2007 to 2008

This day of the year I do what most people do, I look back at the year ending and forward to the new...

2007 began with a sense of renewed hope, and as it turns out, over optimism. I was pretty jazzed up because the Democrats had one back our government and had high hopes that they would end the war in Iraq and bring our soldiers home. I had hopes that they would do what needed to be done to restore our Constitutional Rights (and the Constitution), our country's reputation, and start impeachment procedings -- or at the very least, investigations -- against Cheney and Bush.

Honestly, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was relieved because, hopefully, somehow, the Democrats would end the warrantless spying and wiretapping, my emails wouldn't be read by some shadow person in some dark room and my phone calls would not be listened to. I was relieved because I felt there was no longer any need to worry about someone coming to knock my doors down, search my home and take me away because I dared to speak out against my government. Okay, maybe I'm paranoid, but there WAS and still IS reason to be paranoid.

None of these things have happened. Our Democratically elected Congress has not done its job. In fact, most of the members have completely refused to do their jobs inspite of the American people wanting them to do all the things I mentioned above. It is the year before the next Presidential election, so instead of doing the RIGHT thing, the thing that should be done, they were doing the "safe" thing, I guess in the hopes of winning the next election. At least I hope that is their plan because anything else seems just too egregious to me. I really don't want to be the kind of person who sees conspiracy and criminal activity in every corner of our government, but alas, that is what I am seeing.

We learned that our vets are not being taken care of when they return home from the war fronts. We learned that they are taking their own lives in vast numbers on a daily basis -- though, presumably, no one keeps track of such things. Politicians promised us they would do something about it, yet I have not seen anything much be done.

2007 found the first viable female and African American candidates running for President and the news media have acted like a bunch of poorly trained cocker spaniels, piddling all over themselves for the chance to talk to them and about them. It's sickening. I've got real burn out over the election already, have had for months now.

Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speak of the House. I thought that was exciting, at first, but now have found her to be a bitter disappointment overall. My friend, Cindy Sheehan, is running for Congress against her out in San Francisco and I can only say this: Run, Cindy, Run!

On the homefront, I am not writing as much and have, this year, refused most public speaking engagements. I guess I just got tired of preaching to the choir, the same group of people everywhere I went. At some point I just decided that if the American people, as a whole, could not see, refused to see, what was/is happening in our country, we deserved exactly what we got. It cannot and should never be left to the few to decide when our country has gone wrong. I got tired of the complacency, the electronically numbed robots in this country who care little for what is beyond the tip of their video screens.

I decided to reach beyond the people who have supported me in my work to end this war, to those who are middle of the road and maybe undecided. And I have made a difference with those people, even though it is just a tiny pothole in the road of life.

There were other reasons I quit, as well. Massive burn out, frustration, health problems (I was diagnosed with diabetes at the end of 2006 and have been working to get it under control -- which I am happy to report, it is!). My husband, Maxx, ended up in the hospital with stress related chest pains from a job that was sucking his soul dry. I wondered how much longer he would be with me on this earth as I watched the light go out in his eyes and it really scared me.

As 2007 comes to an end, some things have changed, but certainly not on the political front. Maxx no longer has that job he hated so much -- which really was a microcosm of the Bush administration and a very unhealthy place. I have seen the light and the fire come back into his eyes, his stature become straighter and taller, and his sense of humor and fun return. He is starting his own business and doing work around the house that has been held off for too long.

My daughters and grandson moved back to Houston. Dani came first, then Jaime & Aiden. Jaime and the little one are living with us for a little while to get back on their feet, so I have been reminded, quite well, what it is like to have a busy two year old boy in the house. And I remember, now, why we have children when we are young instead of middle aged. However, Aiden is the joy of my life and I look forward to every minute with him. Dani is starting school at the end of January.

My mother died in 2007 and I mourned her but also came to the realization and, eventually acceptance of our crazy relationship that lasted 45 years. I love you, Mom.

I pray and I hope for a better tomorrow, a better year ahead of me and my family. I plan to reconnect with my spiritual life and self, continue my work and writing, and try to find a peaceful place in which to be. Overall, we are happy and healthy and adjusting to the major changes in our personal lives here in the Branham household.

Let's hope that some way, somehow, someone in the Washington D.C. will step up to the plate and act like a leader, show the courage it takes, and do what needs to be done.

Wishing you all peace & love,
Amy

Romney's Tears

From another Gold Star Mom -- from her blog at http://gsmso.blogspot.com/2007/12/romneys-tears.html

There are a lot of things you can say to a Gold Star family and there are also a lot of things you shouldn't say to or about a Gold Star family. While most people are kind and empathetic when speaking to a family who has lost a loved one in war, some people can really be insensitive and insulting.

Mitt Romney, a Republican running for President was the latter this week. The AP reports that Mitt Romney's eyes filled with tears Monday as the Republican presidential contender recalled watching the casket of a soldier killed in Iraq return to the United States and imagined if it were one of his five sons.

How disingenuous. If there was a possibility that any of his 5 sons might serve their country in the military and die as a result, I might give him credit for his imagination. But Romney told us his sons are serving this country by campaigning for their father. What's the worst that could happen to them on the campaign trail? A paper cut? To suggest that serving your country campaigning for one's father is the same as serving your country in the military and underfire is just wrong. If it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable.

While I appreciate that he thinks he could imagine losing a child to war, Romney would have to have a hell of an imagination to get even anywhere near what my life is like since losing my only child, Lt Ken Ballard, to George Bush's war 3 1/2 years ago. There are not enough painful words in our language to describe the anguish that I and nearly 4000 other families feel as we wake up every morning knowing that our loved one is never coming home and that they will never again join us for the holidays. There are no words to describe the gaping hole in our hearts that will never, ever heal.

