ARE WE FREE YET?

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This Belongs to You and Me
. . . NOT our elected politicians. Not Corporations, not the media, not corporate-paid lobbyists.
But to you and me. But we must claim it, proactively.

And why should we care when other people aren't free? Other than it is the morally, ethically and spiritually the right thing to do ~ it lends to our own security at home and in the world. When there is unjustice in other countries, there is more of a chance that we will have less leverage and influence in those places and also terrorists love to go to those places and build their forces. This is what happened in Sudan.

Whether we like it or not, we are only a player in this world. We are not king. And we have lost our influence around the world during the George W Bush administration. It doesn't take much travelling outside the United States of America to learn the effects of the torturing that we have been doing in the name of the USA, the Iraq war and our stubbornness to ignore environmental effects of our lifestyle choices.

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From: lovethec

I actually typed in the google window Bush Killing the Constitution and found this Youtube.

MARTIN LUTHER KING'S LETTER FROM THE BIRMINGHAM JAIL

EXCERPT:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking:

"Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

A TESTAMENT OF HOPE: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

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"The Constitution is just a piece of paper" ~ George W. Bush

IF NOT NOW ~ WHEN WILL AMERICA THINK FOR HERSELF?

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NOW Is The Time

The time has come for this nation to face itself. Truth will not set free a nation who cannot face truth: About George W Bush and his selected representatives, about racism of Native American Indians, Mexicans or Black African Americans, about discrimination against the poor and the children in need in this nation.

My heart feels sick because I see a Democrat candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is not interested in bringing our divided Unites States of America together ~ but will use tools of division to win at any cost her dream to be in the position of President of our divided nation. It is apparent in her campaign. And she is the master at parsing.

I want a candidate who is authentic in who she is. Someone who doesn’t use the parsing of words and misrepresentation of what Barack Obama says. Hillary is politics as usual.

Her way is not a sign of a nation’s leader who is ready to face truth, but to use its people to get the power she wants. We are manipulated. But we let ourselves be manipulated. it is historical. Look at what we let Rove give to us.

I want a candidate who is authentic, who has integrity as the guiding force behind her or his behavior. We are human and of course that means no one can be perfection personified. But we can know when people are authentic. But we have to be willing to be honest with what is in front of us. Status quo is dangerous at this time in our nation’s politics.

I hesitate to say these things, but I will and take the risk that I will be criticized. If we can't say what we think, we are not free. Our government and media is owned by corporations. Do a search on Bush’s signed bills and his signing statements, on what he has acted upon and what he has pushed away of “not important” to deal with. (A signing statement is a written proclamation issued by the government executive power that accompanies the signing of a law passed by the government's legislature. . . Notably, such statements are issued by the Presidents of the United States).

Hopefully, you will see that NOW is the time to get involved in our government. In a country, that the people are looked upon as in the way of progress and government doing its job, we have corporate kings like Don Blankenship buds with George W Bush and his people.

To spend a trillion dollars on the Iraq war*, that has reaped none of the various ever-changing claimed goals, and not be willing to spend money on and support our people by way of health care, top quality education for all children, housing, Christian principled social and humanity values, infrastructure ~ is at best obscene ~ disgusting and morally offensive, especially because of showing total disregard for other people. (*and the deaths of Iraqi civilians and U.S. troups, as well as those injured from this illegal Iraqi war.)

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Bill Moyers Journal on Clinton, Obama, King and Johnson on PBS

We need to learn about our government and what and who are ruling Washington, D.C. ~ our national government. We need a government and people who sees that the Federal Reserve has tremendous power and not given to it by the U.S, Constitution and without the gold standard for the dollar. We need a government that doesn’t undermine her citizens, including when it comes to electronic voting machines with no paper back-up. We need a government that recognizes that all of her people are equal parts of the government and that paid corporate lobbyists and corporate media are not protected by the U.S. Constitution ~ all opposed to the elevation of We the People as the core of our democracy.

