Responsibility
By Amy Branham
One would think we would feel some sense of validation knowing that all we accused our government of doing: the lying, the torture, the deceit, is true. Piece by piece and time after time those of us in the peace movement and, in particular, Gold Star Families who have worked in the peace movement have learned we were right. I don’t know about the rest of the families today, but I can tell you, I do not feel in the least bit happy about it.

For those of you whose heads have been in a hole somewhere out in Never Never Land, let me explain to you what I am talking about. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan wrote a book that has been talked about hour after hour this week called “What Happened”. He talks about the lead up to the war and how the Bush administration fed all of us, including him, propaganda as they beat the drums to illegally invade Iraq. It is, seemingly, a tell-all book written by a man who now says he has a duty to the truth.

Sir, you have always had a duty to tell the truth, to speak truth to power. As a public servant, that should have always been your moral and ethical responsibility! To do anything less leaves you culpable in one of the greatest crimes against humanity of all time. If you knew what the administration was spewing were lies, you should have said something and done something. But you did not and because of it, all of us have suffered. You were not alone in this, I’ll give you that. There were many others who spewed the lies, the rhetoric, the propaganda that cost so many lives and so many trillions of dollars. You helped to totally ruin a foreign country and kill their civilians.

I can feel little more than anger today, after I have listened to hours of interviews and talking points on the TV and radio.

A few years ago I never thought I’d find myself in the position I am in today, as I look back over time and what I have experienced because of this war and this disastrous administration. I have been called a traitor to my country, unpatriotic, and a disgrace to my son and his service to his country. I have been threatened physically and shouted at by misled people (who are generally otherwise probably pretty decent people) who thought I was crazy because I did not believe. My phones have been tapped and my emails read illegally. One morning during August of 2005, shortly after coming home from Crawford, Texas, my husband went outside to find a government car parked in front of our home, the windows blacked out. The car sped away as soon as they spotted my husband.

We have worried for our jobs and the safety of our family. Many of our friends thought we were just plain nuts, while we have had others who worked for the government tell us, we can’t be friends anymore – it endangers us and our jobs. Even our own family thought we had lost our marbles.

Yet, I cannot lay full blame on Scott McClellan. The blame for all of this also lies with the media, who did not question properly even though it would have put their jobs on the line. The blame also lies with our elected officials who should have questioned more carefully and explained to the American people what they were doing.

We no longer have a system of checks and balances on the Presidency of this country, in Congress or in the media. When responsible, patriotic citizens stand up to hold our government and the media to accountability, we are generally ignored and pushed to the side like an unwanted pile of weeds.

The corruption goes down to the very deepest, darkest levels of our society now. When people like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and the likes of Fox News and the other Murdock-owned media outlets only report what the government wants them to report, there is something seriously wrong. When people are getting rich off the war there is something wrong.

We know the truth. There is inescapable evidence right in our faces as to what the truth is. Yet, absolutely nothing is being done to hold the Bush administration accountable for its actions. Those few honorable elected representatives who have tried eventually get buried and forgotten. It is not just the Republicans who are responsible for this, the Democrats hold equal responsibility for not taking responsibility, holding the administration accountable and doing what is right.

What we have all feared for so long has come to pass… The terrorists won, but not in the way we thought they would. It did not take more violence, only a government and military industrial complex that fed upon our worst nightmares and fears. Worse, We, The People, let them.

Amy Branham
Houston, TX
Gold Star Mom for Peace

Bothersome

It really bothers me when someone promises to help a person you love, professes their love for your loved one as well, then does not follow through and actually help... You know who you are. And I will not trust you again... Those you promised to help are in desperate straits and working hard while they starve... once again you let me and my family down, as you always have and forever will.

Memorial Day 2008

Yesterday afternoon, after a short morning of work, Maxx and I traveled the 20 or so miles from our home into Houston's Hermann Park with the intention of helping the Veteran's for Peace set up the memorial display for the 4,000+ soldiers whose lives have been sacrificed for the war in Iraq. There is also a section for the soldiers who died in Afghanistan as well as a memorial for those have taken their own lives and a section for the Iraqi people who have died. It is a moving, amazing tribute to the soldiers and their service to our country.

