WAWA/WeAreWideAwake is my Public Service to America as a muckracker who has journeyed seven times to Israel Palestine since June 2005.
WAWA is dedicated to confronting media and governments that shield the whole
truth.
We who Are Wide
Awake are compelled by the "fierce urgency of Now" [Rev MLK, Jr.] to raise
awareness and promote the human dialogue about many of the crucial issues of our
day: the state of our Union and in protection of democracy, what life is like
under military occupation in Palestine, the Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land,
and spirituality-from a Theologically Liberated Christian Anarchist
POV.
"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave...a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils." George Washington's Farewell Address - 1796
"My aim is to agitate & disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast." Unamuno
"Imagine All the People Sharing All the World." John Lennon
"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
"You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won't back down." Tom Petty
"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman
"We have yet to begin to IMAGINE the power and potential of the Internet." Charlie Rose, 2005
Only in Solidarity do "We have it in our power to begin the world again" Tom Paine
"Never doubt that a few, thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
"You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32
DO SOMETHING!
Photo of George shown here and in web site banner courtesy of Debbie Hill, 2000.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. -July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence
March 4, 2012: Bibi, Obama, Nobel, Peres, Manning, Mordechai and George
March 4, 2012: Bibi, Obama, Nobel, Peres, Manning, Mordechai and George
This Monday's talks between President Obama and
Prime Minister Netanyahu maybe the most consequential encounter yet between the
U.S. and Israel and the focus is all on Iran.
Just in time for AIPAC’s 2012 Conference, Congress
overwhelmingly passed H.R.347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds
Improvement Act which will make it a felony to express
one’s conscience and exercise one’s freedom of speech via demonstrations near
to presidential candidates or visiting heads of state.
If Obama signs onto it, US citizens of conscience
could be imprisoned for up to one year if they dare enter or remain in a
building or on the grounds where the Secret Service is present or where ever
there is an “an event designated as a special event of national significance” such as the AIPAC Conference, the Democratic and Republican National
Conventions as well as the Super Bowl.
Alfred Nobel’s intention was to reward people with a moral backbone and he hoped to create icons and examples to humankind.
In his congratulatory
message to President Obama upon being awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize,
Israeli President Shimon Peres opined:
"Very few leaders if at all were able to change the mood of the entire
world in such a short while with such profound impact. You provided all of
humanity with fresh hope, with intellectual determination, and a feeling that
there is a Lord in heaven and believers on earth. Under your leadership, peace
became a real and original agenda. And from Jerusalem, I am sure all the bells
of engagement and understanding will ring again. You gave us a license to dream
and act in a noble direction." [1]
And the Nobel committee
"stressed that it made its decision based on Mr. Obama’s actual efforts
toward nuclear disarmament as well as American engagement with the world
relying more on diplomacy and dialogue." [2]
In an interview with Atlantic magazine
published last week, Obama warned, "As president of the United States, I
don't bluff. I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize
that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear
weapon, we mean what we say…All options are on the table [which] includes a
military component.”
On 11 August 2011, during
a GOP debate, Ron Paul warned, “Countries you put sanctions on, you are more
likely to fight them. Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war.”
President Obama is the third sitting American president to win the Nobel Peace
Prize and his peers include Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who won the Nobel for helping
end the Cold War which raged from 1945 to 1991, and Nelson Mandela, who fought
for the end of Apartheid in South Africa.
The apartheid regime in South Africa existed from 1948 until 1994; but it was
not until the late 1980's that the American government got on-board with the twenty-plus years of a global call for boycott, divestment and sanctions that
ended that apartheid regime.
On October 2, 2009, The Washington
Timesreported that Obama agreed to keep
Israel's nukes secret and reaffirmed the 4-decade-old secret understanding that
has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to
international inspections.
But on April 5, 2009, President Obama stood on the world stage in Prague and
admitted, "As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the
United States has a moral responsibility to act…When we fail to pursue peace,
then it stays forever beyond our grasp. We know the path when we choose fear
over hope. To denounce or shrug off a call for cooperation is an easy but also
cowardly thing to do. That’s how wars begin. That’s where human progress ends…the
voices of peace and progress must be raised together…Human destiny will be what
we make of it…Words must mean something."
So should the Nobel Peace Prize
and among the 231 nominations for this year's Nobel are two champions
for freedom of conscience and thorns in the sides of America and
Israel.
