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.
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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
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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
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"If enough Christians followed the gospel, they could bring any state to its knees." Father Philip Francis Berrigan
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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
HomeBlogAugust 2010 August 20, 2010: Bolton beats the war-drum and Mordechai Vanunu's third coming
August 20, 2010: Bolton beats the war-drum and Mordechai Vanunu's third coming
August 20, 2010: Bolton beats the war-drum and Mordechai Vanunu's third coming
On August 16, 2010, G.W. Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security from 2001-2005, John Bolton, now employed by FOX News as a commentator called on
Israel to attack Iran "now" and said Israel had "eight days" left
to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility before Iran
injects enriched uranium obtained from Russia into it. Bolton warned that after
August 21 it "will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against
the facility because it would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians."
In 2004, John Bolton traveled to
Israel, just prior to Mordechai Vanunu’s release from 18 years in prison for
providing the photographic proof and telling the truth that Israel had already manufactured
upwards of 200 nuclear warheads by 1985, in their still un-inspected Dimona WMD
facility in the Negev.
As President G.W. Bush went searching
for WMD’s in Iraq, Vanunu offered to direct him to the only site in the
Middle East where WMD’s can be found:
Bolton’s 2004 visit to Israel sought to squelch
the truth regarding America’s collusion in Israel's WMD program, and to support Israel’s draconian restrictions against Vanunu which denied but failed to
prevent him from having contact with internationals, to use and own a cell
phone and have Internet access.
On August 8, 2010, Israel released Vanunu from 78 days in solitary confinement, punishment for
speaking to foreign media in 2004.
"Vanunu was one of the very few prisoners in Israeli history
whose sentence was not reduced for good behavior, nor was he given a single
day's furlough. For many years, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement,
which nearly drove him insane. Two years ago, he was released and asked to
leave Israel. That's when the vengeful machinery of the defense establishment - Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz, the Shin Bet, and Yehiel Horev, head of security for the
defense establishment - went into action. They imposed a series of limitations
on Vanunu, restricting his freedom of movement and his right to social
contacts. The worst of these restrictions is the ban on him leaving
Israel…Morally and legally, and from a democratic perspective, it is
intolerable that someone who has been punished should be punished over and over
again for the same sin for which he served such a heavy sentence…the man's
ongoing harassment…is entirely motivated by the defense establishment's hunger
for vengeance over the way he outwitted it."[1]
This man’s ongoing harassment has also been enabled by a
Media that has failed to fulfill its commission to seek and report the truth.
On July 23, 2010, the
National Archives and Records Administration released declassified files from a
Senate investigation into Israeli-funded covert public relations and lobbying
activity in the United States.
Grant F. Smith, director of
Institute for Research on Middle Eastern policy stated, "It is frightening
how easily some in the American news media surrendered to a foreign public
relations campaign that spent the 2010 equivalent of $36
million over two years. Time has proven most of the planted content to
be misleading, if not dangerous. These historical documents hold many
important lessons for Americans who have long needed—but rarely
received—straight reporting on key Middle East
issues."
The subpoenaed documents expose Israel's
clandestine programs for "cultivation of editors" and the "placement of
suitable articles in the major consumer magazines" as well as directly influencing
U.S. reporting regarding the Dimona WMD facility, as "most of the press seemed to accept the thesis that the reactor was being built for peaceful purposes
and not for bombs." [2]
During my 2005 interviews with Vanunu he told me:
"By the time I was twenty-three, I began
working at the Dimona. It was suppose to be a textile plant, but I was hired
for the control room. At the time, I had no idea what it was in control of.
"In August of 1985, I was put on a list of
people who should be dismissed from the Dimona. They were laying off 10
percent, but when they told me I was going, I confronted them with ‘Why are you
dismissing me? I am a good worker; you are getting rid of me for political
reasons, aren’t you?’ The union protected me, and after two months, they told
me they were transferring me to a less secure area.
"I told them I would stay where I was, or
else I would resign. They said, ‘Okay, resign.’ And I did. I had already shot
the two rolls of film. I worked the night shift and had lots of time alone. I
found the keys to the restricted areas in the shower room. I left the film in
my locker for a few days before taking it out of the Dimona. I knew they were
watching me.
"I left Israel in January of 1986, and went
to search for someone to share my story with. I didn’t develop the film until
six months later. I was waiting until I found a newspaper that would cover the
story. I met a Canadian author on my way to Greece, but nothing came of it. I
traveled to Athens, Bangkok, and then went to Russia. I was 32 years old in a
Moscow hotel, wondering if I should tell my story to the Red Army. I decided to
leave, instead. The reason I had arrived there was that before I left the
Dimona, I had checked out the Palestinian Communist Party to see how the
communists worked. I was curious and wondered if they would help me once I left
Israel. But when I witnessed the poverty and nothing but military cars
everywhere, I decided to get out of there.
"I went to the Far East and met some people
who had run away from Chernobyl, and I told them about the Dimona. Two weeks
later I arrived in Sydney and stayed for six months. I went to St. John
Anglican Church and became friends with the people I met there. I got a job
driving a taxi and met a freelance journalist named Gervevo; I told him my
story, and he was enthusiastic to help me get it out. He thought I wanted to
make money on it, but I told him I just wanted to prevent a nuclear war and
contribute to a positive change in the Middle East. Then I met Peter Hounam"
the investigative reporter who broke Vanunu’s story on the 5th of October 1986, four
days after Vanunu was kidnapped by the Mossad.
Although I was not a reporter when I met
Vanunu in 2005, I knew I must and would become one after Vanunu informed me:
"Did you know that President Kennedy tried
to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister
Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside
proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor
is only for peace.’
"Kennedy insisted on an open internal
inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for
inspection. The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona.
The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and
tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was
there.
"Back then; the Dimona descended seven
floors underground. In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree
they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the
Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel
leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on. Kennedy demanded
inspections. When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel
that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would
visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and
stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the
wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them. Nixon stopped the inspections
and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production.
In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough
plutonium for ten bombs a year.
"The
only way to peace is peace; the only way is nonviolence. The only answer to
Israeli nuclear weapons, their aggression, occupation and oppression, and the
wall and refugee camps is to answer them with truth and a peaceful voice. When
I became the spy for the world, I did it all for the people of the world. If
governments do not report the truth, and if the media does not report the
truth, then all we can do is follow our consciences. Daniel Ellsberg did, the
woman from Enron did, and I did. The United States needs to wake up and see the
truth that Israel is not a democracy, unless you are a Jew. Israel is the only
country in the Middle East where America can right now find WMDs. America can
also find where basic human rights have been denied Christians: right here in
Israel."
"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