WHEN YOU LIE UPON YOUR DEATH BED ~ WHAT WILL HAVE BEEN THE IMPORTANT THINGS YOU DID

OR SAID?

To gain and keep perspective in my life, I visualize and feel what I expect to feel if I get to my end knowing my death is soon to be. It instantly makes all things right for me. What will be important then comes front and center and what I once labored or fretted over just loses its grip on me. It won't matter that my family is broken, disconnected or differs from me in their beliefs, politics and ways of handling the truth. What will matter is how I lived my life. What I said, but more how I said... It will matter to me if I chose to be silent when I should have spoken up. Clear and with passion. It will matter to me if I consistently had truth as my anchor, strength and target.

This is one of those things that has my attention. And I feel stories such as these are neglected, dismissed and thrown out while our narcissism consumes our behavior.


The following is from the Enough Project

September 30, 2008

Peace process near collapse in eastern Congo

The peace process in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is on the verge of collapse due to resumed hostilities between Government forces and rebels loyal to Congolese general Laurent Nkunda. Absent immediate and robust diplomatic pressure on the Congolese government and a more impartial effort by United Nations peacekeepers to stop the fighting, the region could descend back into total war.

After weeks of tit-for-tat violence, large-scale fighting between the Congolese army and Nkunda's National Congress for the Defense of People, or CNDP, began again on August 28 in the territory of Rutshuru, North Kivu. Violence has since spread to Masisi territory in North Kivu, and Kalehe territory in South Kivu. The clashes are the largest violations to date of the cease-fire agreement signed last January in Goma (capital of North Kivu) between the Congolese government, the CNDP, and 21 other armed groups active in the East.

The fighting has newly displaced an estimated 100,000 civilians in North Kivu, and has curtailed access for humanitarian aid agencies across the province. On September 25, the Enough Project -along with 82 other NGOs-released a statement on the humanitarian costs of faltering peace efforts. This follow-up examines why those diplomatic efforts are failing and what steps the international community must immediately take to halt the violence and reinvigorate the peace process.

• To read the full statement, click here
• To read the Congo Advocacy Coalition's September 25 release, click here
• To join our Raise Hope for Congo Campaign and learn what you can do to help protect and empower Congolese women, click here

Check out the Enough Project's website for our new Raise Hope for Congo Campaign

REACH OUT AND TOUCH A WOMAN IN NEED

I support two women in regions that are currently in hellish lives or have lived through hellish lives. One of my sisters is in Iraq. And the other is in Rwanda. I do this through the non-profit organization "Women for Women". Women only can be in the program for one year so that more women can be helped. This is the third sister I have sponsored in Rwanda. And last year I was asked to take a woman as my sister in Iraq. I write to my sisters in Rwanda, but I am not allowed to in Iraq because the women there are too afraid for their lives. The surge hasn't helped them.

I ask you to watch the video of a segment that was on "60 Minutes" tonight. It is about the hell that the women live with continually in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that we in the USA knew about during the Clinton Presidency, but minced words over the definition of "genocide" versus the "acts of genocide". One definition meant we would have been obligated to act and the other allowed us to do nothing, as one million plus Tutsis were hacked to death by Hutus with ten cent Chinese machetes and garden tools. The Hutus left Rwanda and now are continuing their behavior in the DR Congo. It is now 2008. That is 14 years of this. And we are complicit in the results. We were silent in 1994 and it goes on today.

Every day in the Congo women are being traumatized; their suffering used as weapons of war.

Anderson Cooper and 60 Minutes visited the organization "Women for Women" operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and met the women they serve there. The 60 Minutes piece, “War Against Women”, showed the unspeakable violence these brave women face every day as well as the hope for the future that the Women for Women International program brings.

Check out the website, www.womenforwomen.org/congo, for more information and continued updates on the show, to make a donation, or to learn more about the women of the DR Congo.

Zainab Salbi is the Women for Women International CEO and Founder

60 Minutes

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Dedicated to the Women in DR of Congo
Thanks to Mimi

PRESIDENT PINOCCHIO JUST PLAYING WITH US

PRESIDENT BUSH IS A LIE WAITING FOR THE TRUTH TO SET HIM FREE.
WE ARE ENABLERS BY ALLOWING HIM TO LEAD US INTO THE DEPTHS OF HIS INCOMPETENCY. WHERE ARE THE CLEAR-MINDED THINKERS AND BOLD PEOPLE WHO CAN SAY OUT LOUD WHAT MUST BE SAID?

President Bush is like a sick playwright and he uses the world as his stage. We are his characters in his world-wide play. I am tired of being taken for stupid.

“I want to tell you this about the decision, about my decision about troop levels. Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media."
George W Bush

"Everything you said about Iraq yesterday, and everything you will say, is a deception, for the purpose of this one cynical, unacceptable, brutal goal: perpetuating this war indefinitely."
Keith Olbermann, September 4, 2007

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20593445/
“Bush just playing us with 'troop withdrawal - Revelation contradicts every other rationale offered in the last 500 days"
Keith Olbermann On President Bush’s Trip to Iraq and His REAL Reasons for Continuing His War in Iraq
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A portion from Keith Olbermann’s September 4th "Special Comment":

And as if those polls were not so overwhelming, and not so clearly reflective of the nation's agony and the nation's insistence.

But this president has ceased to listen. This president has decided that night is day, and death is life, and enraging the world against us is safety. And this laziest of presidents, actually interrupted his precious time off to fly to Iraq to play at a photo opportunity with soldiers, some of whom will on his orders be killed before the year maybe the month is out.

Just over 500 days remain in this presidency. Consider the dead who have piled up on the battlefield in these last 500 days.

Consider the singular fraudulence of this president's trip to Iraq yesterday, and the singular fraudulence of the selling of the Petraeus Report in these last 500 days.

Consider how this president has torn away at the fabric of this nation in a manner of which terrorists can only dream in these last 500 days.

And consider again how this president has spoken to that biographer: that he is “playing for October-November." The goal in Iraq is “to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence." Consider how this revelation contradicts every other rationale he has offered in these last 500 days.

In the context of all that now, consider these next 500 days.

Mr. Bush, our presence in Iraq must end. Even if it means your resignation. Even if it means your impeachment. Even if it means a different Republican to serve out your term. Even if it means a Democratic Congress and those true patriots among the Republicans standing up and denying you another penny for Iraq, other than for the safety and the safe conduct home of our troops.

This country cannot run the risk of what you can still do to this country in the next 500 days.

Not while you are playing....

“I'm playing for October-November," Mr. Bush said to Draper. That, evidently, is the time during which, he thinks he can sell us the real plan, which is “to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence."

Comfortable, that is, with saying about Iraq, again quoting the President, “stay... longer."

This is worth hearing the whole justified rant from Keith which comes at the end of the link address above.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

DARFUR
George Bush said Genocide Would
NOT HAPPEN ON HIS WATCH
BUT IT HAS AND IT IS

http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/projects/darfur/

Bring the Olympic Dream to Darfur

www.dreamfordarfur.org

www.savedarfur.org

www.standnow.org

Thanks!