On
February 1st 2012 the entire parliamentary group of The Movement of
the Icelandic Parliament nominated Private Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace
Prize. In their letter to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee they wrote:
"Manning
is a soldier in the United States army who stands accused of releasing hundreds
of thousands of documents to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The leaked
documents pointed to a long history of corruption, war crimes, and imperialism
by the United States government in international dealings. These revelations
have fueled democratic uprising around the world, including a democratic
revolution in Tunisia. According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate
the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate
influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the
Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S. troops from the
occupation in Iraq.
"Bradley
Manning has been incarcerated for well over a year by the U.S. government
without a trial. He spent over ten months of that time period in solitary
confinement, conditions which experts worldwide have criticized as torturous.
"The
documents made public by WikiLeaks should never have been kept from public
scrutiny. The revelations – including video documentation of an incident in
which American soldiers gunned down Reuters journalists in Iraq – have helped
to fuel a worldwide discussion about America’s overseas engagements, civilian
casualties of war, imperialistic manipulations, and rules of engagement.
Citizens worldwide owe a great debt to the WikiLeaks whistleblower for shedding
light on these issues." [1]
Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear technician who revealed the details of
Israel's nuclear program and exposed the “secret cooperation between
Israel and western countries” because he wanted to prevent a nuclear holocaust, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize over twenty times.
In 1986, Vanunu was kidnapped by Mossad agents and
in a close-door trial was sentenced to 18 years in prison and since his release
in 2004, he has been arrested several times for violating the draconian restrictions
placed upon him, including speaking to foreigners who happen to be journalists.
In
2007, after Bishop Tutu nominated Vanunu for that year’s Nobel, Vanunu told me
he didn’t want the Peace Prize if Israel would not allow him the freedom
to go and accept it.
When
he was nominated in 2009, Vanunu wrote the Nobel Committee:
"I am asking the committee to
remove my name from the nominations. I cannot be part of a list of laureates
that includes Simon Peres. Peres established and developed the atomic weapon
program in Dimona in Israel. Peres was the man who ordered [my] kidnapping and
he continues to oppose my freedom and release. WHAT I WANT IS FREEDOM AND ONLY
FREEDOM I NEED NOW."
In 1963, when Vanunu was nine years old the Zionists came to his home town of
Marrakech, Morocco and convinced his Orthodox father to abandon his general
store and pack up the first seven of his eleven children for the land of milk
and honey. Instead, the Vanunu's were banished to the ethnically cleansed
Palestinian village of Beersheba.
A few months later, Shimon Peres, then Israel's Deputy
Minister of Defense met with President John Kennedy, at the White House.
Kennedy told Peres, "You know that we follow very closely the discovery of
any nuclear development in the region. This could create a very dangerous
situation. For this reason we monitor your nuclear effort. What could you tell
me about this?"
Peres replied, "I can tell you most clearly that we will not introduce
nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first."
As of this writing Vanunu remains silent about his 2012 nomination but the ‘smart
money’ is betting if he does issue a statement he will publish it at his
YouTube Channel: vanunuvmjc
Before talking to The Media; because as Vanunu told me in
2007 after he refused to grant Amy Goodman a follow-up interview to her 2004 interview
which was used as major testimony against him in his Freedom of Speech Trial, “The
Media never helped me.”
20th century Christian Anarchist, Author, Reporter and Founder of The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day
advised, “Spend your life working on something that outlasts it”.
This 21st century struggling Christian Anarchist, Author, Reporter, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org and Candidate of Conscience for US House of Representatives is willing to spend the rest of my life working to help End the Occupation of Palestine and US and Israeli Nuclear Deceptions
Because as George Washington warned in his Farewell Address:
"Observe good faith
and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all...and
passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of
them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which
indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some
degree a slave. A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a
variety of evils."
I
am Eileen Fleming for US House of Representatives and I approve of this message.
"HOPE has two children.The first is ANGER at the way things are. The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."-St. Augustine
"He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust." - Aquinas
Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions
without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
" In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."-Mother Teresa
“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright
“Any nation that year after year continues to raise the Defense budget while cutting social programs to the neediest is a nation approaching spiritual death.” - Rev. MLK
Establishment of Israel
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations." - May 14, 1948. The Declaration of the Establishment of Israel