On today, the anniversary of the overthrow of King Idris in Libya, the neo-colonial powers met in France to continue their drive at the new carve-up of Africa. This set of circumstances makes many of us very sad.
I had a dream last night. I was caught in the midst of intense fighting–street fighting: house to house. I guess I was channeling what the typical Libyan is feeling and has been feeling for the past 6 months. In my chats with DIGNITY Delegation members, one thing is clear: we are traumatized by what is happening to the lovely people of Libya. But imagine, if we feel that way, how must they feel? Terrorized and worse.
When the DIGNITY Delegation of journalists was there, we could already see the impact of the bombing on patients in the hospital, children trying to understand what was happening, women trying to soothe their families, men trying to carry on with their normal activities, shopkeepers trying to eke out a living despite fighting and bombing all around them, Black Libyans who felt threatened by their fellow countrymen and the outsiders who have streamed into the country, siding with NATO and openly boasted of killing dark-skinned Libyans (who number between 50% and 58% of the population, according to one of the Libyans who joined us on the tour, now returned to his country, not the 30% written in the special interest press) and non-Libyan Africans.
There is so much I want to say, and there is no space and little time. As I now return to my Ph.D. work, so terribly behind in my assignments, I will just say thank you to those who supported the tour and to ANSWER and the IAC, International Action Center, who sponsored it. Thank you to the local organizing committees that saw people come together from across all demographic and ideological lines to support our important peace work. This momentum must now be sustained. We have now identified those who really stand for peace and have outed the pretenders. That allows our movement to soar now, unburdened. Study the tactics that were used in the Counter-Intelligence Program; learn the truth, seek out and listen to the elders who experienced it firsthand.
Across this country, at almost 30 stops, I was able to join the true patriots of this country who struggle for justice and peace every day of their lives wherever they are in their own communities. In some places, the struggle is against police brutality; in other places it is against oppressive despair brought on by a police state and poverty. In all places, the budget choices of those elected to represent and serve us have placed justice and dignity on the chopping block, but have left war profiteering intact. These are policy choices that cannot last.
Along the way, many invoked the names of peace messengers of earlier times, the people we all look up to today. And lamentation abounded about the lack of representation we all have from our government. It is clear that the people of this country do not have the government that they want or deserve. On two previous cross-country trips, in 2008 with the Power to the People Green Party Presidential campaign and in 2010 with Bike4Peace, I saw with my own eyes that even from the arid Nevada desert to the lush Shenandoah Valley, people in this country want peace. They want representation and are sick and tired of war. I agree with former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir that war, itself, is a crime.
But we in this country, who fund these wars, are the people best situated to stop them. We almost did that once. Along the tour, I oftentimes invoked the words of our late President John F. Kennedy at American University: “What kind of a peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I’m talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living . . . not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women; not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time.”
Kudos to Thierry Meyssan, Mahdi Darius, Lizzie Phelan, and others who provided us up-to-the- minute, on-the-ground, unembedded information about Libya. They are safely home now, thank goodness. Therefore, the best sources of information from and about Libya are the chats and tweets that accompany these Libyan broadcasts (and then you’ll have to go elsewhere like mathaba to verify):
1. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ilibya-tv
2. http://support-libya.c.la/
3. http://www.mathaba.net/
Mathaba operates exactly like Wikileaks, so its reports are from all over the world and on the ground inside Libya. I understand that Frank Lamb remains in Libya and we look forward to his continued reports and hope that his decision to remain there means that he has found a way to remain there safely. Additionally, Stephen Lendman’s writings have moved me greatly. I will continue to read and I recommend them to you. He told me that he, too, hasn’t had much sleep since this started.
For the current situation on the ground, see this:
4. http://mathaba.net/news/libya/i/2011/occupied-map500.jpg
For the truth about the current Libyan Jamahirya social and economic systems view this:
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aJURNC0e6Ek
How long will we taxpayers of the U.S. allow our tax dollars to be used to make the children of the world cry? Libyan children now cry like Palestinian children. They are all my children. Tripoli now looks like Gaza. Innocent Libyans are now just like the Palestinians. Crying. Traumatized. Terrorized. Resisting occupation. Watch this and cry:
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBapbq8etf0&feature=player_embedded#
And then read this to understand the U.S. role:
And when the special interest war-mongering media (in this case the BBC) get caught lying about Libya, read this BBC response that is almost more troubling than their original error of broadcasting a rally in India and describing it on air as live from Tripoli!!!:
8. http://bsnews.info/BBC_Correspondence.html
Listen to this and cry that someone purporting to be a Libyan would invite this kind of death and devastation to his own country:
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8gBRBfvSA&feature=mr_meh&list=FLV_ZoMqjVmMsW5UyKZ4d7Ow&lf=plpp&playnext=0
And finally, watch/listen to this to remember what a real U.S. Peace President sounds like; cry at what we’ve lost, and get busy putting someone with these ideals in the White House and Congress again:
10. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html
—
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Silence is the deadliest weapon of mass destruction.
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