Perhaps Romney might try to imagine opening the door to the military casualty team to be told that your loved one is dead. He might try to imagine meeting his child's flag covered casket inside the belly of an airplane at the airport as he comes home for the last time. Or maybe he might imagine standing over his son's grave at Arlington National Cemetery with the sound of Taps is being played in the distance. But, mercifully, he will never know, because no one should ever know the reality of a Gold Star family.

If Mitt Romney finds imagining this war so painful, he could take steps to end this endless occupation. As a presidential candidate, Mitt Romney could make ending the war part of his platform. But, a quick search of his website lists issues such as Defeating the Jihadists, Competing with Asia, Taxes, Immigration, America's Culture and Values and others but has no specific statement on Iraq. I'm pretty sure that means it's okay with Mitt for other people's kids to keep getting blown up, as long as it is not one of his own.

Mitt Romney should stick to talking about things he knows. He will never know the pain of losing a child in a war he never supported.

Is anyone else out there in Cyberland tired of hearing about the Presidential election? Are you tired yet of hearing about Hillary and Obama, Mitt and Huckabee and Guiliani?

I am so tired of the pundits and their endless snithering about these candidates, quite honestly. They are so concerned about the polls, who is on according to what poll in which states, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then there's all the who said what about whom to contend with. Honestly, they are acting like a bunch of teenagers trading gossip and calling each other on the phone, stirring up trouble and keeping the rumors going.

Do you hear enough about where each candidate stands on the issues? Do you hear much about their voting records (if they are currently holding public office)?

This past week Chris Dodd came into my field of view. He caught my interest because he actually stood up, saw an issue that he felt strongly about, and did his job. He actually LEFT the campaign trail and went back to Washington to attend a vote! Oh my God, can you imagine that? What is this world coming to?

A person that I know recently had a job for a couple of years that was really a microcosm of the Bush Administration, though it was not politically related to him in any way whatsoever. However, the company was run in much the same way as the current administration is run. Anyway, several of the employees in this person's department were double dipping -- getting paid to do their jobs by the hour but instead of doing the job they were getting paid to do, they brought in other jobs that were supposed to be done in their free time at night and they were being paid as contractors to do.

In most companies, that would be grounds for being fired. Not in this company. Everyone knew about it yet no one stopped it.

One of the things that really bothers me about the current presidential campaign is that most of the current candidates are elected officials in some capacity. Yet, they are not at their jobs on a daily or even a regular basis. Instead, they are out campaigning and/or raising funds for their campaign. I believe that campaigning should be done on the weekends, during breaks or on holidays. The candates, especially if they are currently holding some kind of public office, should be required to actually be in their offices, doing their jobs during the election season. We, The People, are not paying them to be out on the road campaigning and raising money for their campaigns. We are paying them to be present at the job they were elected to do. Ever heard of butts in the chairs? That's a big part of why I've been so disgusted with this presidential campaign.

I still haven't decided who I'm going to vote for yet. I know who it won't be, and that list is growing longer. One thing is for sure, I am paying close attention to where they stand on several issues, including the Constitution.

Peace,
Amy

P.S. For a young man who had some pretty serious surgery this morning.... Get well soon. Sending you lots of love.

Where does that stuff go?

Have you ever put something down, dropped it, whatever, and it just completely disappeared? I'm talking crazy stuff that you KNOW was there 30 seconds ago, or you heard and saw it hit the floor, but it's no where to be found now.

Today a piece of the lemon cake I was eating fell off. Now, I'm not talking crumbs, this was a sizable chunk of that piece of cake. It just fell off and disappeared... I looked and looked and looked for it and it was just gone. A couple of hours later I found it -- sitting in a shoe that I was wearing when that darned piece of cake fell.

Then there was the day when Maxx was cleaning the kitchen and knocked a fork off the counter. It hit the floor, we heard it. But then it completely and totally vanished and we never saw it again. We looked all over that tiny little kitchen -- there was really no place for that fork to go that we wouldn't see. But it was gone! Just like that.

So, are there ripples in our universe that coincide with some other alternative universe that things go flying into and disappear? If there is, I wonder what those people think when our stuff goes flying into their reality out of no where??!!!

Just think about it...

A Gold Star Family Holiday

A Gold Star Family Holiday
By Amy Branham


A Gold Star Family is a family who has had a member of their immediate family killed in the line of duty during a time of war. At the time of this writing, there were 3,892 Gold Star Families just since the beginning of the war (or occupation) of Iraq. In my group, Gold Star Families Speak Out, we also include the families of those men and women who have taken their own lives.

So, just how does a Gold Star Family celebrate the holidays? The answer is most of us do not. At least not for the first couple of years.

This is the time of year when family togetherness is so cherished; rich with tradition and memories, and these things are simply too much for a Gold Star family to bear. It is a deeply depressing time of year because, after all, one of those we love dearest in the world is not with us anymore and will not ever be with us again. At a time when family togetherness, happy feelings and “Peace On Earth” are shoved down our throats, we literally just want to either stay in bed until January 2nd or run away and hide in some far corner of the universe somewhere until it’s all over.

The first holiday season after my son, Jeremy, died, I was shopping in a Target and saw a shirt I just knew he would have loved. I reached for that shirt, then pulled my hand back in dismay as I realized what I was about to do. I was going to buy that shirt for Jeremy. It had not yet fully sunk into my brain, although he had been gone for ten months by then, that he was not coming home for Christmas.

My family has continued to at least go through the motions of the holiday, even if our hearts haven’t quite been in it. Personally, I have done this in large part for my daughters, those who are left living in my family, who have always loved Christmas and all the traditions our family always celebrated. It was important to them that Mom put up the tree and the decorations, cook Christmas Eve dinner and be among the living for them. Their world was going to be okay as long as Mom at least seemed okay from the outside. That was important to me.

It’s gotten easier over the years (this will be our third year without Jeremy), in large part because of a grandson who lights up our days and makes it worthwhile.

