When a U.S Soldier In Iraq Won't Soldier

Please read the following article from the Christian Science Monitor on what a soldier goes through when he doesn't agree with the war.

What does the Army do with a private who can't be persuaded to load his gun?
By Mary Wiltenburg | Correspondent of Christian Science Monitor

No one looked comfortable at the sentencing hearing. Not family and friends who packed the US military courtroom's straight-backed benches. Not the rookie Army prosecutor in stiff dress greens who flushed with every "Your Honor." Not Judge R. Peter Masterton, whose usually animated face was now grave.

And not the convicted deserter – Army medic Agustín Aguayo – on the stand in a US military court in central Germany last March, pleading for understanding.
"I'm sorry for the trouble my conscience has caused my unit," Private 1st Class Aguayo said, his voice thick with emotion. "I tried to obey the rules, but in the end the problem was at the very core of my being."

Colonel Masterton, a veteran military judge, stared down at his bench. The defense wanted him to free this man of conscience. The prosecution asked that he put the coward away for two years to show other soldiers that "they are not fools for fulfilling their obligation."

Aguayo craned to face the judge. "When I hear my sergeants talking about slashing people's throats," he said, crying openly, "if I'm not a conscientious objector, what am I when I'm feeling all this pain when people talk about violence?"
Next door in the press room, where reporters crowded to watch the proceedings on bleached, closed-circuit TVs, a soldier guarding the door wiped tears from his face.

Every war has its deserters, troops who abandon their posts. And every war has its converts to pacifism. The Defense Department reports that 5,361 active-duty service members deserted the US Armed Forces last year; nearly 37,000 since October 2001. In today's all-volunteer force, that means a desertion rate of less than half a percent – much lower than the Vietnam War draft era, when it reached a 1971 high of 7.4 percent. In the past six years, 325 Army soldiers have applied to be recognized as conscientious objectors (COs), soldiers who no longer believe in war; 58 percent were accepted.

Still, Aguayo's story is revealing of the mental battles of these thousands who change their minds during a bloody war – and, arguably, of many who don't.
Struggling to support a young family in the patriotic months after 9/11, Aguayo chose to serve a nation heading into a long fight. War made a man of the naive private – but not in the way his officers intended. While his struggle to believe in his mission probably resembled that of many young recruits, no one imagined how it would end.

Aguayo is a small, soft-spoken man, tentative but quick to smile. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, he immigrated legally to Los Angeles with his parents when he was 4. At 19, he became a citizen and married a girl he'd met at church, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. He worked a dead-end bank job; for his twin daughters' sake, he wanted more. So he got second and third jobs and enrolled in community college. At Home Depot, where he worked in the fall of 2002, the radio blared through his shift with Army Reserve ads promising he could stay with his family and get a four-year degree.

On the way to renew his driver's license, Aguayo saw a recruiting station and stopped in. "No, you don't want the Army Reserve," he recalls the recruiter saying, "have a seat." Two weeks later, Aguayo joined the active-duty Army. His wife didn't want him to – the Afghan war had subsided and the Iraq invasion was imminent. "But he was so excited and so sure that the future would hold great things," Helga Aguayo says, that she supported his decision. She recalls asking him what he'd do if he had to go to war. "He kind of laughed and said, 'They train you for that. I'll be a different person."

But in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., Aguayo couldn't adjust like other recruits did. It pained him to march to "Left, right, kill!" and to chant "We are not men. We are beasts." He stumbled out of gas-mask training crying, and wrote to Helga that the sting of the gas made him think of Nazi gas chambers. "The point is for you to learn how to use the mask," he says, "but [the gas] hurts, and I'd never want to hurt anyone like that." He hoped his qualms were normal, that he'd master them.

In August 2003, five months after the US invaded Iraq, Aguayo's unit was sent to a base in Schweinfurt, Germany. There they received orders to deploy to Iraq in the new year. His roommate assured Aguayo that the war was over and they would be peacekeepers. Aguayo, who rarely followed the news, felt better.
Then their training changed. "It wasn't targets anymore. It wasn't about me getting a badge. It wasn't about me getting a pat on the back," he says, "It was about me getting ready to take someone down."

