Liberty service Interruption

Thanks to Sandi Grubb

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Dear World:

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty, democracy, and the rule of law, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and a decision was made on Tuesday, November 4, 2008, to completely replace the faulty apparatus responsible for the problems.

The updated version of the system was placed on line on January 20, 2009, and early tests of the newly-installed components indicated that they are functioning correctly. If you continue to experience any difficulties, please contact us at www.whitehouse.gov to advise us as to your concerns.

We apologize for any inconvenience, destruction, poverty, or deaths caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service -- and also to improving it in the years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding,

The USA
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Love and War

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We are also fervently praying that the God of Love will guide our nation, the U.S., from its present path of foolishness, greed, and violence towards the Way of compassion. As the people of Love, God has told us how foolish is the way of war, and how stupidly incompetent are leaders who lead their countries into war. Unlike our leaders, most of our people are not foolish, but do believe in the Power of Love.
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US/NATO Hands Off Georgia and Russia - Sign Petition

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Please send this message to bush, Cheney, Congressional Leaders, the United Nations, NATO Sign the petition: http://www.iacenter.org/anti-war/handsoffcaucasus

Donate:
http://iacenter.org/donate

Sign up for updates:
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TELL BUSH, CHENEY, RICE AND CONGRESS: U.S. HANDS OFF GEORGIA AND RUSSIA - NO NEW WAR - END NATO NOW!

It is with growing concern that we observe that the U.S. government is threatening new military moves that carry the danger of another war-- this time against Russia.

The Bush regime and the corporate U.S. news media have launched an anti-Russia hate campaign. Yet, just as with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the threats on Iran, the threatened military confrontation with Russia is also based on a lie.

The truth, hidden by most of the corporate news media, is that Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, unleashed his U.S.- and Israeli-armed and-trained forces on the tiny autonomous region of South Ossetia, murdering civilians and attacking Russian peacekeeping troops stationed there. Only then did Russian troops respond.

Saakashvili is the president who sent 2,000 Georgian youth to join the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The U.S. supplies the weapons to his army. U.S. Special Forces and Israeli advisers and mercenary contractors direct the Georgian military, which just held three weeks of joint exercises with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in July. We must take note that like Iraq and Iran, Georgia itself is a prize for U.S. oil companies, as it is a major transit point for Central Asian oil.

There is little doubt that U.S. arming of Georgia and its push to get Georgia into NATO set the scene for the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and created the threat of a new major war. Now Washington also threatens Russia by placing missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people there. Surrounding Russia with this military alliance of new NATO members is the greatest danger to peace and stability on a global scale.

It is time to remember that NATO was established as an anti-USSR military alliance aimed at reinforcing capitalist control and preventing socialist revolutions in the colonialist powers of Europe weakened by World War II. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. has attempted to vastly expand NATO and turn it into a military instrument to consolidate U.S. corporate power, surround Russia and China and re-conquer the former colonial world.

Consider these examples:

Yugoslavia. Based on the lie that NATO was defending small nations, U.S.-NATO intervention and bombing destroyed multinational Yugoslavia and turned the Balkans into a collection of dependent ministates ruled by the U.S. and Western Europe powers.

Afghanistan. Based on the lie that this was a police action against terrorists, U.S.-NATO have carried out a seven-year occupation leaving the country in ruins and enslaved.

Iraq. Here the lie about weapons of mass destruction was so blatant, and the U.S. position so weak, that most NATO countries refused to join the occupation and utter destruction of Iraq.

No one can believe Bush is promoting peace in Georgia. It is time not only to stop this expansion but to end the NATO war machine completely by dissolving NATO.

It is encouraging to anti-war people worldwide that Georgians themselves have issued a statement condemning the Saakashvili machine. "The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war," the Georgian Peace Committee says, "for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively on the current president, on the Parliament and on the government of Georgia." (Aug. 11)

We cannot do less than the people of Georgia who oppose the current president and want no part of NATO. We demand from Washington:

(1) Stop interfering in Georgia and the Caucasus

(2) Stop attempting to expand the NATO military organization into the
countries of Eastern Europe and those that border on Russia.

(3) End the aggressive NATO military alliance

(4) No new wars!


