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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 04:36 PM
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Cindy Sheehan: Mass Murderers
Post in its entirety with permission.

Mass Murderers
Cindy Sheehan

"Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect."
~Chief Seattle~1855

Last night, at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, we did not get the usual “stellar” comedy performance from George Bush in deference to the Virginia Tech tragedy. Who can forget that “uproariously hilarious” bit he did looking for WMD under the couch in his office in 2004 shortly before my son was killed in Iraq by this joker in chief? How nice that George reined in his comedic impulses for the families and friends of the murdered VT students…because I can assure you, their families are finding nothing funny right now.

Troops dying unnecessarily every day in Iraq has not even slowed down this annual event with correspondents and George Bush has not found it in the slight bit crucial to temper his comedy routines in deference to the families that he has destroyed by his war for profit in Iraq .

By all accounts, the mass murderer of VT’s horrific events on Monday was a disturbed loner and there was plenty of warnings and hints that he may do something violent, but no one could predict the magnitude of the horror.

From accounts of George Bush’ early life (Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank) from thinking it was funny to put firecrackers in the anus’ of frogs and blowing them up to burning pledges to his fraternity with cigarettes and his alcohol and cocaine abuse…we, as a nation, should have seen his mass murderous tendencies coming from leagues away. Instead we rolled over and played apathetic when he was unconstitutionally selected by the Supreme Court as President in 2000. He gleefully made fun of people he was about to execute as governor of Texas , and he and Al (“I don’t recall”) Gonzales never had an ounce of compassion for a single soul condemned to death.

In early August of 2005, 21 Marines from Ohio were murdered by their Commander in Chief’s homicidal tendencies and there was no national mourning for them. Not one elected official called for a nation-wide lowering of flags to half mast for these brave souls who were mortally abused by George’s war of terror. The cable news networks did not go on 24 hour reportage of the events, and person, who killed them. There were no profiles of their lives. No bereaved family member had the opportunity to tell America what a wonderful son, friend, lover, student, athlete, was lost in the desert of Iraq : too young, and just as random, violently, or senselessly as the ones killed in Blacksburg , Va. last week.

My friend, Vickie Castro’s son, Jonathan, was one of 14 soldiers killed in a mess tent incident shortly before Christmas in 2004. Jon was Vickie’s only child. He was a brilliant, handsome man with a bright future ahead of him. He made a horrible, but honorable, mistake by enlisting in the US Military to be sent off to war to die to enrich Dick and George and their buddies, and he and his family paid dearly for that honest mistake. The flags may have been lowered in his hometown, but no one, but Jonathan’s closest friends and family mourn him to this day in this country. Jonathan’s coffin wasn’t even allowed to be photographed and his body was returned to his grieving family with the utmost secrecy as if to cover the shame of this rogue state.

We, as a nation, were rightly shocked, saddened and repulsed by the murders of 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech. My heart grieves with the friends and families of the fallen. I know what a ghastly path they have been forced to step off on by a maniac who unthinkably had easy access to weapons of limited (but infinite) destruction.

Another sociopathic killer with inexplicable and unconstrained access to the planet’s most deadly arsenal, George Bush, has condemned 100 times 33 of our nation’s bravest and brightest to death and most people walk around indifferent to the fact that our White House is inhabited by a serial killer of historic proportions. Bloody King George has even more tragically claimed the lives of more than 20,000 times 33 innocent victims in Iraq . Where is the public horror and outrage over these killings? Where was the 24 hour news coverage this past week when over 500 people were killed in Baghdad and 65 decomposing bodies were found?

I was in DC this past week when George’s bullet proof entourage (he always travels like he is outside the Green Zone in Iraq---how sad to have so many enemies you have to be put in a prison of your own making) hurried down to Blacksburg to participate in memorial services for the slain---yet, he has not attended one service for one of his murder victims in Iraq.

Many people will justify this reaction to the crimes at Virginia Tech and lack of reaction to our murdered soldiers and people of Iraq by saying that our troops volunteer and the people of Iraq are uncounted collateral damage. Consequently, because we have an all volunteer military our children are getting what they deserve and because BushCo took another tragedy of 9-11 and exploited those needless deaths to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, the people of Iraq deserve this constant violence? Thirty-three dead is sickeningly yet realistically a good day in Iraq . When do we Americans rise up and insist the carnage end for our brothers and sisters there?

Life is life and it is all precious---whether students in college, soldiers in the field, or inhabitants of an occupied, defenseless country. Until we as a nation wake up to the fact that our state’s directed violence to any human demeans and implicates each and every one of us in these crimes, the actions of April 16th and state sponsored horrors that have been perpetrated on a daily basis since Sept 11, 2001, will continue. True peace and true justice are not possible when our national compassion is limited to a certain demographic of victim.

Until we wake up and abhor and are appalled at violence even when it is not directed at unborn babies, or mostly white Americans, we are all condemned to living under regimes that condone, profit from, order and commit mass murder.

Please join Cindy, The Camp Casey Peace Institute, Gold Star Families for Peace, CODEPINK , Congress Reps John Conyers (D-Mi) and Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), and others, as we march on the Nation’s Capital on May 14th demanding an end to the violence in the Middle East and for the impeachment of the Bush Regime.

