Cindy Sheehan: Raging Grannies & Raging Americans

I am sitting here watching CSPAN, where Congress is holding a special hearing into Chinese human rights violations, which is, of course, an important issue that needs to be addressed. An Amnesty International report just came out, and of all of the countries in the world, the US is fourth in number of executions - behind China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. China by far executes the most people with seeming barbaric abandon.

Everyone who has a brain and a stake in what direction our country is going should be demanding that Congress investigate the administration and itself for human rights violations. This feeble excuse for an Executive Branch and its bobble-headed, rubber-stamp franchise of a useless body down the mall - Congress - are committing crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes against our Constitution and rule of law. Instead of holding these investigations against China, they should be investigating themselves and George Bush and his cronies, who are violating everything that we hold dear as Americans and are killing and torturing thousands of people just for the icing on the brutality cake.

Every American who has ears to hear the "decider" lie and everyone who has eyes to watch him figuratively defecate on our Bill of Rights should use their voices to scream against the cruelty of BushCo, use their feet to march in solidarity with other Americans who repudiate the cruelty, and use their butts to sit down in front of places of power to demand that our leaders quit using our names to imprison people indefinitely without trials and torture them as they hypocritically accuse other governments of violating human rights.

We as Americans need to realize that our government falsely accused Saddam of having WMD and our government is using WMD on the people of Iraq and they are not "ruling out" the use of nuclear weapons on Iran. God forbid Iran gets a nuke; and if Iran is even thinking about it, we will nuke them and kill tens of thousands of innocent people who don't have nuclear technology. All they want is peaceful lives left alone by the US. The US has used nuclear weapons before; as a matter of fact, we are the only ones who have and are using depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq as we speak. The US cannot be trusted with this technology! Why do we trade our nuclear secrets to India for some mangoes and prohibit other countries from seeking the same technology? Could the real reason be to also control Iran's oil and natural gas resources? Hmm ... maybe the CEO of Exxon wasn't too happy with his $400,000,000 bonus for the past year and Deadeye Dick was not nearly thrilled enough with his over million dollar tax refund. George wants to build 125 more "nucular" bombs a year! I think Georgie has a buddy that is in the nuke business. The discourse should be about disarming the nations that already have nukes and guarantee a better future for our generations. Too late for the people of the Middle East, who have had their region contaminated by the cancer of radiation for 4.5 billion years.

This morning, I attended the beginning of the trial for the NYC Raging Grannies, who tried to enlist in the Army last October and were arrested for blocking the entrance to the recruitment center in Times Square. Their average age has to be somewhere in the high 60s with the oldest one being 90. Eighteen of them came to trial today, and they proudly marched slowly (many with canes and walkers) up to the defendant benches to defend their and YOUR rights to peaceably gather to dissent from a government who has gone way out of control, and to express their disgust with the Iraq war and to stand up and be counted and say: "You are not committing these crimes in our name!" We need to distance ourselves from leaders who are war criminals to not be accused of this ourselves.

Everyone in this country who has not tried to shut down a recruiting station or has not gone down to sit in at their Congress-coward's office to demand an end to the war or who has not attended a march, written hundreds of letters, come to Crawford, or otherwise stepped out of their comfort zones to repudiate the Bush regime and call for indictment of the same need to be abjectly ashamed of themselves.

If the darling Grannies - who should be able to be home baking brownies if they want to, or running marathons, or reading books, or painting portraits, or shopping, or doing whatever else makes them happy - put their bodies on the line for peace, so your child won't have to go off to a war based on lies to die and kill innocent people, why can't you?

Today, I and my co-defendants in our arrest at the US Mission to the UN delivered subpoenas to Peggy Kerry (sister of John Kerry and NGO representative to the UN, who arranged our appointment for us), the US Mission to the UN, and the management company who owns the very public building that holds coffee shops and restaurants and their security. Our trial is next week on April 26th, and we want to know who refused to take our petition when we had an appointment, and we want to know who gave the order to arrest us instead of taking our petition that was signed by tens of thousands of women from all over the world.

The Raging Grannies and we Raging Americans are willing to go to jail to protect you and your rights and your children's lives. Who wants to live free in a society that has total disregard for human rights, humanity, and practices cruelty that would be worthy of the Inquisition? Who wants to live free in a society that arrests and tries Grannies and ordinary citizens who are only exercising the rights that we are all born with? The rights for which my son and so many others had their lives robbed from them.

Congress has already allowed this Execution Branch to take away so many of our rights and freedoms. If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention. Rest assured that there are people who are raging with indignation over the suppression of dissent and the wanton abduction of our rights. Rest assured that there are so many people working to take our country back.

Do your part. Democracy requires active participation not active and complicit apathy.

Gold Star Families for Peace www.gsfp.org

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