In February 2004, on the eve of his Iraq deployment, Aguayo confided to Helga, who had joined him in Germany with their 8-year-old daughters, that he wasn't willing to kill, even in self-defense. She was alarmed. She searched for help online, and found a story about a marine who had refused to serve in Iraq. They read it together; some of the words were new to them.

"I had never heard the term 'conscientious objector,' which is embarrassing," she says. They Googled it, and called the hot-line number that came up. Volunteers explained the application process, and Aguayo, deploying in two days, hurried one together.

In Iraq a week later, he woke to the sound of shouting. Near his Tikrit aid station, a US military truck with five passengers had hit a roadside bomb. Aguayo zipped two officers up in body bags. His horrified expression caught the attention of a physician's assistant who took him aside. "You have to understand, there is a bigger picture," Aguayo remembers him saying, "God has a bigger plan."

"I couldn't reason like that," Aguayo says. "I thought, 'How can God have anything to do with this?' To me it was ignorance: on our side and on the guys that put the bomb out there."

Aguayo never got used to the routine cruelties of war: The men in US uniform he heard speak lewdly to veiled women, the American squads that cut clotheslines on Fridays while families were at prayer. "When someone sees me on a corner, then sees this guy next to me," he says of these soldiers, "he thinks we're the same."
Despite his misgivings, Aguayo developed a reputation in his unit as a mature presence and a diligent worker. He was promoted to the rank of specialist and recommended for another promotion to noncommissioned officer status, which he refused. Friends who served with him say that although they didn't share his beliefs, they respected his growing pacifism.

For his 12-month tour, Aguayo refused to carry a loaded weapon. His medical duties didn't require one, but dangerous patrols in Saddam Hussein's hometown did. Out of consideration for his beliefs, superiors looked the other way as he hoisted an empty rifle. When he told Helga, she was appalled at the danger he was putting himself – and others – in. "I said: You can't do this. You have a family. You have to come back," she says.

In August 2004, Aguayo's CO application was denied. The decision was divided: Aguayo's company commander and investigating officer called him "absolutely sincere" and said he had a "legitimate concern with being a soldier." The next four levels of command recommended rejection; one called Aguayo's application "an attempt to remedy [the] anxiety all soldiers face during an extended deployment in a combat theater."
Aguayo knew there were other ways out: A friend used illegal drugs to get discharged; others went AWOL. But he hated the idea of breaking the law. So the Aguayos threw themselves into challenging the decision when he returned to Germany in February 2005. Superiors decided that whatever the result, he didn't belong in the Army. A sergeant took him aside and promised to "paper" him out: charge him with enough small defiances to disqualify him from service.

But with only one infraction on record – failing to raise his M-16 in a training exercise – and another pending, his unit got word. They were going back to Iraq.


Read the rest of this chilling story here:

When a Soldier Won't Soldier

ROVE RESIGNS!

TODAY on Basham and Cornell Progressive Talk we'll be discussing Rove's resignation as well as other juicy politcal news.

The Basham and Cornell Show broadcasts weekday mornings at 8 am Pacific Time on AM 1230 KLAV in Las Vegasat 8 am Pacific (11 a.m. Eastern). All shows are simulcast on the Internet (and archived) and can be listened to at BASHAM AND CORNELL.COM

If you missed it, you can listen in the archives. This past Friday August 10th, Senator John Edwards was our guest, and Tomorrow, Tuesday August 14, we are having Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, author of "Take This Job and Ship it: How Corporate Greed and Brain Dead Politics Are Selling Out America."









Open Thread.

SYMPHONY OF HOPE

I heard Nancy Pelosi this morning. 'She said that the whole point of the military surge, is to bring forth a peaceful political process. But the Iraqi government seems to be disbanding, desite reports that the military part of the surge is having some success. We can't just stay indefinitely using only military means, since the whole point of the surge was to bring the Democratic government to the table. Are we supposed to stay there forever, providing a virtual police state? The cost to our troops and to our nation is too great.