Alas, we arrived to late to help set up the display. In the past, this has pretty much taken up the whole day or at least most of it. This year, though, there were plenty of volunteers and the reading of the names and setting of the flags was done in pretty quick order! I was pleased to hear this.

We don't always go down to these memorial displays when they are put up. It's just too hard to see all those flags that represent one human being whose life has ended. It's too hard to see the number of those flags go up every time. For three years I have been trying to stop the war and have not been able to do it.

However, I do find comfort in knowing that I have, in some small way, helped to shine the national spotlight on the war, on the people who were responsible for starting the war, and the lies that led to the war. When I first started writing and protesting, 70% or more of the people of this country were supportive and in favor of the war. 70% or more of the people in this country supported the President and his ill-begotten presidency. Now, those numbers have done a 180-degree turn and 30% support the war and/or the President.

Memorial Day... The day we remember those who served our country and who gave their lives for us. We must remember them. But we must also remember those who are currently serving or who have served. We must cover their backs because they have covered ours.

If we do not do it, who will?

On another note... one thing I noticed that was just crazy... On our way to the memorial we traveled a couple of different freeway systems (290, 610, 59). Considering that it is a holiday weekend, I would have expected to see more traffic. There was probably less than half the usual traffic. A sign of the times? Probably. Things are changing and people are staying home because of the high price of gas and food. Our lives, as a country, are only beginning to change. What will it be like this time next year?

Today we are home. I have been working in my gardens and Maxx has been trying to finish up a project of his. Sure wish we were out doing something fun like camping!

Peace,
Amy

Wednesday Thoughts

It's Wednesday afternoon. Work is slow and I really don't have a whole lot to do. So I thought it would be good to just sit down and play catch up.

The dust from our family crisis a week ago has settled (some) and I've learned some really important lessons for myself. I truly hope the others in my family are learning. What is most important to me concerning my offspring is that they understand -- Mom is not always going to be around or able to help them. They must learn to take care of themselves. From what I see, they are taking care of each other, which is a good thing -- to a point.

Sometimes it really seems like everyone around me is in a state of flux or chaos. I feel like the willow in the wind, ever bending but never breaking...

Maxx and I went to a preconvention meeting last night for Obama delegates going to the state convention in a couple of weeks. It was nice to get out and not be such a hermit for a while, and even, surprisingly, ran into a few old friends that I truly do enjoy being around. That was a real treat. I made friends with a couple of new people and talked politics and war with quite a few others. It was good. I'm not going to the convention because I have to stay home chained to my desk, working, but Maxx will be there and he's working the angles.

I'm concerned that many of these die-hard democrats are seeing this election as more of a party and not taking seriously the real issues of our day. The delegates who want to go to the national convention later this year are really going all out to get people to vote for them! We've had emails, mail outs, invitations to parties and all kinds of stuff. A lot of these people are spending lots of money to make this happen. It just doesn't seem right to me.

Anyway, I was really proud last night as I stood in the club. There was a kind of "click" as things just fell into place for me. The club was called Club Kobain after Curt Kobain, former lead singer of Nirvana, my son's favorite band and singer. I felt kinda like Jeremy was standing there saying, "Yeah, Mom! This is right." We listened to Barack Obama give his speech and I really felt a sense of hope, of pride.

I thought, as I stood there, about a lot of things that brought us to the moment when Senator Obama could claim the majority of delegates for the nomination in this race. I do not take credit for much in my life, but I will take a little from time to time. And I'll pat myself on the back because if it had not been for a couple of moms who marched to the President's ranch, who said, the war is wrong, the President is wrong and our sons are dead now, would we be where we are today with a candidate for President who agrees with us? Hurricane Katrina coming on the heels of our march in Crawford gave the whole movement a great big giant push forward as well.

