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.
"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
August 19, 2012: The Week that Will Be and a Week that Was
August 19, 2012:The Week that Will Be and a Week that Was
Next week, this reporter will be in the streets of Tampa
during the Republican National Convention and I begin next Sunday, at the Sun Dome for the Ron Paul
Rally.
Less than 80 days remain before Election Day.
Twenty-five million Americans are unemployed or underemployed. Over thirteen
million homeowners are at risk of foreclosure. Every single minute We The
People of this homeland are taxed $2.2 MILLION for so called Defense and
Florida has the 3rd largest homeless population in this nation.
A YouTube posting by the Tampa Bay Action Committee
promises lots of anarchists will come to Tampa. Their video says,
"Black Bloc and Anon Bloc tactics are being encouraged because some say
liberal protests get nothing done … If you hope to 'peacefully' protest your
rights, you will be respected by radicals. If you are into social warfare, look
for a group of people dressed in black."
I will be wearing a USS LIBERTY cap.
I
also understand the best expression of Anarchy is Rebellion
against UNJUST laws.
The Yang/male force of anarchy resists
authority and causes disorder and is socially and politically incorrect by the
norms of the status quo for it seeks the higher ground of justice.
The Yin/feminine force of anarchy
births a new order out of the chaos and chaos is creativity in action.
The group Doctors for
Americawants to
"to make sure politicians and the public get our message. We need a system
where everyone can get healthcare when they need it and where patients and
health-care providers are leading the way."
March on the RNC say’s"No to the Republican agenda; money for
human needs, not for corporate greed. We have had enough of the endless attacks
on the rights of working people and our standard of living. We will defend
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
The Florida Consumer
Action Network speaks
about healthcare to voting rights and is staging a march against voter
suppression.
Fight Back Florida is affiliated with March on the RNC and
plans to stage a demonstration "to peacefully protest the Republican
agenda and to demand jobs, healthcare, education, equality and peace."
Poor People's Economic
Human Rights Campaign
has affiliations with the Occupy movement and recently set up a tent town near
downtown called "Romneyville."
The group plans a "March for the Poor,
Homeless and Unemployed" at the RNC on Monday, August 27. Demonstrators
will call for stopping all foreclosure actions, criminalization of the poor and
homeless. "Housing and food are human rights. We are not affiliated with
any political party…Both parties are intricately tied to corporate rule, war,
economic injustice and profess freedom and democracy but crack down on dissent.
The entire system in which we're currently living is rooted in greed and power,
and keeps us from realizing our full potential. The pursuit of wealth has taken
over our entire way of life and has done so at the expense of humanity and the
earth."
Coptic Christians Against
Persecution will rally
against persecution of Christians, particularly in the Middle East.
Pray Tampa Bay has issued the call to the faithful to pray
nonstop during the RNC and the DNC in Charlotte, N.C., "It is as if the Lord is bringing the nation's leaders to these
cities so that we may build a house of prayer over them. Our nation and its
leaders are in need of God's wisdom and guidance."
My PRESS Pass is a prayer and it is also my campaign
poster as a candidate of conscience for US HOUSE.
The photo of me with Ms. Helen Thomas sporting her Palestinian
flag bracelet and another of the saints, was shot in D.C. on 20 May 2011:
When I heard the call to “Move Over
AIPAC: Building a New US Middle East Policy” I immediately became one of over 100 organizations
to endorse it; but I didn’t commit to attend the event until I learned that
journalist Helen Thomas was to be the keynote speaker.
By the time I booked my flight, Ms.
Thomas had been “disinvited” because of the pressure from a few particular
people who had still not gotten over her flaming honesty expressed on 27 May
2010, in a courtyard at the White House.
As “life is what happens while you are
making other plans” [John Lennon] their shortsightedness led to one of the
highlights of my life
and only because of my friend and author, Richard Forer, was I even invited to dinner with Helen Thomas.
Ms. Thomas had recently reviewed Rich’s
book, “Breakthrough:
Transforming Fear Into Compassion – A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine
Conflict.”
Ms. Thomas wrote, "People need to be
informed so we can make good decisions regarding our involvement in the Middle
East, and ultimately support the right governments. Forer offers a viewpoint
that is not available in the mainstream…I admire Forer’s courage to not being
silent. He openly shares his personal transformation, and encourages the reader
to be willing to 'assess one's beliefs with honesty and to follow wherever the
facts lead'. The truth cannot be silenced." [1]
During Jewish Heritage Month in 2010,
in a courtyard at the White House, blogger and Long Island Rabbi David Nesenoff
approached Ms. Thomas and introduced her to two young boys with him who were
interested in a career in journalism.
Nesenoff asked, "So what do you think
of Israel? Got any advice? Go for it" as he pointed his camera at Ms. Thomas
like a "jackknife" and she readily replied, "They should get the hell out of
Palestine."
In an interview with Playboy, Ms.
Thomas elaborated, "I knew I’d hit the third rail. You cannot say anything
about Israel in this country. But I’ve lived with this cause for many years.
Everybody knows my feelings that the Palestinians have been shortchanged in
every way. Sure, the Israelis have a right to exist—but where they were born,
not to come and take someone else’s home. I’ve had it up to here with the
violations against the Palestinians. Why shouldn’t I say it?"