The following two articles will blow you away. I am a symphony lover and grew up in a family of musicians. I wanted to see if Iraq had a symphony and if there were any signs of hope in Iraq at all. So I Googled "Symphony in Iraq: and here's what I found from this amazing journalist embedded in Iraq. God Bless Terry McCarthy. He also wrote a bizarre and astounding article below called "Prints of War" You will not believe it. In addition, he did an interview last week with Iraq's Prime Minister Maliki, and was shocked at how "dead" Maliki's spirit seems to be.

SYMPHONY OF HOPE by Terry McCarthy of ABC News

July 26, 2007 6:23 PM

We look hard for signs of hope in Iraq. And so we were pleasantly surprised when we went to a music festival in Erbil -- about 300 Iraqi musicians and dancers had been flown in to the northern city, and were given the run of an enormous performing arts center, courtesy of a grant from the US government. On hand were nine American music and dance teachers, who were giving classes on such subjects as Baroque keyboard technique, hip hop dancing and contemporary jazz. It was fun to see the Iraqi musicians soaking it all in. For 10 days, in the relative safety of Kurdistan, they got to act like most musicians in the rest of the world who don’t have car bombs and gunshots constantly disturbing their sense of harmony.

Michael, the hip-hop teacher, was from Texas and very extroverted -- the young Kurds who wanted to learn hip-hop quickly lost all their shyness and inhibitions in the face of his antics. His first task -- to update their musical knowledge. They had been downloading most of their music on their cell phones, which Michael thought was cool -- until he heard it. “There is a definite time lag,” he said. “I had an argument about it yesterday. They still feel Michael Jackson is the King of Pop.” Once that issue was settled, he began teaching them a robocop dance routine. They loved it.

Other inhibitions melted away. Iraq is in the midst of a bitter sectarian conflict, and today people are usually very slow to socialize outside their own group -- it is a simple matter of safety. At the festival there were Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Kurds and Arabs, flown or driven in from all over the country. On the first day the organizers noted that people pretty much stuck to their own cliques when they sat down for lunch or gathered in the hallways. But after about 24 hours thrown together in class rooms and the concert hall, religious and ethnic differences began to be pushed aside, as the musicians and dancers found common interest in their craft.

By the end of the festival they had put together what they called a “Unity Orchestra”, made up of musicians from various cities around Iraq, who were to give a performance on the final evening to an invited audience. A conductor from Baghdad, Mohammed Amin, said the whole point was “to show that we are still here, that there is still hope for Iraq”.

The music festival in Erbil reinforced my sense that, if they are given a modicum of security, Iraqis can lay aside their differences fairly quickly. In the context of today’s violence, provoked by some very vicious extremists, that is a pretty massive “if”. But as the conductor says, the moderate, non-extremist, non-sectarian majority of Iraqis is still here. And so, there is still hope.

THE PRINTS OF WAR

July 31, 2007 2:30 PM

Some time ago a good friend, Chris Morris, a photographer for TIME magazine, told me how he had been traveling through Somalia during the bad days there and had come across a makeshift medical station in an abandoned house north of the capital Mogadishu. There was one doctor, an English-speaking Somali surgeon, who was dealing with a large number of wounded civilians and soldiers who had been brought there from the fighting further south. His equipment was rudimentary – a small number of scalpels and forceps, not many drugs, a wooden table on which he was operating.

Chris, with a photographer’s eye, noticed that the whitewashed walls of the room where the operations were carried out had been decorated with red palm prints. He shot a few frames, and asked about the significance of the designs. The doctor was blunt. There was no water in the building, and he had no latex gloves, so the only way to get the blood off his hands after each operation was to slap them against the wall, before moving on to the next patient.