Another thought that came to mind, and has repeatedly over the past few months... I was born in the early 1960's, a child who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement, the Hippies and Free Love and, a little later, the Women's Rights Movement. Even in a protected place like Southern Idaho and Utah, I knew there was change happening from the bottom up. Although the places I lived were ultra-conservative and did not believe in equal rights (they were happy for women to stay home barefoot and pregnant most of the time), I did grow up with a sense of equality for all humankind. Yes, there was racism and still is within even my own blood relatives. And yes, many of them also feel a woman's place is in the home. But for the most part, civil rights and liberty equal for all has become the norm.

I am a product of the Civil Rights Movement and of the ERA. I taught my son and my daughters what I learned and now, they have the expectation that a woman is equal to a man and they do not seem to see color amongst people. Isn't this exactly what those who led us wanted?

And now, in the year 2008, for the first time in my life -- and I did not think it would ever happen -- the best, most viable candidates to lead our country are an African American male who was born the same year as I and a woman who was college age during the Women's Liberation Movement of the 70's.

Truly, this is a culmination of all the years of work, of raising our children to belive in what can be and not just in what is. Truly, this is a time to marvel even if the issues were not so important this time around.

And the issues are truly what separates these two candidates. There are millions of lives depending on where these two human beings stand and where they will take our country from here.

I would remind the Democrats of this, if I were to go to the state or national conventions. I would remind them... the war was handled improperly and hundreds of thousands are either dead or severely wounded in some way. I would remind them that this war for oil is sending our country into the deepest dark place that we have seen in a long time, if ever. I would remind them that it is not just color or sex or money that is at stake.

That is why I must vote for Obama.... In him I find a sense of hope, of humanity, of change, and a reason to believe again.

The Bushes and Hitler's Appeasement

by Robert Perry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/051808.html

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush’s own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.

If Borah, an isolationist Republican from Idaho, sounded naïve saying “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided,” then what should be said about Bush’s grandfather and other members of his family providing banking and industrial assistance to the Nazis as they built their war machine in the 1930s?

The archival evidence is now clear that Prescott Bush, the president’s grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from and collaborated with key financial backers of Nazi Germany.

That business relationship continued after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and even after Germany declared war on the United States following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It stopped only when the U.S. government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the “Trading with the Enemy Act.”

So, perhaps instead of holding up Sen. Borah to ridicule, Bush might have acknowledged in his May 15 speech that his forebears also were blind to the dangers of Hitler.

Bush might have noted that his family’s wealth, which fueled his own political rise, was partly derived from Nazi collaboration and possibly from slave labor provided by Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

A more honest speech before the Knesset – on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s founding – might have contained an apology to the Jewish people from a leading son of the Bush family for letting its greed contribute to Nazi power and to the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, there was just the jab at Sen. Borah, who died in 1940.

President Bush apparently saw no reason to remind the world of a dark chapter from the family history. After all, those ugly facts mostly disappeared from public consciousness soon after World War II.

Protected by layers of well-connected friends, Prescott Bush brushed aside the Nazi scandal and won a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, which enabled him to start laying the foundation for the family’s political dynasty.

In recent years, however, the archival records from the pre-war era have been assembled, drawing from the Harriman family papers at the Library of Congress, documents at the National Archives, and records from war-crimes trials after Germany’s surrender.

Managers for the Powerful

One can trace the origins of this story back more than a century to the emergence of Samuel Bush, George W. Bush’s great-grandfather, as a key manager for a set of powerful American business families, including the Rockefellers and the Harrimans. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Family Chronicles: The Patriarchs.”]

That chapter took an important turn in 1919 when investment banker George Herbert Walker teamed up with Averell Harriman, scion to a railroad fortune, to found a new investment banking firm, W.A. Harriman Company.

The Harriman firm was backed by the Rockefellers’ National City Bank and the Morgan family’s Guaranty Trust. The English-educated Walker assisted in assembling the Harriman family’s overseas business investments.

In 1921, Walker’s favorite daughter, Dorothy, married Samuel Bush’s son Prescott, a Yale graduate and a member of the school’s exclusive Skull and Bones society. Handsome and athletic, admired for his golf and tennis skills, Prescott Bush was a young man with the easy grace of someone born into the comfortable yet competitive world of upper-crust contacts.

