Wave The Flag

Hasta cuándo

Hasta cuándo

Hasta cuándo seguir gritando a esta gente
Que el rey y la reina yacen bajo tierra
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que no cedo en hipoteca mis sueños
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que soy incorregible
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que no reniego de mis actos
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que nada de lo que no tengo
está en venta ni quiero que ningún imbécil corte la soga
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que cumplo mis deberes en la tormenta
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que no exijo futuro
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando a esta gente que me son despreciables
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que estoy
con los que no tienen razón porque la tienen a mares llenos
Hasta cuándo seguir gritando que jamás abandonaré mi capa de insurgente
Hasta cuándo si desde siempre mis cartas están sobre la mesa

– Víctor Valera Mora

Music Video of the Week

Midnight Oil – Beds Are Burning

IVAW Encourages U.S. Troops to Refuse to Fight

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War voted this weekend to launch a campaign encouraging US troops to refuse to fight. The decision was made at the group’s annual membership meeting, held last week in Saint Louis, Missouri alongside the annual convention of the Veterans for Peace Organization.

To underscore the point, the group elected Sergeant Camilo Mejia to chair of its board of directors. Mejia is the first US combat veteran to publicly refuse to redeploy to Iraq. He is author of a new book about his experience, “The Road from ar Ramadi: The Private Rebellion of Camilo Mejia.”

He served six months in Iraq in 2003 with the Florida National Guard. While on a two-week leave in the United States, he decided never to return. Mejia went into hiding to avoid redeployment and was classified as AWOL – or Absent Without Leave. After five months on the run, he surrendered to the military at Fort Stewart, Georgia and submitted a formal application for discharge as a conscientious objector. His application was denied.

In May 2004, a military jury convicted him of desertion and he was sentenced to one year in prison. He served nine months behind bars prompting Amnesty International to declare him a prisoner of conscience.

Full Article

Intelligence Test

Voice of the Day

“Another World is not only possible. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

— Arundhati Roy

How We Will Protest Our Executions

August 22, 2007

Stand With Us for Human Rights
How We Will Protest Our Executions

By KENNETH E. FOSTER
and JOHN JOE AMADOR

In the name of Human Rights; all religious doctrines of Peace, Love and Forgiveness; and in the vision of reform and atonement, on the above said date myself (Kenneth E. Foster Jr.) and John Joe Amador have committed to a protest of passive non-participation in our executions. Together we have decided to go on a spiritual missin to oppose our systematic executions in the hopes to open the eyes of people that think this horrific process is ok.

Starting on the 22nd we will engage in passive non-participation in this process in the same fashion that civil rights fighters stood down the cruel and inhumane treatments of their time. We are here to say that we do not condone violence and will not promote it. We recognize that violence will not solve our problems, just like executions do not help our society. We are committed to peace and grassroots activism. We are not doing this for ourselves, but for YOU, the people, to demonstrate to you that we do not agree with this process. We do this for YOU, the people, to show that we are new men today and that we must stand down the death penalty. We seek to harm no person and we will not. We pray to compel this society to look at the death penalty in a new light.

Starting on the 23rd we will begin refusing all food. We will not eat any more meals served to us. Our only nourishment will be liquids.

Bexar County had lined up two San Antonio executions in a row – John Amador’s for the 29th and mine for the 30th. While my case is known, Mr. Amador’s is not. I will give Mr. Amador the opportunity to write his own words regarding the injustices that he has faced at the hands of Bexar County. Since I have a visual plight I am here to say that the State is wrong in its desire to kill me. If I was as equally guilty as the 2 other men in the car, and these 2 men are not on death row, then I should not be either. This is an obvious injustice and railroad.