That image stayed with me, and it popped back into my mind today during a conversation I had with an Iraqi surgeon who has become a good friend to the ABC bureau here, Dr Jamal Taha. Dr Jamal works in the ER of Yarmuk Hospital, one of the busiest in Baghdad, and over the last four years he has seen an unimaginable array of human suffering – gunshot victims, carbomb survivors, victims of torture – and many dead bodies. We talk to him frequently, and he has become a bellwether for us on the level of violence on the streets. He sees the effects first.

I asked him today about supplies of drugs and medical equipment for his hospital – there has been some news recently about how corrupt officials in the ministry of health here have been diverting drugs from hospitals onto the black market to make profit for themselves. Dr Jamal said yes, there was a shortage of drugs, but that wasn’t the worst of his problems. “Many times,” he said, “we have to delay our operations because there is no tap water to wash our hands.”

History repeats itself, often for the worse. The movie “Blackhawk Down” about the war in Somalia starts with a quote from the Greek philosopher, Plato: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Iraqis understand that with a tragic sense of the inevitable.

And they desperately need running water in Yarmuk hospital.

ABC News' Terry McCarthy has been reporting on war, peace, and everything in between from all around the world for 20 years. He writes about daily life in the areas he is reporting from.ABC News

http://blogs.abcnews.com/bizarrebazaar/2007/07/symphony-of-hop.html

"No water, no eat, no everything," Symphony conductor al-Ghazali says. "And we think it's the end of life on the Earth. But we say, 'Hamdallah, we can do the new life.'"

JOHN EDWARDS on BASHAM & CORNELL RADIO SHOW FRIDAY

On Friday August 10th, Senator John Edwards will be the guest on the Basham and Cornell Radio Show at 8 am Pacific Time on AM 1230 KLAV in Las Vegas. The Basham and Cornell Show broadcasts weekday mornings at 8 am Pacific (11 a.m. Eastern). All shows are simulcast on the Internet (and archived) and can be listened to at BASHAM AND CORNELL.COM



John has dedicated his career to representing families and children just like the families he grew up with in Robbins, North Carolina. Standing up against the powerful insurance industry and their armies of lawyers, John helped these families through the darkest moments of their lives to overcome tremendous challenges. His passionate advocacy for people like the folks who worked in the mill with his father earned him respect and recognition across the country. In 1998, John took this commitment into politics to give a voice in the United States Senate to the people he had represented throughout his career. He ran for the Senate and won, defeating an incumbent Senator.

Senator Edwards brought a positive message of change to the 2004 presidential primaries. During the primary season he spoke about the two Americas that exist in our country today: one for people at the top who have everything they need and one for everybody else who struggle to get by. This powerful message resonated with voters all across America. After the Democratic primaries, Senator John Kerry picked Senator Edwards to serve as his running mate in the 2004 general election, and Senator Edwards crisscrossed the country and campaigned tirelessly on Senator Kerry's behalf.

Senator Edwards will be in Las Vegas on Friday August 10, for a Town Hall meeting. It will be held at the Laborers International Union Local 872 - 4201 East Bonanza Road #101. The event gets started at 4:45 p.m. Some of the topics Senator Edwards will discuss will be trade, keeping jobs in America, getting real universal healthcare for all Americans and stopping the threat of global warming.

Attendance to this Town Hall meeting is free, but the Edwards campaign would like you to at least RSVP if you will be attending. You can go to their web site, at www.JohnEdwards.com; you can email them at nevada@johnedwards.com; or call 434-3978 here in Las Vegas.

Nevada is a red state, but we have the ONLY Progressive Talk-radio show in Las Vegas! Basham and Cornell Show is now a DAILY SHOW! Tune in LIVE FROM 8-9 a.m. Monday thru Friday online or live from LAS VEGAS (KLAV 1230) BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK


_______________________________________________________________________________________

SUPPORT LABOR * MINERS NEED TO UNIONIZE
Before we get into the sex lives of the presidential candidates, I want to mention how important it is for our coal miners to unionize. In Canada, during a recent miner's catastrophe, all the miners walked out alive. Why? They were unionized. Their safety came first. The coal companies built underground "safe rooms" stocked with water, food and enough air to be able to live for a month. The miners demanded this and of course they are all alive.