Other families, though, do not celebrate the holidays. I’ve known of some who really do run away to the farthest place they can find until after the New Year. Others stay home in bed and watch TV. Some do not put up trees or lights or buy gifts. And many ask, especially the first year or so, that others not buy them gifts, send cards or invite them to parties.

There is a certain amount of guilt associated with the holiday season for Gold Star Families. We feel guilty for being alive when the one we love is dead. We feel guilty because we are not happy when we’re supposed to be full of those happy happy, joy joy thoughts and attitudes. We feel guilty because we are not buying gifts, nor do we feel up to participating in all of those things we used to do. Please, do not add to all of this. Just let us be and try your best to understand.

And, NEVER, EVER tell someone who is mourning that they need to get over it and get on with their lives. They will, eventually. But this is a healing process and for most of us, it takes years.

Families should ALWAYS respect the wishes of those Gold Star Families who do not wish to participate in the Holiday festivities. They have their reasons. If they do not want cards or gifts, do not buy them or send them. It would be selfish on your part to insist on doing so and not respecting their wishes. What would be appropriate, however, and probably much appreciated, is a phone call to say “I was thinking of you today”.

If you just cannot let the holiday go by without buying a gift, maybe an appropriate gift would be to donate to the family’s favorite charity in the loved one’s memory. This relieves the family of any guilt of not buying gifts, but is a thoughtful, helpful thing to do.

Be prepared, above all, to listen to the family member talk about the one who is not there with them any longer. They need to talk and relive their memories, especially at first when they are so fresh. This is a vitally important and part of the healing process. We are so afraid that our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, etc. will be forgotten over time! We want to remember them and to have them be remembered. So let us talk about them and our memories, the good times and the bad.

With the New Year, it is my wish, my hope and my dream that this war will end, we can bring our sons and daughters home to be with their families, and we will take care of them when they do finally come home. I do not want our nation to have any more Gold Star Families.

In Peace,
Amy Branham

What Has Changed?

Maxx and I sat up talking late into the night the other night, as we are prone to do from time to time, about the state of our country, the world, our kids and grandkids, and just life in general. Sometimes our discussions can last for days, a kind of running commentary on whatever topic it is we happen to stumble upon that captures our interest and/or imaginations.

Among our more recent running conversations has been the difference between our generations and the current younger generation of adults. I think that's a sign of older age setting in -- at least that's what I was always told.

Anyway, there are differences between every generation. Maxx grew up in the 50's and 60's, so he was around for all the hippy stuff, the Beatles, Rock N Roll when it was young, vinyl records, AM radio before FM, Viet Nam (he barely missed being drafted) and all that went with it, Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, and last, but certainly not least, the Equal Rights Amendment.

Now, I'm almost a decade younger than Maxx, well eight and a half years, actually, so my growing up years were the 60's and 70's. I barely remember so many of the big, important things that were going on when Maxx was a teenager in the 60's, which was a time that rocked our nation and challenged previously held views and notions.

But I'm not so much younger than Maxx that I don't remember war and the fear of it. I remember the Cold War and the threat of being nuked 24/7. I remember Viet Nam -- thank goodness the draft was stopped while I was still in high school. I remember the first Moon Walk and Neil Armstrong, vinyl records, AM radio and all those things.

What I don't remember is the Civil Rights Movement because, frankly, I don't think it ever had any kind of an impact in the small town where I lived at the time, in South Central Idaho. We had hippies who hung out on the Courthouse lawn with their long hair, bare chests and feet, irritating the locals.

The thing is, though, that back then, young people knew what was going on. They were involved and they had things they cared about outside of themselves. They (and by that, I mean "we") were not constantly immersed in cell phones, computers, texting, video games and connected to everything and everyone that wasn't right in front of them at the moment.

Maxx says the drug of choice for the younger generations today is electronic gadgets -- computers, IPods, cell phones, you name it. If you go to any mall or movie theater and watch the kids you'll see something interesting. Almost every one of them, even those hanging out in a group, are on their phones talking to other people who aren't there. But they are not communicating with or reacting to each other, the people who are right there with them.

I wonder, what do the people of this generation care about? Do they care that their education is substandard compared to the rest of the world. Do they care that there is a war going on and people are dying on the other side of the planet? Do they care about others who are going hungry?

I don't know. I haven't seen any evidence of these young people caring for anything more than what is right in front of them.

More later. I gotta get back to work!
Peace,
Amy

(CBS) "If he were anyone else, he'd probably be dead by now."

Advocacy Group Says, Without Government-Sponsored Health Care, V.P. Would Be Dead

(CBS) "If he were anyone else, he'd probably be dead by now."

So begins a health care union's newspaper advertisement which ran in Iowa Monday, pointedly referring to Vice President Dick Cheney as a beneficiary of government-sponsored health care unavailable to most other Americans.

The California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee, based in Oakland, hope the ad will bring attention to the issue of health care reform.

The ad depicts a patient, Cheney, whose history and prognosis - "four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator" - might disqualify him when applying for health coverage if he did not happen to be a member of the Executive Branch or Congress.

The procedure recently used to treat Cheney's irregular heartbeat, the ad notes, might not be available to average Americans.

Such an episode, for millions of Americans without access to health care, "might be a death sentence," the ad said.

The ad appeared in the Des Moines Register and in 9 other Iowa papers.

“The point we’re trying to make here is that health care is clearly the most critical domestic issue in this election campaign,” Charles Idelson, the groups' communications director, told the Quad City Times. He hopes Iowa voters will press the presidential candidates on the issue.

The group, a health care union with 75,000 members in 40 states, is advocating for universal healthcare reform through a single-payer-style system. They are seeking support for legislation on both state and federal levels which promotes single-payer coverage, including the National Health Insurance Act (HR 676), which would expand Medicare.

Cheney spokesperson Megan Mitchell gave a dismissive no-comment to news of the ad. "Something this outrageous does not warrant a response," she told The Wall Street Journal.