Three years later, Dorothy gave birth to George Herbert Walker Bush in Milton, Massachusetts.

Lifted by the financial boom of the 1920s, Prescott and Dorothy Bush were on the rise. By 1926, George Herbert Walker had brought his son-in-law in on a piece of the Harriman action, hiring him as a vice president in the Harriman banking firm.

By the mid-Thirties, Prescott Bush had become a managing partner at the merged firm of Brown Brothers Harriman. The archival records also show that Brown Brothers Harriman served as the U.S. financial service arm for German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early funder of the Nazi Party.

Thyssen, an admirer of Adolf Hitler since the 1920s, joined the Nazi Party in 1931 when it was still a fringe organization. He helped bail the struggling party out with financial help, even providing its headquarters building in Munich.

Meanwhile, Averell Harriman had launched the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamships to facilitate the bank’s dealings with Germany, and made Prescott Bush a director. The ships delivered fuel, steel, coal, gold and money to Germany as Hitler was consolidating his power and building his war machine.

Other evidence shows that Prescott Bush served as the director of the Union Banking Corp. of New York, which represented Thyssen’s interests in the United States and was owned by a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands.

As a steel magnate, Thyssen was amassing a fortune as Hitler rearmed Germany. Documents also linked Bush to Thyssen’s Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, which was based in mineral-rich Silesia on the German-Polish border and exploited slave labor from Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. But records at the National Archives do not spell out exactly when Bush’s connection ended or what he knew about the business details.

In 1941, Thyssen had a falling out with Hitler and fled to France where he was captured. Much of Thyssen’s empire went under the direct control of the Nazis, but even that did not shatter the business ties that existed with Prescott Bush and Harriman’s bank.

It wasn’t until August 1942 that newspaper stories disclosed the secretive ties between Union Banking Corp. and Nazi Germany.

After an investigation, the U.S. government seized the property of the Hamburg-Amerika line and moved against affiliates of the Union Banking Corp. In November 1942, the government seized the assets of the Silesian-American Corp. [For more details, see an investigative report by the U.K. Guardian, Sept. 25, 2004.]

No Kiss of Death

For most public figures, allegations of trading with the enemy would have been a political kiss of death, but the disclosures barely left a lipstick smudge on Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush and other business associates implicated in the Nazi business dealings.

“Politically, the significance of these dealings – the great surprise – is that none of it seemed to matter much over the next decade or so,” wrote Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty.

“A few questions would be raised, but Democrat Averell Harriman would not be stopped from becoming federal mutual security administrator in 1951 or winning election as governor of New York in 1954. … Nor would Republican Prescott Bush (who was elected senator from Connecticut in 1952) and his presidential descendants be hurt in any of their future elections.”

Indeed, the quick dissipation of the Nazi financial scandal was only a portent of the Bush family’s future. Unlike politicians of lower classes, the Bushes seemed to travel in a bubble impervious to accusations of impropriety, since the Eastern Establishment doesn’t like to think badly of its own. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

To this day – as President Bush showed by mocking the long-forgotten Sen. Borah and then wielding the Nazi “appeasement” club against Barack Obama and other Democrats – the assumption remains that the bubble will continue to protect the Bush family name.

However, the evidence from dusty archives suggests that the Bush family went way beyond appeasement of Adolf Hitler to aiding and abetting the Nazis

All the President's Nazis (Real and Imaged): An Open Letter to Bush

By Larisa Alexandrovna
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/all-the-presidents-nazis_b_102022.html

Dear Mr. Bush,

Your speech on the Knesset floor today was not only a disgrace; it was nothing short of treachery. Worse still, your exploitation of the Holocaust in a country carved out of the wounds of that very crime, in order to strike a low blow at American citizens whose politics differs from your own is unforgivable and unpardonable. Let me remind you, Mr. Bush, of your words today:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Well Mr. Bush, the only thing this comment lacked was a mirror and some historical facts. You want to discuss the crimes of Nazis against my family and millions of other families in Europe during World War II? Let me revive a favorite phrase of yours: Bring. It. On!

