“Beacon of Freedom!”

     Today,  as we remember family and friends killed in war and continue to feel their loss, I was struck with all the hype to induce feelings of American exceptionalism and blind patriotism. In a Memorial Day speech U.S. President Barrack Obama said the U.S. is a “Beacon of Freedom” to the world. It reminded me of President George W. Bush saying after 9-11 that the U.S. World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked because they were symbols of ” freedom and democracy.”

      I would suggest Presidents Obama and Bush need to read the results of recent international Gallup and other well respected polls showing the U.S. as the world’s greatest threat to peace, the most feared country on earth, by a long shot. Pakistan came in a distant second.  (http://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008)  (http://www.jewishfederations.org/european-poll-israel-biggest-threat-to-world-peace.aspx)  What country has more prisoners, more people locked up, than any country on earth? It’s not Russia or China. It’s the U.S.A. As for democracy, recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions make clear the U.S. has the best elections money can buy. In addition, now President Obama claims he has the imperial authority to be judge, jury and executioner through drone, and special ops assassination, strikes of anyone in the world, including American citizens, that he deems an enemy. What happened to the beacon of freedom, due process, consent of the governed, the right to be secure in your person and property, and other basic rights supposedly guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution?

      The question Obama, Bush, and all Americans should be asking is why do so many people in the world hate and fear the U.S? Consider the following: The U.S. has between 800-1000 military bases around the world in 150 countries; the U.S. has used military force 120 times against another country since WWII; the U.S. has tried to over overthrow 50 countries and grossly interfered in the elections of 30 countries since WWII; the U.S. has bombed civilian populations in 30 countries since WWII including the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. (source: www.uslaboragainstwar.org)  And don’t forget the U.S. illegal overthrow and continuing illegal occupation of the Nation of Hawaii.

      Beacon of freedom? If the U.S. or any country, wants to be a beacon of freedom to the world, then put words into action and free us from the addiction to militarism. Stop sending the poor to fight and die in rich men wars. Redirect the military budget toward meeting human needs and saving the planet. Demonstrate economic and environmental justice. Do as the prophet Isaiah said: “Beat swords into plowshare and spears into pruning hooks and learn war no more.” Isaiah 2:4.  Talk abount American “exceptionalism” and “Beacon of Freedom” is nonsense.  The time for action is now.  Let us begin to live in peace and harmony with one another and all the earth. Human survival hangs in the balance.

“No More War!

War Never Again!”

SAT 5/24 6:30-8:30 pm UH Hilo STB108 Dr. Lorin Pang of Maui, informs us about the health effects and other issues around genetic engineering and genetically engineered food and farming. His focus will also be on pesticides, and how pesticides affect the human body at the cellular level, and the unintended consequences of mixing different pesticides together. When mixed, as is done more often than not in the farm fields, they combine to create brand new untested chemicals that wreak havoc on the human body’s ability defend from the toxins.
https://www.facebook.com/events/614509675305904

Resist the U.S. National

Security State!

Don’t believe the argument that mass surveillance is only a problem for wrongdoers. Governments have repeatedly spied on anyone who challenges their power, says Glenn Greenwald in an extract from his book about Edward Snowden and the NSA, No Place to Hide

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23641-from-mlk-to-anonymous-the-state-targets-dissent

      In an article published in The Guardian, UK 5/13/14, entitled “From MLK to Anonymous, the State Targets Dissent.” author Glenn Greenwald says “a prime justification for surveillance – that it’s for the benefit of the population – relies on projecting a view of the world that divides citizens into categories of good people and bad people. In that view, the authorities use their surveillance powers only against bad people, those who are “doing something wrong”, and only they have anything to fear from the invasion of their privacy. This is an old tactic. In a 1969 Time magazine article about Americans’ growing concerns over the US government’s surveillance powers, Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, assured readers that “any citizen of the United States who is not involved in some illegal activity has nothing to fear whatsoever”.

       “The point was made again by a White House spokesman, responding to the 2005 controversy over Bush’s illegal eavesdropping program: “This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people.” And when Barack Obama appeared on The Tonight Show in August 2013 and was asked by Jay Leno about NSA revelations, he said: “We don’t have a domestic spying program. What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack.”

“For many, the argument works. The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalized and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behavior and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.”

“The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.”

These efforts are “aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association…” in challenging the power and crimes of empire.

Don’t Be Fooled By Government Lies Again!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760. Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org  http://www.malu-aina.org

Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (May 23, 2014 – 661st week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office

Climate Change is

Overriding Issue of

Survival!

But like lemmings, many humans race to the cliff!

      While there are many pressing issues of justice, peace, and environmental destruction facing us here in Hawaii and in every country around the world, there is no question that on the grand scale of issues like Nuclear War, Climate Change trumps all. It is an issue of species destruction. Symbolic of how humanity is growing very short of time in addressing changes that need to be made to deal with this human-made disaster, here is a short video that teaches climate change in one minute and 31 seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UatUDnFmNTY&feature=youtu.be

      The end of “normal” is here already. The climate changes are already upon us and accelerating at an alarming rate. Here on Hawaii island the NOAA weather observatory located on Mauna Loa recorded the monthly average for CO2 in the atmosphere at 401.33ppm. In early May 2014, the U.S. federal government’s National Climate Assessment, the national scientific community’s definitive statement on the current and future impacts of greenhouse gas emissions was released.

      Compiling the efforts of 300 leading climate scientists and experts, the message is “bleak” as the NCA details how human-caused global warming is being felt “here and now” nationwide. As a consequence of the nearly two degree Fahrenheit rise which occurred throughout the country over the past century, the report says, Americans are experiencing water scarcity in dry regions, increasing torrential rains in wet ones, increasingly severe heat waves, worsening wildfires, and the death of forests as a result of heat-loving invasive insect species. And all of this is likely to worsen as average temperatures continue to increase. The authors… estimate that global warming could exceed 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the United States by the end of this century.

      Following its release, many noted that the report provides an abrupt wake-up call to politicians and the fossil fuel industry, saying that their ongoing denial of mankind’s disruptive impact on the planet has significantly hastened many of these dangerous effects. “As our communities reel from droughts, floods, forest fires, fossil fuel disasters, crop failures and more, it becomes harder for these polluters and those aligned with them to hide just how out of touch from reality they are,” said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice. “The divide between the fossil-fuel industry’s misguided attempts to place profits above the needs of our families and communities grows as each new scientific report is released,” Van Noppen continued. “The National Climate Assessment paints a bleak picture, but it is a picture we have seen clearly for many years, and we have to act on it now.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/05/06-2
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23670-on-the-edge

          Time to Mother Earth!
Aloha ‘Aina & Future Generations Before Profits!

1. Mourn all victims of violence. 2. Reject war as a solution. 3. Defend civil liberties. 4. Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, etc.
5. Seek peace through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Contact: Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action P.O. Box 489 Kurtistown, Hawai`i 96760.
Phone (808) 966-7622. Email:ja@malu-aina.org  http://www.malu-aina.org
Hilo Peace Vigil leaflet (May 16, 2014 – 660th week) – Friday 3:30-5PM downtown Post Office