Hacked Computer

Over the weekend someone hacked into one of my computers via the internet and somehow managed to install spyware on the computer. This damn spyware tracks every keystroke, every website visited, everything. It slowed the computer down to the point that it's not usable. I bought a program that is *supposed* to remove the spyware, but so far no luck. I tried to do a system restore, but that didn't work, either.

Who the hell would do something like that? Who would even WANT to know what I'm doing on that computer? Why would anyone do something like that? I just pisses me off to no end that some idiotic moron out there in the cyberworld would act in such a way. That was my back up computer for work, just in case the one I use everyday to make my living goes down for some reason.

I'm just fucking pissed today.

Have a great day.
Amy

Thoughts on a Monday Morning

Wow. Just when you think things couldn't get any worse, that SOMEONE in Washington would finally have to do SOMETHING about this President and his administration, something comes along and does get worse. But still, nothing happens.

I'm talking about the NIE released last week, you know, that report about Iran that Bush says he didn't know about until about a week before it was released, that little report that Bush's VP sat on for six months, apparently because he didn't like what it said about Iran. I'm sorry to say, I don't believe for one iota of a second that Bush didn't know about this report and what it contained. He is quite simply not that stupid. If Cheney knew about it, Bush knew about.

And how about those torture tapes that were destroyed AFTER an investigation that clearly asked for those tapes? How about all those millions of destroyed emails?

I have to ask, is anyone up there in our nation's capital EVER going to grow a spine, some balls of ovaries and FINALLY do something about all of this? Or are they all in this together? I really think all those politicians are criminals, paid off by the corporations of this country to just do nothing...

Really. And I'm generally pretty moderate when it comes to politics, unless it comes to things like gay rights (Yeah, I think all men and women are created equal), separation of church and state, and abortion. Then I step off into the left of midline. What gets me in this situation our country is in now....is that the American people are crying out for someone to do something, and quick, but nothing is done more than paying lip service to the problems that are compouding daily.

You have to ask yourself... what the hell is going on?

Just my thoughts.
Peace,
Amy

DOOMSDAY SEED VAULT

Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, December 4, 2007

One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

Doomsday Seed Vault

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault's relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a common project, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rocks on Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinating things.

The first notable point is who is sponsoring the doomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are, as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the US agribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified (GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta, the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicals company through its Syngenta Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the private group who created the “gene revolution with over $100 million of seed money since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global network created by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its ideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

CGIAR and ‘The Project’

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction1, in 1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council and the Ford Foundation joined forces to create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines. By 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-created international research centers, the IITA for tropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice, Philippines, combined to form a global Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

CGIAR was shaped at a series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talks were the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harrar, Ford Foundation’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family’s international environmental organizer, who, as a Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It was part of the foundation’s decades long focus to turn science to the service of eugenics, a hideous version of racial purity, what has been called The Project.

To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Program and the World Bank. Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initial funds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning of the 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculture policy. And shape it did.

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to ‘master’ the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO ‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.

Genetically engineering a master race?

Now the Svalbard Seed Bank begins to become interesting. But it gets better. ‘The Project’ I referred to is the project of the Rockefeller Foundation and powerful financial interests since the 1920’s to use eugenics, later renamed genetics, to justify creation of a genetically-engineered Master Race. Hitler and the Nazis called it the Ayran Master Race.

The eugenics of Hitler were financed to a major extent by the same Rockefeller Foundation which today is building a doomsday seed vault to preserve samples of every seed on our planet. Now this is getting really intriguing. The same Rockefeller Foundation created the pseudo-science discipline of molecular biology in their relentless pursuit of reducing human life down to the ‘defining gene sequence’ which, they hoped, could then be modified in order to change human traits at will. Hitler’s eugenics scientists, many of whom were quietly brought to the United States after the War to continue their biological eugenics research, laid much of the groundwork of genetic engineering of various life forms, much of it supported openly until well into the Third Reich by Rockefeller Foundation generous grants.2

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in 1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.

The Green Revolution purported to solve the world hunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India and other select countries where Rockefeller worked. Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly something to boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharing the same.

In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolution was a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop a globalized agribusiness which they then could monopolize just as they had done in the world oil industry beginning a half century before. As Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’

Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution went hand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for the development of genetic engineering of plants and animals a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy. In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few others had a clue back then--- a revolution in agriculture production that would concentrate control of the food chain in corporate multinational hands, away from the traditional family farmer. 3

A crucial aspect driving the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation and US agribusiness companies was the fact that the Green Revolution was based on proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspect of hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity. Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication. Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gave yields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne by hybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the first generation.

That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meant farmers must normally buy seed every year in order to obtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of the second generation eliminated the trade in seed that was often done by seed producers without the breeder’s authorization. It prevented the redistribution of the commercial crop seed by middlemen. If the large multinational seed

companies were able to control the parental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmer would be able to produce the hybrid. The global concentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful of giant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the later GMO seed revolution. 4

In effect, the introduction of modern American agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial hybrid seeds all made local farmers in developing countries, particularly the larger more established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly US agribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was a first step in what was to be a decades-long, carefully planned process.

Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was making major inroads into markets which were previously of limited access to US exporters. The trend was later dubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it was agribusiness-controlled agriculture.

Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and of the CIA.

One major effect of the Green Revolution was to depopulate the countryside of peasants who were forced to flee into shantytown slums around the cities in desperate search for work. That was no accident; it was part of the plan to create cheap labor pools for forthcoming US multinational manufactures, the ‘globalization’ of recent years.

When the self-promotion around the Green Revolution died down, the results were quite different from what had been promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminate use of the new chemical pesticides, often with serious health consequences. The mono-culture cultivation of new hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility and yields over time. The first results were impressive: double or even triple yields for some crops such as wheat and later corn in Mexico. That soon faded.

The Green Revolution was typically accompanied by large irrigation projects which often included World Bank loans to construct huge new dams, and flood previously settled areas and fertile farmland in the process. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.

Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were also used, creating additional markets for the oil and chemical giants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the Green Revolution was merely a chemical revolution. At no point could developing nations pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get the credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans by Chase Bank and other large New York banks, backed by US Government guarantees.

Applied in a large number of developing countries, those loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money.

Initially various government programs tried to provide some loans to farmers so that they could purchase seeds and fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in this kind of program had to borrow from the private sector. Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informal loans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits of the initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sell most if not all of their produce to pay off loans and interest. They became dependent on money-lenders and traders and often lost their land. Even with soft loans from government agencies, growing subsistence crops gave way to the production of cash crops.5

Since decades the same interests including the Rockefeller Foundation which backed the initial Green Revolution, have worked to promote a second ‘Gene Revolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway termed it several years ago, the spread of industrial agriculture and commercial inputs including GMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa

With the true background of the 1950’s Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it becomes especially curious that the same Rockefeller Foundation along with the Gates Foundation which are now investing millions of dollars in preserving every seed against a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investing millions in a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with the same Rockefeller Foundation which created the “Gene Revolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directors confirms this.

It includes none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptance speech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape Town South Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I accept this challenge with gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.’

In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African, Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 – 2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K. Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance for AGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.

To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRA includes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Director, Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, the new Africa Green Revolution is clearly a high priority of the Rockefeller Foundation.

While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsanto and the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed at the heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops.

Africa is the next target in the US-government campaign to spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an ideal candidate. Not surprisingly many African governments suspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitude of genetic engineering and biosafety projects have been initiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOs into Africa’s agricultural systems. These include sponsorships offered by the US government to train African scientists in genetic engineering in the US, biosafety projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank; GMO research involving African indigenous food crops.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for years to promote, largely without success, projects to introduce GMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backed research that supports the applicability of GMO cotton in the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.

Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’s seed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived of an ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the ‘Seeds of Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a green revolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed, of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. 6

Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollars into a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to develop GMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part of CGIAR as well.7

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leads the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one and the same time to back proliferation of patented and soon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, a process which, as it has in every other place on earth, destroys the plant seed varieties as monoculture industrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the same time they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserve every seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future’ to restate their official release?


It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gates foundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style Green Revolution in Africa at the same time they are quietly financing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. The GMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in the Svalbard project.

Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the people involved call up the worst catastrophe images of the Michael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi thriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening the entire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s most secure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen of the GMO Green Revolution--the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.

The Svalbard project will be run by an organization called the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.

Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is the Secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is also a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, the much-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Rai has served as Board Member for CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Member of the Executive Council of the CGIAR.

Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angels include as well, in the words of the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors include GMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of Basle Switzerland, CGIAR and the State Department’s energetically pro-GMO agency for development aid, USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO and population reduction foxes guarding the hen-house of mankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. 8

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation along with the major genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPont and Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.

Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed.

This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forces farmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn, wheat whatever major crops they need to feed their population. If broadly introduced around the world, it could within perhaps a decade or so make the world’s majority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto or DuPont or Dow Chemical.

That, of course, could also open the door to have those private companies, perhaps under orders from their host government, Washington, deny seeds to one or another developing country whose politics happened to go against Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events. The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.

These private companies, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms of stewardship of human life. They developed and proliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, Agent Orange. They covered up for decades clear evidence of carcinogenic and other severe human health consequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They have buried serious scientific reports that the world’s most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, the essential ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tied to purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineered seeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water.9 Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmed it has contaminated the country’s groundwater.10

The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the raw material for plant breeding and for a great deal of basic biological research. Several hundred thousand samples are distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’s FAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, the largest being held by the United States Government. Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descending order of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain of seed banks in select centers around the world.

CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and the potential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Can the development of patented seeds for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ 11

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. 12

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.

Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’ 13

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation just released by Global Research. He also the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact by e-mail: info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). His writings can
be consulted on www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net and on Global Research.

Enough Heroes to Fill a Book!

By David Swanson

"A very few serve the state with their consciences, and so necessarily resist it." -Henry David Thoreau

"We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal." -Martin Luther King Jr.

"A real cynic isn't going to blow the whistle. And a real radical probably won't be in a position to do it. It takes someone who believes in the system far more than the system ever believes in itself." -C. Fred Alford

Actually Thoreau is wrong. More than a few serve the state and resist its abuses, at significant risk to themselves. But very few of us know all of their stories. Resisters of the occupation of Iraq in the U.S., British, and Australian governments and militaries are plentiful enough to fill a book, and they've filled a good one.

"Dissent: Voices of Conscience: Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq" is the forthcoming work of U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright and Susan Dixon (forthcoming after a long delay imposed by the State Department). Wright is herself one of the many heroes whose stories are told in the book. Many of us who follow the war and the peace movement know Ann and know that she resigned from the U.S. diplomatic corps in protest of the invasion of Iraq. But can you name the other two U.S. diplomats who had already done the same thing? Do you know their stories?

What about the stories of the high level resisters in the British government? We've heard some of their names before, but here are the stories and statements of people like Katherine Gunn, Robin Cook, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Clare Short, Carne Ross, and Craig Murray. Here is Frank Grevil, a Danish military intelligence officer who revealed how early his government knew of U.S. plans for war and how clearly his government knew there was no solid evidence of weapons in Iraq. Here, too, is Andrew Wilkie, an retired Australian Lieutenant Colonel and a civilian analyst who resigned in protest of his government's lies about Iraqi weapons, leading to censurein the Senate of Prime Minister John Howard, who recently lost a bid for reelection.

And what of whistleblowers in Washington? Do you know what Bunnatine Greenhouse, Jesselyn Radack, Mary Ryan, Sibel Edmonds, Russell Tice, and Coleen Rowley, among others, did, and what their government did to them to express its gratitude? These are our heroes. And like all heroes, they are often flawed. They knew about evil deeds because they were working for organizations some of us would never choose to work for, or because they went along with things they shouldn't have. And in some cases it took them a long time before they found the courage to speak out. The same can be said, of course, of members of the U.S. military who have resisted this illegal invasion and occupation.