The All-American Nazi

Your family's fortune is built on the bones of the very people butchered by the Nazis, my family and the families of those in the Knesset who applauded you today:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's grandfather was a director of a bank seized by the federal government because of its ties to a German industrialist who helped bankroll Adolf Hitler's rise to power, government documents show.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp. (search), a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Fritz Thyssen was an early financial supporter of Hitler, whose Nazi party Thyssen believed was preferable to communism.

Both Harrimans and Bush were partners in the New York investment firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman and Co., which handled the financial transactions of the bank as well as other financial dealings with several other companies linked to Bank voor Handel that were confiscated by the U.S. government during World War II.
Union Banking was seized by the government in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.Oh, but there is much more too:

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war, Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
I cannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kind of lineage. Can you? No, I don't think so. But you can lie brazenly and attack a sitting US Senator on foreign soil by comparing him to Nazi sympathizers? Let us continue down memory lane to help those who applaud you understand just what it is they are celebrating.

The All American Traitor

Your family did not stop with supporting fascists and Nazis abroad, did they Mr. Bush? Surely you must know of your grandfather's role in the treasonous plot of 1933 to overthrow democracy in America? Let me remind you.

Grandpa Bush -- that is to say, your grandfather -- wanted fascism imported into the United States, or as you now call this type of transformation, "exporting democracy." Prescott went so far as to subsidize a coup attempt in order to achieve his dream of a fascist America (see BBC report below):

Document uncovers details of a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by right-wing American businessmen. The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush's Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression. Mike Thomson investigates why so little is known about this biggest ever peacetime threat to American

In other words, not only was your grandfather a self-professed fascist, he was a Nazi sympathizer and a war profiteer who should have stood trial at the Hague instead of buying his way into the US Senate. He was also a traitor, twice over.

Now clearly the crimes of Prescott Bush are not your fault, Mr. George W. Bush. Let us therefore judge your actions and words on their own merit.

Iraq is your Poland

Your reminiscence today about the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany should have been seen as your own condemnation of your own abhorrent actions against Iraq. The morbid irony of what you said will likely never register with your or your speechwriter. To truly grasp the grotesqueness of what you said requires that you have both a conscience and some understanding of history. We know you possess neither.

I will therefore make your history lesson brief, but to the point. The unprovoked attack on Poland by Germany was a war crime just as your attack against Iraq -- based on lies -- is a war crime. This is not my opinion. This is not a political attack. This is a fact. Consider the words of the esteemed former chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg trials, Benjamin Ferencz, regarding your war of aggression against Iraq:

"...Prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Moreover, your reckless verbiage and partisan pandering using something as tragic and criminal as Germany's war of aggression against Poland is an insult to all victims of those atrocities.

My grandfather's sister and parents were having supper in their Warsaw home when a German bomb erased them from this planet. Your evoking the German atrocities against Poland in order to play dirty politics against Democrats is as offensive to me as if you had pinned a swastika onto your lapel.

Even your own words appear to be penned by Hitler's ghost all the while you imply that Democrats are Nazis and/or terrorists -- something you have done over and over. Your lies and Hitler's lies even have the same purpose.

When you, Mr. Bush, said "see in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," were you aware of Adolf Hitler's eerily similar statement? Hitler said "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."

Yet if words alone were your only weapon and words strung together into lies your only crime, you might be seen as simply the loathsome, unethical dilettante and despot that you are. Unfortunately, your crimes are many and so similar to those of the Nazi regime that at times one wonders if you are not yourself reenacting that very history you used today as an insult against a political opponent.

Your very own concentration camps

You ordered the creation of secret camps all over the world and on US territory where you also authorized the torture of countless men, women and children is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, international law, and domestic law. In other words, you authorized war crimes.

We don't know the number of people you have had disappeared, tortured, and possibly murdered. Although we have some idea of what these numbers may be, I doubt the full truth of it all will ever be known.