As we enter into being 7 days away from our execution we will be placed in cells that have video cameras where we can be observed 24-7. We cannot condone this invasion. We cannot participate in the way our humanity is being stripped. While we are NOT indifferent to the victims, we are also not indifferent to the fact that we are still human beings. But for a country that professes it wants a good society it’s hard to acknowledge that when the prison population is 2 million and rising and the conditions are left horrific. So what is really the purpose of the Penal system? We also ask you to think about this – in any other country when people are lined up and slaughtered it’s called genocide. They said Sadaam Hussein committed mass Genocide. It has happened in Darfur and Rwanda and Presidents of Cuba and North Korea have been accused of it. But when America does it it is called justice? Texas will surpass 400 murders this year. It we are to be unjustly taken then we do not want to go silently. We will not walk to our executions and we will not eat last meals. We will not give this process a humane face.

We ask all of you to stand for human rights. We are men that are dedicated to change and betterment. We are dedicated to give atonement to the system and society. Who of us will be left to guide the lost? We sacrifice this for society, not for us, because death row is a cancer in the body of this country. Our actions are antibodies to oppose this atrocious disease.

I, as a DRIVE representer, stand in the name of a better day. We will be on a DRIVE and we do it with prayers, love and understand – even for those that hate us. We don’t have them and we don’t hate the TDC officers that will usher us to our murders. Reports have said that Governor Perry is doing the will of the people. So, we come to you, the people, to relook at this process.

For those that have read about my case you now see how arbitrary capital punishment can be. AS long as it exists these things WILL continue to happen. Why? Because human beings are fallible. Many people want us to be the men we was 10 years ago. But we’re not. We could point fingers and talk about scams and corruption going on. We can talk about the ENRON’s and the Scooter Libby’s, the Guantanamo Bay’s and Abu Ghraib’s. But we won’t because we know you know that these things exist. We will only point our fingers up…..up…..and say that WE MUST GET UP. We must get up the way the CEDP has gotten up and made a movement. We must get up like these medias, politicians and even friends to the victims have gotten up. Some of us see a new way. It is possible.

And so, on August 22nd we commit ourselves to something that is beyond us. Perhaps we are just tools for a greater purpose.

We will not lift a finger to another person. We will only lift our voices and spirits. We will allow YOU, the people, to be the force that must be reckoned with.

We close this Directive in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

“Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that.”

Let’s shine to the world.

In struggle,

Kenneth E. Foster Jr. & John Joe Amador

Black Military Enlistment Down

Great news and very encouraging that Blacks just like Latinos are in increasing numbers resisting US militarism and in the process are making an important contribution in helping end the war in Iraq.

Steady Drop in Black Army Recruits
Data Said to Reflect Views on Iraq War

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 9, 2005; Page A01

The percentage of new Army recruits who are black has slipped dramatically over the past five years, reflecting a lack of support among African Americans for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as an economy that is providing more enticing options at home, according to Army studies, military experts and recruiters.

Since fiscal 2000, when African Americans made up 23.5 percent of Army recruits, their numbers have fallen steadily to less than 14 percent in this fiscal year, officials said. A similar trend has reduced the number of female Army recruits, who have dropped from 22 percent in 2000 to about 17 percent of this year’s new soldiers.

Full Article

War Made Easy

WAR MADE EASY:
How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

Narrated by Sean Penn

War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

War Made Easy gives special attention to parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse, and news correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer.

Norman Solomon’s work has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “brutally persuasive” and essential “for those who would like greater context with their bitter morning coffee.” This film now offers a chance to see that context on the screen.

Official Website

Freedom Next Time

In Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Africa there have been promises of hope, and even of “official” freedom, but in their divided societies, real freedom remains elusive. In Palestine, the world’s longest occupation continues with no resolution in sight. And the little-known island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, has become a microcosm of the ruthlessness of great powers. The island–sold by the British to the U.S. military in the 1960s, the indigenous population forced out–remains the United State’s third largest military base in the world.

Yet across these places, people find ways to resist. In Freedom Next Time, John Pilger gives voice to the millions affected by imperial adventures across the globe, illuminating in gripping detail, who are the true enemies of freedom, and saluting those who refuse to be victims.

Official Website