But military heroes fill much of this book: officers, lawyers, whistleblowers, resisters and deserters, those facing court martial, those fled to Canada. Here are collected the stories and statements of those who spoke some bit of unpermitted truth: General Eric Shinseki, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroft, General (Ret.) Anthony Zinni, Lieutenant General (Ret.) William Odom, Lieutenant General (Ret.) Gregory Newbold, Major General (Ret.) Paul Eaton, Major General (Ret.) John Batiste.

Here are the lawyers within the military who have worked for justice: Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz. And the whistleblowers in the ranks: Specialist Joe Darby, Captain Ian Fishback, Seargent Samuel Provance. Do you know these stories? These are our heroes. Do you know anyone serving in the U.S. government or military? Please send them a copy of this book. I'm sure the authors would be delighted to print an expanded edition with your friends in it when they speak truth to power.

Above all, "Dissent: Voices of Conscience" presents a sampling of the many stories of soldiers who have put down their weapons in this unjust war: Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Kevin Benderman, Stephen Funk, Abdullah Webster, Aidan Delgado, Katherine Jashinski, Melanie McPherson, Ehren Watada, Augustin Aguayo, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Joshua Key, Patrick Hart, Chris Magaoay, Darrell Anderson, Ivan Brobeck, Kyle Snyder, Ben Griffin, Malcolm Kendal-Smith, Mohisin Khan. There are many more.

All of these people have recognized that there was only one thing they could justly do, and they have done it. Perhaps it was illegal or disobedient, but it had to be done. Our Congress has one legal move remaining in impeachment, beyond which it too will have to step outside what is legal or lose its existence. But we as citizens have no right to ask that of our representatives or to ask those in the position to do so to resist, to leak, or to refuse illegal orders, unless we too recognize our one remaining move. We've voted and marched and lobbied and educated. Creative nonviolent civil disobedience is the one move remaining to us. It's our turn to step up and be heroes. It's now or never. Want some inspiration? Read this book: http://www.voicesofconscience.com

An American Nightmare

A Pseudofiction by Amy Branham
PART I – THE WOMAN
George climbed into bed beside Laura, tired from the long day of work. Running a nation isn’t easy. It’s really hard work. The war in Iraq wasn’t going well and disapproval by the American people was growing by the day. His economic policies were awash. “You have to make hard decisions when you are President of a country”, he told himself. “I’m the President and I can do what I want. The people elected me, and that gave me the freedom to do what needs to be done.”

George drifted off to sleep with that thought running through his mind.

In the night he was awakened by a sound. He opened his eyes and scanned the room but saw nothing. Laura was still peacefully sleeping, undisturbed. Unconcerned, George closed his eyes. The White House was teeming with security at all hours of the day and night. He was safe. Nothing could happen to him here.

Just as he began to drift back into dreamland, he heard the sound again, louder this time. It seemed to be coming from the far corner of the bedroom. This time George sat up in bed and looked around. The sound continued to grow steadily louder. Crying, someone was crying. Who would be in his room crying at this time of night?
George sat there in his bed for a moment, not able to decide what to do. Where were those Secret Services agents that were supposed to be protecting him, he thought to himself. George rolled out of bed, slipped his slippers on and grabbed his robe from the back of a nearby chair as he headed for the door, intending to find out where his guards were. As he did so, he looked back to the corner where the noise was coming from and stopped.

In the corner stood a woman, her head covered. She was weeping and moaning, a sound that came from the depths of her soul, eerily ghost-like that almost gave George a chill. He turned to face the woman.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” George demanded of the woman.

The woman said nothing, but took a step toward George. He stood his ground.

"How did you get in here?” George demanded of the woman.

The woman still did not answer him. She continued to advance toward him, her cries growing louder and more shrill with each step. George looked to the bed for help from Laura, but Laura was still sound asleep, her chest rising and falling gently with each breath. How could she not hear this?

The woman was now just a few steps away from George. He found himself backing away from her. One step. Two steps. Three steps. His back was now against a wall and he looked around, panic stricken, trying to find a way out. The door, there was the door that led out of the room, he thought to himself. Just get to the door and you can get out, call security.

There was no escape for George on this night. He was caught in a nightmare of his own making.

As he tried to inch his way along, back against the wall, the woman spoke to him.

“Mr. Bush, you killed me.”

“What? I haven’t killed anyone,” George replied.

“Mr. Bush, you are responsible for my death. You killed me with your bombs. I was in my home, sleeping in my bed. Your bombs came and hit my house. I died.”

“I’m dreaming. This is a nightmare. I didn’t kill anyone.” George said to himself as he began pinching himself on the arm trying to wake himself up. “Wake up, George, wake up!”

The woman continued, taking a step closer to George, “Mr. Bush, you invaded my country. You killed me. My children are now without a mother, my husband without his wife. They cry every day, Mr. Bush. My country is a war zone and an unsafe place to live. This, Mr. Bush, you have done.”

“No, no, I am bringing Democracy and freedom to your country! I have freed you from a tyrannical leader! I have killed no one!”

The woman’s hand reached out from under her robes, her skin the color of death. With her hand she pushed back the cover on her head, revealing a terrible gash that almost made her face look inhuman, unrecognizable.

“Mr. Bush, your bombs did this to me.”

George looked with fascinated horror at the woman’s face, his stomach feeling queasy. Then he looked away from the woman, unwilling to accept what he was seeing with his own eyes. “This is only a nightmare, a really bad dream. This isn’t real.”
“This is real. Now, you are coming with me.” The woman’s hand reached for George and he pulled away. Her cold hand touched his arm and instantly he was gone from his bedroom, transported to a cold, dark deserted road in the blink of an eye.