In 2005, I had a CENTCOM document leaked to me illustrating that since the start of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, more than 70,000 men, women, and children have been detained at one of your various camps Mr. Bush. We don't know what happened to them, if they were tortured, raped, or murdered. What we do know is that less than 2% of those 70,000 had any sort of charge brought against them in a court of law. None of those alleged crimes, by the way, were acts of terrorism. We don't know if that 70,000 figure was the actual and full count of detainees in US custody around the world in 2005. But it is safe to say that in the last 3 years since this document was published, the number of detainees has likely grown.

What we also now know, in great horror, is that at least one of your camps had a crematorium in it, which some of the US soldiers stationed there suspected was used for burning bodies:


"We had some kind of incinerator at the end of our building," Specialist Megan Ambuhl said. "It was this huge circular thing. We just didn't know what was incinerated in there. It could have been people, for all we knew -- bodies." Sergeant Davis was not in doubt. "It had bones in it," he said, and he called it the crematorium. "But hey, you're at war," he said. "Suck it up or drive on."

What we also now know is that Dick Cheney and senior members of your administration carried out a plan of torture and abuse that violated international and domestic law with regard to human rights, down to the type of torture tactics that would be used against prisoners in our custody. This plan, we now know, was approved by you.

Has the mirror cracked yet from this much fact or are you still peering into the political sphere hoping to ascribe your own crimes to others? It won't work. It never has and it certainly won't work now. We know far too much about you and yours.

I could continue listing the litany of your crimes, both against the United States and against foreign nations. I won't. We know what you are and what you have done. Having roughly 1,000,000 dead Iraqis under your belt should have shamed you into the parasitic hole you came out of, attaching yourself to the blood of this nation and sucking it dry. Instead, you parade around, the globe-trotting horror show and anti-Semite that you are.

Yes, you are an anti-Semite

Would you say no, you are not an anti-Semite? Consider your own words when you thought no one was keeping score:

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

Only an anti-Semite would think this type of humor is acceptable. Did you tell the Jews of Israel they were going to hell? No, instead, you told them that American Democrats are Nazi sympathizers and in an act of sheer indecency, the right wing Likud party orchestrated the greatest applause you ever got. For shame!

What this blind adoration finally proves to me is that the right-wing regime that has overtaken Israel cares nothing for its people, its heritage, and the tragic history that they now honor by applauding a man whose family-fortune was built on the bodies of their loved ones. Like their Republican (and Lieberman) counterparts in the United States, Likud does not represent its people, rather, it represents its owners. Likud has traded Israel, its Jews, their heritage and history for the same golden calf purchased and sold by the far-right wing in the United States.

I am ashamed of you Mr. Bush. I am ashamed of those who applauded your political porn played out against the hallowed backdrop of the Holocaust. I am ashamed of those reporters with you, who between them could not muster the moral courage to call you out on your ugly rhetoric and ask you about your own family Nazi ties. You are, sir, the most abhorrent human being of my lifetime. I dare say, in the lifetime of this nation.

Mom's Lesson

Photo by Andrew Stern
When I carried my unborn children within my womb
I was full of hopes and dreams and wonder…
I wondered at the life we had created, growing within me
And the first seeds of love were planted when I learned of that life.

I wondered what this little one would do with his or her life
What kind of person he or she would be.
I wondered if this precious soul would achieve the dreams,
The hopes, the aspirations of its heart and dearly hoped it would be so.

I walked in the Valley of life and death
To bring the unborn through the birth canal to be born;
Flooded with relief at the first cry,
The long hours of pain and fear quickly forgotten.

As my children grew, I felt great joy in their first smiles, the first steps
I could kiss away the tears and the sores and the heartaches.
When they were little, my children thought I could fix anything
A toy, a scratch, a spill – no problem!

I did my best to protect my children from all that would bring them harm,
And from the bogeyman under the bed and in the closet or around the corner.
I did my best to teach them to protect themselves and to be kind to others.

Eventually all children grow up and become adults.
They make their own decisions and all I can do is watch
And hope and pray they will be the right decisions
And that they will not bring themselves undue harm.