Sign the Petition at http://www.iacenter.org/anti-war/handsoffcaucasus
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International Action Center
Solidarity Center
55 W. 17 St., Suite 5C
New York, NY 10011

God, the U.S., and Forgiveness

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The "Ten Commandments" were never, and never meant to be, a "Christian" document. They are the ancient, primitive laws that guided a very old and archaic culture. They were not created to guide people of the twenty-first century, but groups of tribal savages living near the twenty-first century BC!

Not that they are not great and fine ideas for all people. They likely derived from the more ancient Code of Hammurabi of Babylonia. And it is a good idea not to kill, steal, and go after your neighbor's wife!:)

But most of the modern defenders of the Ten Commandments are also supporters of the noxious and obscene war for greed and oil in Iraq. So, they cannot be taken seriously as "defending" or "being on the side of" Jesus, in this or any other matter. For this sick and nightmarish war, they have trashed the most important of Commandments, "Thou shalt not kill."

It really doesn't impress a person of even moderate intelligence that they hang it up, with a kind of boastful superiority, on their walls, or in their courts. For they advocate and defend trashing this Commandment.

They support, often enthusiastically, the utter merciless slaughter of our Middle Eastern sisters and brothers. A high percentage of the nearly one million that have perished through the "shock and awe" of this ghastly bloody war have been women and children. This is the most ugly and insane behavior, and God does not approve of it, is never behind it.

The true God is Love and perfect forgiveness. He does not rain punishment upon his beloved children. The United States has some gigantic problems, at the top of which it is being run, and ruined, by a lawless, greedy, tyrannical regime controlled by a backwards incompetent.

But although the U.S. has many challenges, they are not, and can never be, the "punishment" of a petty, trivial god who is "offended" by human actions. Stupid human mistakes are not important, or potent, enough to "offend" the God of infinity. They are not even a blip on the "radar" of life!

Human beings who think that human mistakes are so terribly important base this on the assumption that their lives are the obsession of God. But God has a billion other planets, in a billion other galaxies, to run.
Our activities, including our mistakes, are simply not Number One on an endless, limitless agenda!

Earth is a school. A school is a place designed to make mistakes, for that is the only way that we ever learn anything. Only rightwing fanatics, without a particle of Love, compassion, or forgiveness in their hearts, try to present the beautiful Lord of Love in the violent, ignorant Jehovah-image of the Old Testament. This false "god" is always angry; he is violent, murderous, and completely unforgiving. He is a petty and trivial deity.

More advanced and sophisticated people realize that the sweet Infinite does not waste time with anger. We recognize this as a serious weakness among people; so why should we project it onto the immeasurable Mind of Love?

People who feel that the Ruler and Guide of the universe wastes time with unforgiveness and punishment, vengeance, and pettiness, are wrong. They betray that, although hyper-religious, they have absolutely zero knowing of the true God of profound wisdom and deeper Love. For the Love of God is infinite, and he is never petty. It simply does not matter to him whether we, on a planet so tiny as to be invisible, hang up the Ten Commandments in our courts, or put, "In God we trust" on our money. For, in the greater scope of eternity, none of these trivialities add up to a single molecule.

What is important is that we learn to love and to forgive. So, the person of wisdom does not waste time with hollow, superficial, and artificial public activities, so that she might be admired by microscopic people. She does not fight and argue about symbolic actions that are inconsequential, such as placing religious documents in public. Instead, every day, she works on the interior Self, renewing it in the healing Power of Love and compassion.
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Why Virginia Tech shootings happened

A Statement from the International Action Center
Why Virginia Tech shootings happened

Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech — the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus.

The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women.

But aren’t there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers?

The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why?

President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said.

Don’t ask why, don’t try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush’s message.

But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It’s just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons.

What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse.

But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders.

It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"—which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment.

It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media.

The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon.

At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs.

In the final analysis, the military and the police exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers.

And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere.

Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games—all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state’s use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women—and increasingly children.

As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers.

The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can’t find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals.

Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate—nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the government is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily.

The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, a movement directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society.

International Action Center- 55 West 17th St, 5C, New York, NY 10011

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