Ms. Thomas also got in trouble when she
asked her first and last question to President Obama regarding who has nuclear
weapons in the Middle East; Obama didn’t want to "speculate" but "we know he
knows":
I asked Ms. Thomas "how did it feel
when your peers remained mute although the State Department has reams of documentation
about Israel’s WMD?"
Ms. Thomas replied, "They have no conscience."
I also claim their lack of integrity
borders on treason!
I was not a reporter when I met Israel's Nuclear whistle Blower, Mordechai Vanunu
for the first time in June 2005, but I knew I had to become one when he told
me:
"Did you
know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons?
In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a
textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime
Minister said, 'The nuclear reactor is only for peace.'
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding
that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.
"The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans
gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay
their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost
twenty years ago. Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground.
"In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a
nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez
Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the
Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.
"When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two
senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the
Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways.
From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that
hid the rest of the Dimona from them.
"Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result,
Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today,
they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year."
I also filled Ms. Thomas in on my
distress over Amy Goodman’s failure to follow up on her 2004 interview with Israel’s
Nuclear Whistle Blower, which resulted in 78 days back in solitary confinement
in 2010, just because Vanunu dared to speak to foreign media after he was
released from 18 years in a windowless, tomb sized cell for telling the truth
and providing the photographic proof of Israel’s WMD Program.
In April 2007, I had lunch with Amy
Goodman-not because we have ever been friends, but only because I had once been
a generous donor to Democracy NOW!
I accepted the invitation only so I could
fill Amy in on the fact that her 2004 interview with Vanunu was major testimony
against him in his FREEDOM of SPEECH trial-which began the same day Hamas was
democratically elected on 25 January 2006- and I asked her to follow up.
Amy acted interested and jotted down
notes in her Blackberry, but she didn’t bother to call Vanunu until July 2007
after he was sentenced to 6 more months in jail essentially for speaking to
foreign media in 2004!
Vanunu refused to speak to Amy because
she –like all THE MEDIA-hadn’t done anything to raise awareness about Israel’s
continuing persecution of him and to this day Vanunu is still waiting for the
right to leave Israel.
In regards to Ms. Goodman, Ms. Thomas
commented, "She used to be better."
I asked Ms. Thomas what she would
advise anyone who wanted to go into the field of journalism and she advised:
"Go for it!
It’s the greatest profession in the world because you are always learning and
you are aware of the world, so you just might be able to affect change.
"You cannot have a democracy without an informed people.
"Information is everything; it enlarges your intellect and that guides
you.
"The job is to follow the truth and report where it leads you!
"Right and wrong is not relative. Empathy is fine but kindness and
sympathy do not change the facts and conscience is everything!
"Leaders are suppose to do the right thing and we should back up the
president when he does the right thing; but drop him when he doesn’t.
"The WHY is the most important question-not that something happened-
but WHY did it happen?
"Somewhere along the way America lost its soul.
"People have to rise up but Americans have become so passive and power
overwhelmingly abusive."
I asked, "So how do we fix this situation?"
Ms. Thomas responded, "It’s being done!"
And then I asked Ms. Thomas if she had
always wanted to be a journalist and her persistent smile broadened and the
gleam in her eyes sparkled with unshed tears as she replied, "When my first
article was published in the high school paper and I saw my byline, I was
hooked!"
I shot back, "I had a similar but
opposite experience!"
I explained that when I was a child, my
dream was to grow up and become Brenda Starr, the red headed, ace investigative
journalist and star reporter for the metropolitan daily, The Flash. The
fictional Brenda traveled the world solving mysteries and unearthing scoops and
she intuitively knew when somebody was not telling the truth.
But when my first assignment for the
high school newspaper was edited beyond my recognition but my name was
attached, my Irish temper erupted and I immediately confronted the faculty
member on the paper and inquired, "Why did you publish an article with my name
but with words I did NOT write?"
I was told that it was just standard
procedure for the faculty to edit all of the student’s work and I replied, "Not
mine you don’t! I quit!"
Ms. Thomas pointed her finger at me and
said, "That’s ethics!"
And that
comment is the second highest compliment I have ever been paid in my life!
The first remains the one Mordechai
Vanunu graced me with when he said, I was always good to remind him of JC/Jesus
Christ.
JC was never a Christian, but a social
justice radical revolutionary nonviolent Palestinian devout Jew who rose up
against a corrupt Temple and taught the people there was no need to pay the
high priests for ritual baths or sacrificing livestock to be OK with God; for
God already loved just as they were.
What got JC crucified was agitating the
status quo of the Roman Occupying forces, for Rome’s method of capitol
punishment was to crucify all dissidents, rebels and agitators.
Two thousand years ago the Cross had NO symbolic
religious meaning and was not a piece of jewelry.
When Jesus said: "Pick up your
cross and follow me," everyone back then understood he was issuing a
POLITICAL statement, for the main roads in Jerusalem were lined with crucified
agitators, rebels, dissidents and any others who disturbed the status quo of
the Roman Occupying Forces.
I am Eileen Fleming for US HOUSE and I approve of all of my messages.
Visitors since 07.22.05
Visitors: 32250636
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas
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.
" 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