I want to help them; I want to fix what they have done,
Sometimes I cannot. Sometimes I should not.
This I have learned. And maybe, as a Mother, this is my greatest lesson.
But still…

I cry, I weep, I sorrow when they fall and hope and pray they will get back up.
I hope… I pray… I love them unconditionally
Sometimes, that is all I can do
I can’t make everything better. Sometimes they have to do it themselves.

by Amy Branham
May 16, 2008

It's May!

I simply cannot believe my eyes when I look at my desk calendar and already we are into the month of May. How did this happen? Where did all those months go? When I was much younger than I am now, it seemed that every day was an eternity that would go on forever. Now, every day passes by quicker than the one before it and in such a hurry that they are becoming blurs in my past. How does this happen to us?

It's been a month since I started taking the Chantix to quit smoking. So far, the worst side effect is severe constipation. The second worst is the nausea I get two times a day for 30 minutes or so after taking it, and the third worst is my glucose spiking higher after meals and taking a little longer to come down than previously. I can compensate on the glucose by being more vigilant about my diet. Drinking a Sprite or 7-Up or something equivalent when I take the pills seems to quell my stomach somewhat. As for the other problem, diet hasn't helped much, fiber and all the other recommendations of my doctor. So I have to depend on a laxative, but at least I can get some relief and not get ill.

I've had some really great vivid dreams that I didn't not want to wake from, usually in the morning just before my alarm clock goes off. So I hit the snooze button and try to regain my dream, but usually with little luck. Some people have really bad, crazy dreams, but I have not.

As far as the smoking goes, I cut back from a pack a day to about a pack a week, which is pretty good. Yesterday afternoon I had the last smoke in my pack and thought about buying some more. But then I thought why? I'm really not enjoying this and I have always hated that I smoke. The physical withdrawls have not been bad, so why am I smoking? The answer was that I was smoking mostly out of habit and not knowing what else to do with myself. So I skipped buying that new pack of cigarettes, came home and found a book to read, chewed on a stick of gum and just tried to relax. Almost 24 hours now without a smoke and very little withdrawls so far. I'm also not having the other withdrawls like moodiness, weepiness and unable to think clearly -- at least so far. I suspect if I were to have them like I always have in the past, they would have shown their ugly little heads by now, but so far so good!

It's the season to celebrate the return of the sun to the world, the fertility of the earth, its plants and animals. A couple of weeks ago we did just that when we went to a festival, met up with some really good friends there, and camped out for three days (probably the ONLY vacation I'll get this summer). It was fabulous except for the fire ants that were everywhere. The weather was fabulous other than the storm front that went through late Friday night -- and the lightning from that was amazing. It kept time to the beat of the band that was onstage! It rained again Sunday morning, but cleared up quickly. It was worth the cost of gas to pull the trailer clear out there. We were blessed with being able to listen to Spiral Dance, a band from the land down under, and a couple of talented musicians who gave us an audience Saturday evening when most had gone to their tents. I was the only sober one in the group (I have found that I have a really hard time getting drunk these days so I just don't anymore) and laughed my ass off at my husband, Chris and Marian as we marched back to camp carrying our chairs through the darkness. The three of them were like ants going off in differing directions as we made our way back. I'll forever have that impression in my head and grin when I think of it -- especially when my love's sarong fell off because he couldn't grab it as his hands were too full!

I think we were the last to go to our beds and we laughed the whole way there. things like that are okay out there, though, because you go to party, not to have a quiet get away. We showed the younguns that even the old farts can have a good time!

My love has a job interview today. I hope it goes well and ends with an offer of employment. He needs the work and we need the money. Please send positive energy and blessings our way!

Peace,
Amy

Obermann Define's Hillary's Goalposts

Hillary's constant "redefining" reminds me of Bush's many changing reasons for attacking and invading Iraq -- none of which were ever based on any kind of sane rationality. Or how about John McCain's constant flip-flopping on the issues?

Do we really want someone like this running our country again?

Just a thought...

Peace,
Amy

Weighing In

Does anyone besides me think it's absolutely nuts the way the TV pundits have gone off over Rev. Jeremiah Wright? I'm having a hard time understanding this one. I'm beginning to wonder if all the hype borders on racism.

