to Israel has been furthered by the claim that both states
are threatened by Arab terrorist groups and rogue states bent on
acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
Many Americans see
Israel as an ally and Iran and Syria as our mutual enemies. The "war on
terror" has become a tactic to infuse fear while it ignores that much
of the anger in the Arab world is in response to Israel's 40+ years of
military occupation of Palestine and the concrete wall and electrified
fence built on legally owned Palestinian property which is "financed
with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile. The Israeli wall
prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical
services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their
olive groves which have been their families' sole livelihood for
generations." [10]
William Fulbright warned, "The age of
warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age
calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect,
judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human
values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition.
The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of
compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and
of empathy and understanding between cultures."
Yet,
America's 'leaders' continue to cower and pander to an "illegal foreign
lobby that has long flouted US law and suborned the national interest
as a foreign agent." [11]
Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal could put the starch in their spine to put America first and then these United States could indeed observe good faith and justice towards all nations; [and] cultivate peace and harmony with all.
A copy should be required reading for every American congressional representative.
1. Grant F. Smith, Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal, Page 15. Published 2007 by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Washington D.C. 2. IBID 3. Page 20, 22 4. Page 149-150 5. Page 150-151 6. Page 158 7. Page 155 8. http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=62812§ionid=351020104 9. IBID 10. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007 11. Grant F. Smith, Page 168 NEW Release:
Spy Trade: How Israel's Lobby Undermines America's Economy
By Grant F. Smith Institute for Research-Middle Eastern Policy, 2009, paperback, 178 pp.
In 1984 the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) obtained a secret U.S.
government industry report via the Israeli Embassy— just as spy
Jonathan Pollard looted vast quantities of national defense
information. Since then AIPAC mandates and election manipulations have
created a $71 billion U.S.-Israeli trade deficit, equivalent to 100,000
American jobs in each of the past five years.
The U.S. is still locked out of lucrative high-growth foreign markets.
This is the story of never prosecuted economic espionage conducted by
Israel's lobby. Grant Smith names violators based on newly declassified
FBI files - dispelling decades of AIPAC public relations fog and
excuses from the department of justice.
"Meticulously detailed in this riveting addition to his earlier exposes, Grant Smith reveals yet another facet of the extent to which the pro-Israel Lobby is beyond dangerous, and has become a serious threat to a broad range of American ideals, objectives, and interests abroad, as well as here at home. This book contains many highly disturbing, documented revelations. Read it." Ambassador Edward L. Peck, former Chief of Mission in Iraq and Former Deputy Director, Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism, Reagan White House.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. -Article 19.
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
Establishment of Israel
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel
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