Are you aware that computer voting machines can be rigged and there is no way to ensure that vote is counted?

Californians join a national lawsuit to restore verifiable and open ballot count, meaning they don’t want any more electronic vote fraud. Voter registration irregularities and notorious vote count manipulation have become standard procedure in recent elections. “We have the Right to cast an effective vote, meaning we have the Right to have our vote counted accurately if our right to self-govern is to have any meaning at all.”

Are you aware by May of 2008 that our law will require you to carry a national identification card?

Are you aware that there are plans being developed to have all Americans embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) computer chip under their skin so they can be tracked wherever they go?

Are you aware the Supreme Court has ruled that the government has no authority to impose a direct unapportioned tax on the labor of the American people, and the 16th Amendment does not give the government that power? Do we know what is going on in our government? Do we care enough to learn?


AUTHENTIC IS NOT A WORD THAT I CAN ANY LONGER ASSOCIATE WITH HILLARY CLINTON

I find her pretentious, a politician who fits the stereotype of willing to do anything she can get away with to win or get what she wants. Some call her phony. I prefer the word pretentious. Of course, Hillary is a good politician whose dirty stuff that her campaign is doing via mail flyers in the states that are having their caucusses and primaries, her local representatives saying intentional distorted things about Barack Obama are under the radar of most, especially those who don't daily keep up.

When going to door to door as a volunteer in New Hampshire for Barack Obama, people told me if John McCain doesn't get the Republican nomination that they would vote for Barack Obama. One woman told me that she had many friends that she thought would vote for Hillary, but she found out they definitely said they would not vote for Hillary.

I hear a lot of this stuff, but still many are for Hillary. I don't claim to know why~ for each and every one of them ~ but it worries me that people choose Hillary based on Bill. And they are not seeing Hillary's campaigning behavior that illustrates "old school politics" and certainly not a "change" like she has adopted from Barack's "A Change We Can Believe In". And I worry that Hillary brings that continual "vetting" baggage with her. How can it be otherwise?

I like that Barack is calling on us to step up and become engaged in his campaign and his Presidency, should we give him the opportunity to pull some of the shreds of hope left in our hearts together and move proactively and thoughtfully forward with some ideals lifted up. That is the USA I want to be a part of.
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Eva Cassidy singing Imagine

Barack Obama speaking at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s church in Atlanta this past Sunday

OBAMA FOR AMERICA

A CLARION CALL FOR AUTHENTIC POLITICIANS, TRUTH AND JUSTICE

WE CANNOT SAY WE CARE ABOUT JUSTICE

AND DO LITTLE TO NOTHING TO PROTECT AND ADVOCATE FOR JUSTICE …………………………………………..

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Video of "A Time to Break Silence"
From: noncorporatenews

Entire text of a sermon given at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Real audio of the speech.

This speech was released by Black Forum records, a subsidiary of Motown, and went on to win a Grammy in 1970 for the Best Spoken Word Recording.

Excerpt:

......Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice.

The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free."

Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing, as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we're always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony. But we must speak...... "

Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent?"

Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. And so this morning, I speak to you on this issue, because I am determined to take the Gospel seriously. And I come this morning to my pulpit to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.

This sermon is not addressed to Hanoi, or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Nor is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in a successful resolution of the problem.

This morning, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans, who bear the greatest responsibility, and entered a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Now, since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is...a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America.

A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings.

Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.

And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor.

So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hope of the poor at home.

It was sending their sons, and their brothers, and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

So we have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school room. So we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village. But we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor......

The Urgency of Now
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

OBAMA FOR AMERICA


"We Shall Overcome". . . what are we proving that we have overcome?
Listen to Hillary's representatives, including her husband President Clinton, slam Barack Obama in her effort to make it look not racist, even though some of us see it as racist as well as "politics as usual" ~ no "change" evident here. Hillary Clinton can't control her own campaign representatives, but she says she will control the direction of this country, a divided United States of America.

VOTE OBAMA