George was still pinching himself. The pain from the pinches was getting stronger each time, but he still was not waking up. George was confused. He looked down and saw the slippers on his feet, his blue terry cloth robe on his body, the red and white striped pajamas he remembered putting on just before climbing into bed with Laura.

“Follow me,” the woman said simply as she opened the door to a building off the road. George had no intention of following this woman and he stood there in the road, looking for a way out.

“Help me!” he shouted, hoping someone would hear him. “I’m the President of the United States and I’ve been kidnapped! Help!” George yelled. No one came out of the buildings. The street was deserted. George looked around and saw buildings made of stone and dirt all around him, buildings that seemed only slightly familiar, but he could not quite place where he had seen them before.

The woman motioned for him to follow as she stepped through the doorway of the nearest building. “Come, Mr. Bush.”

George had no intention of following that woman. His mind was filled only with thoughts of escape, of somehow getting back to his bedroom at the White House where he would be safe.

“How can I do that?” He said to himself. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. This is a dream, a really, really bad dream.”

The woman came back out into the road. “Mr. Bush, you must come with me. I have much to show you this night.” She turned around and walked back into the building.
Reluctantly, George followed the woman through the door. Inside, he found a spacious room lit with the soft light from candles. One of the first things he noticed was that the room was cold, as his body shivered. George closed his robe more tightly to keep out the chill and wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt to get warm. As his eyes adjusted to the light he was able to look around the sparsely decorated and furnished room. There was a table in the center of the room, at which a man was sitting, staring off into the night. In his hands he held a picture.

George took a step towards the man. “Hey, you, you gotta help me! I’ve been kidnapped! I’m the President of the United States!”

The man didn’t so much as twitch. He continued to stare off into space, unaware of his guests.

“He cannot hear you.” The woman said. She was standing next to George.

“This man is my husband, Abdul. The woman in the picture is me, before I died.”

“Hey, you!” George called out to the man, unbelieving, desperate to escape.

“Mr. Bush, listen to me. Abdul cannot hear you. He cannot see you. We are invisible to his eyes and ears.

George walked over to the man. He looked over the man’s shoulder at the picture in his hands. It was of a beautiful woman. Her long, dark hair framed her face beautifully and her dark eyes seemed to pierce his soul as she looked back from the picture. George placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, but his hand went right through the man’s flesh. The man shuddered, not aware of what just happened to him.

“Whaaa -----?” George exclaimed.

“You are not really here, Mr. Bush. Your body is back at home, lying next to your wife in your bed. It is your spirit, your soul that is here tonight with me, Mr. Bush.” The woman told him.

She went on. “Mr. Bush, tonight you are to see some of the death and destruction you have wrought upon my people, my country. For this you are responsible. Tonight you will see the sorrow and despair of my people, my family. You will begin to rethink the occupation of my country that you call a liberation.”

With that, George was once again transported from the room he was standing in to another place he did not know. He found himself standing in a pile of rubble. There were people shrieking and screaming all around him, running in different directions. Smoke billowed up into the air and dust was falling all around him. In the distance he could hear sirens blaring, coming closer.

“Another bomb just exploded here, Mr. Bush. I want you to watch closely. Pay attention to everything.” The ghostly woman next to him whispered in his ear.
As George watched, a man somehow climbed out of the rubble, covered in dirt and blood. Other men saw him and scrambled to help him. The man stumbled as he tried to take a step and the others nearest him caught him before he fell.

“My wife! My children! They are in there! Please, Allah, help them!” The man cried.
A swarm of men, young and old, descended on the rubble, pulling it away with their bare hands, piece by piece, calling the names of the family members stuck in the rubble. Shortly a body was pulled from the rubble, a young boy. A man silently and with tears running down his cheeks, carried the lifeless body to the father.
Others were pulled from the rubble, some lifeless, covered with blood and dust. A young girl was rescued, barely alive, with a broken arm. George watched as the rubble was pulled from the body of a woman, her body curled around the form of a baby as though to protect it from harm. The baby was alive. The woman was not.

“No. No. NO! This is a dream. I am not awake. This isn’t real!” George said of the carnage before him. “In a little while I will wake up and forget all about this terrible nightmare!” George insisted.

“This is not a dream, Mr. Bush. It is very real and you will remember it when you awaken in the morning,” said the woman next to him.

George looked away, turned his back on the horror and destruction he was witnessing. “Take me away from this,” he begged the woman. “Let me go back to my bed, back to my sleep…”

With a start, George awakened from his sleep and sat up in bed. “Wow.” He thought to himself, “that was quite a dream I had last night. What a nightmare!”

George got up and began to dress for the day. He went down to breakfast where he found Laura finishing her first cup of coffee.

“Good morning, dear,” Laura said as he entered the room. “Did you rest well last night?”

“Yes,” George answered, the dreams of the night already gone from his little mind.
As George poured a cup of coffee one of his aides came bustling into the room.

“Mr. President,” said the aide, “there has been an incident. If you will follow me, Sir, we will brief you. This needs your immediate attention.”

“It can wait a few minutes.” Responded George.

“Sir, with all due respect, this needs your attention immediately. It cannot wait,” the aide insisted.

“What in the world could be so important that it can’t wait five minutes for me to have my breakfast?” The President asked grouchily.

“Sir, about two hours ago civilian homes in Baghdad were bombed. There are hundreds dead. There’s a huge outcry from around the world. You must come now, Sir.”

“I’ll be there after I finish my breakfast. You are dismissed.” The President took a swig of his orange juice and dug into the pile of biscuits and gravy on the plate in front of him.

The aide stood stubbornly in the middle of the room, staring at the President.

“I thought I dismissed you.” Said George.

“Sir, I was ordered to bring you to the Briefing Room immediately. I’m not leaving until you come with me. I don’t think you understand, Mr. President. This incident is all over the news. It is imperative that you come with me now, Sir,” responded the aide.