Why would I think that? Well, a lot of the right-wing neoconservative preachers have said things that are just as hateful, vile and nasty as anything Rev. Wright has ever said. Seriously. These white men have said things such as we were attacked because of the gays and the witches or that New Orleans was flood because of the gay pride parades, etc. They have often been very racist and nasty, spewing as much hatred and venom from the pulpit as anyone else, sometimes even more so.

Yet, their speeches did not really make much news. There wasn't hour after hour and day after day coverage of their speeches and they weren't picked apart word by word by the pundits. Essentially, these preachers were given free reign to do as say what they wanted, often condemning everyone who wasn't exactly like them -- at least like them publically. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, these men were living the most hypocritical, secret lives I have ever heard of and getting rich while they did it.

To say that Barack Obama should have severed his ties with Rev. Wright much earlier than he did is simply pure hypocricy. If you want to use this standard in judging people, let's judge everyone in this way. By this standard, every person who sits in a congregation and hears his or her preacher use the vile, hateful, angry and judgmental speech they often use, should get up and leave and never go back. If these people do not get up and leave, they should be judged just as Obama has been judged.

Actually, since I am not a Christian or a religious person, I see no place in the world for religion and politics to mix. Religion and politics in the same pot are a dangerous thing and has lead to more wars, more death, more suffering than any other single thing in history other than cataclysmic natural events. So, leave your religion at home when you go to vote. Turn off the TV and quit listening to everything and everyone except your gut.

Peace,
Amy

P.S. Just read an interesting piece by Matt Taibbi who writes for Rolling Stone. It is an excerpt from his book "The Great Derangement" and is about the crazy religious fanatacism he experienced in Texas called An Atheist Goes Undercover. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/33223

John McCain says Iraq War is about Oil.

We knew it. We suspected it. It's nice to finally have someone admit it. The war in Iraq is about the oil. So far, 4,071 (http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx)American sons and daughters have died for what? Oil?

It's not about freedom and democracy or because the terrorists hate our freedom and democracy. It's about the oil. We Americans have paid a heavy price for something that we, in truth, are not getting. Oil. It's a goddamn shame is what it is.

I am surprised to know that so many people still support this war, are living in fear of another terrorist attack or Muslims or any number of other things because GWB told them to be, because McCain tells them to be. McCain is running for the White House on a platform of fear using the same old rhetoric and lies that Bush used to take us into war.

They people who support this war used to call me unpatriotic and a nutcase because I saw through the crap and knew the truth about this war, about this President and his buddies. They considered me to be a radical (and these days, my beliefs would get me on a terrorist watch list if I'm not already) even though I am in the majority with millions of others who do not believe what we are doing is right.

If you vote for McCain, you vote for war and destruction and stupidity of the worst kind that started nearly eight years ago and will continue. If you vote for McCain, you deserve what you get because of your stupidity.

Yeah, I'm angry. Angry that too many people will let themselves be governed by fear instead of their intelligence and the brains that God gave them.

War for oil. What a morally reprehensible reason to send our children in harm's way.

Peace,
Amy

Dreams

Since going on the Chantix a couple of weeks ago, I've been having a lot of dreams. Unusual for me, really, to remember much of my dreams. Lately, though, I've been remembering them and sometimes, even, wanting to go back into them and learn more.

I've dreamt of former friends. I've dreamt of my nieces and nephews, my grandson and daughters and even an old friend's four sons. Most often I've dreamt of being in a place, a community, where we all pitch in and work together for our survival and I awaken from those dreams wondering if it is a message for me...

The most memorable dreams, though, are of my son, Jeremy, who is alive and well in my dreams. He is smiling and happy, walking with his bouncy walk and joking with me. I know these dreams are only my heart dreaming of what it most dearly desires -- to see his face again, to hear his voice, to caress his cheek and to hug him once again -- for him not to be dead.

The dreams, so vivid, so lifelike, so real. At times they tear at my soul and others make me laugh. At least, for a small moment in time, in my dreams, I see Jeremy. Thank the Goddess I have that.

Peace,
Amy