If our coal miners were unionized, they wouldn't be trapped underground facing death. The greed of coal mining companies has prevented safe guards which could save lives. The owners brag that they prevent their workers from unionizing, thereby saving money — and their stock rises!

FAMILY VALUES: DEMOCRATS KEEP THEIR VOWS AND STAY MARRIED... BUT WHO KEEPS TRADING FOR TROPHY WIVES?




Republicans, the party of so-called "family values" has none. Guiliani is on his third wife, Fred Thompson is on his second, and she is 30 years younger. And we all know about Newt Gingrich, Ted Haggart, Rep. Bob Allen, Mark Foley and all the right-wingers who preach family values but are closet cases...

Democrats stay married. John Edwards is still married to Elizabeth and sticks by her through her cancer treatments (remember Newt Gingrich forced his ailing wife to sign divorce papers on her cancer bed, so he could marry a younger model); Hillary stuck with Bill through devastating trials as their vows and Biblical principles prove in "For better or for worse;" and Obama is married happily to his first and only wife Michelle. Al Franken also is still married to Frannie for over 30 years.

Democrats care about health insurance for children.
Republicans don't.

Democrats care about labor unions. In fact, if the coal miners had a union, they wouldn't be trapped underground facing death. Republicans brag that they prevented their workers from unionizing, so their stock could rise.

In Canada, during a recent miner's catastrophe, all the miners walked out alive. Why? They were unionized and insisted on building underground "safe rooms" stocked with water, food and enough air to be able to live for a month. The miners demanded this and of course they are all alive

The greed of coal mining companies has prevented safe guards which could save lives.

This is the American dream?

WHERE HAVE ALL OUR FREEDOMS GONE?

I am out of town and can only leave short posts until August 10. Meanwhile Larry is holding down the fort, and doing a great job. I was going to write a post about the Bush administration called "If They Have Nothing to Cover Up, Why are they Covering Everything Up?"

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is a terrific spy-thriller, but if this is the way the NSA is spying on us, then we don't stand a chance of ever getting our "freedoms" back. It also closely parallels what is going on in the Bush administration today. It's a socio-political parable. I got goosebumps at the chilling way it mimics exactly what is going on right now in America, in the CIA and with our troops. Watch the ending. Let me know what you think. - Lydia

More on that later...

Where Have All Our Freedoms Gone?
Guest Blog by Larry



On a balmy day many decades ago, the Senate of Rome voted overwhelmingly to make Ceasar their Emperor. It was also a balmy day in America, as the U.S Senate voted 60-28 to violate the constitution and allow George W Bush the freedom to spy without warrant on any American he may choose.

The Senate, who is controlled by the Democratic majority was told by George W Bush, that they couldn't go on their month long summer vacation until they agreed on his desire to spy on every American.

This is another freedom that has been taken away by those we elect to protect our interests. The Congress has already allowed Mr. Bush to send the FBI to enter your house without a warrant and without your permission, did you know that?

The government can read your postal mail without your permission, do you realize that? The National Security Agency can read your e-mail and listen to your private phone conversations, are you aware of that?

Congress gave Mr. Bush the right to install the "Patriot Act" which in essence allows the government to arrest anyone they "suspect" may commit a crime in the future. This act requires no warrant.

The entire Congress gave Mr. Bush the right to institute Martial Law on the citizens of the U.S, for any reason, any time he so chooses. This act was done, by Executive order, with little opposition from Congress.

Where have our other freedoms gone? Our assets can now be seized by the government if it is decided a citizen may be interfering with Bush's duties as President by protesting the Iraq war.

George W. Bush was demanding that Congress rewrite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), so that the U.S. government can more easily spy, not on terrorists, but rather on innocent Americans. Bush has his wish and each American will pay the price.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Americans overwhelmingly oppose giving Bush the right to spy on each of us without warrant and without cause. What about the rights of "We the People" or does it really matter.