Finally, with one last swig of his orange juice and a last bite of his breakfast, George wiped his mouth on a napkin and got up from his chair.

“This had better be good,” he told the aide as they hurried down the corridor. “Otherwise, your ass is fired.” By this time George was thoroughly irritated.

“Yes, Sir.”

The aide opened the door to the Briefing Room and stepped aside for George to walk through. As George entered the room, he noted that most of his highest level aides and cabinet members were already seated, discussing the events. All immediately stopped talking as he entered the room, standing up from their chairs to greet him.

“Mr. President,” they said in unison.

“All right, what’s so goddamn important that I had to be dragged away from my breakfast this morning? It had better be good!” snarled George as he took his seat in the empty chair at the head of the table.

“Mr. President,” began his Security Advisor, “there has been an incident in Baghdad.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard. Get on with it. I have a busy morning.”

“I suggest you rearrange your schedule for the day, Mr. President. This one is big,” replied another advisor.

“Just how damn bad could it be?” The President replied.

“Just watch.” With that, the Security Advisor pushed the button of a remote control and the TV at the end of the room, came on. George watched as a sense of déjà vu descended upon him. He absent-mindedly rubbed his arm and sensed a touch of soreness as he did so. He watched as the events on the television screen played out, exactly as he saw them in his dream the previous night. Rubble everywhere, men scrambling through rubble as far as the camera could see, pulling broken bodies out. In one scene, a man was being pulled through the rubble covered in dust and blood, his friends catching him as he stumbled. In the next, another man carryied the body of a dead child to him. A little girl was pulled from the rubble, alive, her arm twisted and distorted.

“Enough!” shouted George. “Turn it off!”

“Mr. President, last night numerous homes in this neighborhood of Baghdad were bombed. We received intelligence saying this was where some of the masterminds of Al Qaeda were staying, planning suicide bombing missions. We called in an air strike,” Donald Rumsfeld told him.

“Did you get them?” Asked George.

“I don’t believe they were ever there at all. We are receiving reports that there are at least 25-30 dead Iraqi civilians, Sir, many of them women and children,” another aide continued.

“Leaders of nations across the world are furious, calling for a statement from the United States, an explanation of what happened, the events of the night.” Mr. Rumsfeld stated.

“What do we tell them? What do we do?” The question hung in the air.

George sat there, trembling, not believing what he saw on the television screen. “No, no,” he thought to himself. “It was only a dream, only a dream.” He sat in silence, unable to answer the question.

“Mr. President,” Ms. Rice said, interrupting his thoughts, “We need to make a statement, say something, do something.”

“Yes, yes. Continue the course. We are fighting terrorism and sometimes civilians get hurt. This is a war and these things happen. We are sorry for the loss of life. We are bringing Democracy and Freedom to Iraq. Stay the course. Stay the course…” George rambled.

He had to escape this room, go somewhere and be alone, gather his thoughts. “It was only a dream, only a dream. I’m still dreaming. This isn’t real.” George repeated over and over silently to himself.

“Excuse me, Mr. President? What did you say?” asked the gentleman sitting next to him.

“What? Oh, I must have been thinking out loud. Y’all take care of this. You know what to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.” With that, George got up and left the room, leaving the attendees of the meeting in mute shock.
Somehow, George got himself out of the room and ran down the hall to the nearest washroom. Once inside, he locked the door. He went to the sink and splashed cold water on his face in an effort to wake himself up. “Only a dream” he muttered to himself as he looked at his face in the mirror. “Just a dream. Not real.” He rubbed his arm once again, realizing it was a little sore. Quickly he unbuttoned the cuffs of the sleeve and pushed the sleeve up. He was surprised to see bruises up and down the length of his arm. “What the hell,” George muttered.

There was a knock at the door.

“Mr. President, are you all right, Sir?” a voice on the other side of the door asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a minute,” George replied. He took another minute or two to pull himself together.

George emerged from the washroom feeling shaky. He rubbed his arm as he walked down the hall on his way to the Oval Office.

In his office he found Condi and Rummy waiting for him, talking quietly.

“Mr. President.” They acknowledged as he walked into the room.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Mr. President, we have got to deal with this situation in Baghdad. Already this morning the switchboard has been deluged with calls from around the world.” Rummy stated.

“Handle it.” George said.

“Mr. President, we need a statement from you,” stated Condi.

“What the hell do you want me to say? Oh, I’m sorry. We had bad information. We bombed your homes and killed your families. This is war, a war on terror. These things are going to happen in a war. It isn’t pretty. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?” George exclaimed.

“Sir, this has become an international incident. I advise you to not make light of it. This is a disaster for us – for you politically. Now we have to do some kind of damage control. You have to appear before the American people and the world, come across as being sympathetic and apologetic. You have got to say something,” Rummy told him.

“Screw them. Screw them all! We are bringing Democracy and Freedom to the Iraqi people. We took Saddam Hussein out. We are fighting a war on terror!” The President screamed.

Condi took a deep breath. “Sir,” she said, “Members of the United Nations are holding an emergency session tomorrow. They are calling for a vote regarding America’s so-called occupation of Iraq. Before this incident our numbers were falling, our support from the American people and nations around the world was already plummeting. This is a P.R. disaster for you and for the United States. In order to even begin to turn this around, you, as President of the United States of America, are going to have to appear on television, give a speech. Make a statement about this. You can’t just ignore this situation, it’s not going to go away.”
George stood at the window, looking out across the lawn as he rubbed his arm absentmindedly. Turning away from the window he said, “We have to stay the course in order to honor our commitments and the loss of life.”

Condi and Rummy looked at each other, eyebrows raised in question.

“George,” Rummy said, “what are we going to do? What are you going to say?”

“I’m not going to say or do anything right now. One of you can prepare a statement and send it out. I’m going to go finish my breakfast.” With that, George left the room.

...To Be Continued