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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 04:40 PM
Response to Original message
1. K&R
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Monkeyman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 04:42 PM
Response to Original message
2. K&R
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Skip Intro Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 04:44 PM
Response to Original message
3. K&R
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symbolman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 04:48 PM
Response to Original message
4. She needs to use the Proper term
This is GENOCIDE. USE IT.

Watch them FLEE from it..
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omega minimo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 07:24 PM
Response to Reply #4
9. You call it genocide. Tell us you've rethought
IMPEACHMENT

:hi:
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Tom Joad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 05:10 PM
Response to Original message
5. Sanity and War. Some thoughts from Thomas Merton.
I don't think you need be a Christian believer to appreciate this.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist Monk who wrote this in 1966, as the US engaged in a bloody conflict in Vietnam, as the world was on the edge of nuclear annihilation (as it is today).

The young man who committed the heinous crime at V. Tech are not the people we should fear most. We knew he was crazy, and anyone who knew much about him at all would not let him near a gun. They certainly would not let him near nukes. We really need to worry about those who pass the ink blot tests and speak nicely about "democracy" and "liberty" while advocating bombing people back to the stone age.

Merton writes of the then recent trial of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi mass murderer, who was declared to be "sane".


One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.

If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.

He was not bothered much by guilt. I have not heard that he developed any psychosomatic illnesses. Apparently he slept well. He had a good appetite, or so it seems. True, when he visited Auschwitz, the Camp Commandant, Hoess, in a spirit of sly deviltry, tried to tease the big boss and scare him with some of the sight, Eichmann was disturbed, yes. He was disturbed. Even Himmler had been disturbed, and had gone weak at the knees. Perhaps, in the same way, the general manager of a big steel mill might be disturbed if an accident took place while he happened to be somewhere in the plant. But of course what happened at Auschwitz was not an accident: just the routine unpleasantness of the daily task. One must shoulder the burden of daily monotonous work for the Fatherland. Yes, one must suffer discomfort and even nausea from unpleasant sights and sounds. It all comes under the heading of duty, self-sacrifice, and obedience. Eichmann was devoted to duty. and proud of his job.

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. (More here)
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WinkyDink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 06:35 PM
Response to Reply #5
8. I am an admirer of Thomas Merton; have several of his books. I wish more clergy would
Edited on Sun Apr-22-07 06:39 PM by WinkyDink
speak about Iraq.
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az chela Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 05:53 PM
Response to Original message
6. Cindy considers an Iraqi life as important and valuable as any
Edited on Sun Apr-22-07 05:53 PM by az chela
other life on this planet.She has many Iraqi friends and she suffers immensely when something happens to any Iraqi!!!!!
On May 15th many iraqi women will be marching in Iraq along with their sisters here in the states to end this war!!!!!!!!
NO more killing,END THE WAR NOW
PEACE
Wherever you are on that monday support ending this war
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proud2BlibKansan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:03 AM
Response to Reply #6
17. Beautifully said!
Hey friend :hi: :hug:
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WinkyDink Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 06:29 PM
Response to Original message
7. Cindy is the Avenging Fury. May she live to see Fall of the House of Bush.
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 07:26 PM
Response to Original message
10. Quite brilliant Cindy
K & R
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H2O Man Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 07:32 PM
Response to Original message
11. Thank you
for posting this. Cindy is a voice of sanity in an unstable world. I always enjoy reading her works. I hope to have the opportunity some day to thank her for the work she does for all of us.
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MaggieSwanson Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 07:56 PM
Response to Original message
12. K&R
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FtWayneBlue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 08:43 PM
Response to Original message
13. I am planning to go to the march for
Cindy, for our military families, and for the Iraqis.
And for Cheif Seattle.
May peace prevail.
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proud2BlibKansan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:04 AM
Response to Reply #13
18. Good for you!
We will be marching here at home and thinking about all of you in DC.
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Cabcere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 08:53 PM
Response to Original message
14. Today
marks the two-month "anniversary" (that seems like such an inappropriate word here; anniversaries are supposed to be joyful, and there is nothing joyful about this) of my friend's burial, and so this piece hits me especially hard tonight. :( God bless Cindy Sheehan, and many thanks to you, babylonsister, for posting this. :hug: K&R.
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fed-up Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Apr-22-07 09:06 PM
Response to Original message
15. Cindy will be in Chico, CA on May 3/4 at Senator theater and Chico State & more nt
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lonestarnot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 07:43 AM
Response to Original message
16. Serial killing motherfuckers!
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Seabiscuit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 11:46 AM
Response to Original message
19. Even Bill Moyers told Bill Maher that we need a lot more Cindy Sheehans.
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gillamonster Donating Member (40 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 03:44 PM
Response to Reply #19
20. Not enough people are affected..
by this war. Most people are against the war, but they sacrafice nothing, and since they dont, they really are passive in their fight against it. If a draft was instituted and people were unwillingly chosen to fight this war, people would lose their minds. There would be protestors by the thousands. There would be outrage, revolt, and a demand for change, just like you see from Cindy Sheehan.
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Seabiscuit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 10:28 PM
Response to Reply #20
22. I think that's exactly the point of Bill Moyers' statement.
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babydollhead Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-23-07 04:13 PM
Response to Original message
21. kick because we Must Not Rest
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