It doesn't matter because, if these past six-plus years have taught "We the People" anything, it has taught us that America can survive terrorist attacks, but can it survive the threat posed by the extremist agenda espoused and practiced by the dictatorship of George W Bush and today's Republican Party.

*****************
This morning from 8-9 a.m. PST Basham and Cornell discuss the new law Bush signed giving himself unlimited spying powers and condoning all the laws he broke the past 6 years.

If you're in Vegas, tune in to: KLAV 1230 to listen live or on the interent BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK

Nevada is a red state, but we have the ONLY Progressive Talk-radio show in Las Vegas! Basham and Cornell Show is now a DAILY SHOW! Tune in LIVE FROM 8-9 a.m. Monday thru Friday online or live from LAS VEGAS (KLAV 1230) BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK

Murdoch and the Media of Propaganda

CONGRATULATIONS! This blog is a 2006 triple Koufax nominee: Best Writing, Best Post (for Lydia's "Bush's Last Will and Testicle," and More Deserving of Wider Recognition. Also, Clif was nominated for "Best Commenter." Worf was nominated for Best Commenter for two other blogs, but his nomination for Sutton Records was supposed to be for this blog. (Michael Sutton, CEO of Sutton Records is a friend.)

PLEASE Vote in the finals by registering and emailing your vote — although I have no idea when voting closes, as everyone is on hiatus. Please go to KOUFAX AWARDS
and click on Best Writing, Best Post and vote for "Lydia Cornell Blog." Thank you very much.

Nevada is a red state, but we have the ONLY Progressive Talk-radio show in Las Vegas! Basham and Cornell Show is now a DAILY SHOW! Tune in LIVE FROM 8-9 a.m. Monday thru Friday online or live from LAS VEGAS (KLAV 1230) BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK

*********************


Rupert Murdoch has just bought the Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones and Co. The purchase of this media long-stay will cost Murdoch nearly $6 billion. The takeover ends a century of family ownership by the Bancroft family, and adds a new resource to his global media empire, News Corp.

Rupert & Homer

Murdoch has grown his mammoth media company, "News" Corp. into one of the largest and most influential media groups in the world from a small town newspaper in Australia.

Murdoch wields considerable power with his global media company and is often wooed by politicians to persuade him to favorably cover their campaigns. His empire covers television, filmed entertainment, cable network programming, book publishing, direct broadcast satellite television, magazines and newspapers operating in the United States, Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia and the Pacific.

As Murdoch acquired many widely read newspapers in Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. he brought much controversy with his ruthless and aggressive management style. Murdoch once remarked “I’m a catalyst for change, You can’t be an outsider and be successful for more than 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.”

Murdoch developed Fox News channel, with red, white and blue colors flowing throughout the set. He hired anchors from rival news channels, many being attractive women who always wore short skirts to attract male viewers.

He hired Roger Ailes to run his cable news venture, who like Murdoch has always had leanings of being ultra conservative. The slogan “Fair and Balanced” was used throughout each Fox News interview and segment.

As Murdoch and Fox News now had the appeal factor ready for viewers, they often twist conservative views into each news broadcast and interview. A daily log of conservative guests gave Fox anchors hourly opportunities to spread the conservative message, and attack the “Liberal” views of the opposition.

Murdoch and his media outlets worked tirelessly trying to destroy Bill Clinton. They often shattered the truth to spread their propaganda against Presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry during their run for the White House.

Murdoch used Fox News to promote Bush’s twisted reasons for war. They tend to twist the mounting toll of deaths in Iraq, into attacking the “liberal media” for not covering the truth.

Murdoch and the Fox propaganda helped bring the Republicans and George W Bush into power, and now they feverishly try to spin the war, although their propaganda message has turned the public away, due to the increasing costs of war.

Since Rupert Murdoch’s offer was made public, volumes have been written on what this historic deal might mean to journalism in America. A fair bit of the criticism and concern surrounding News Corp.’s bid for Dow Jones has focused on Murdoch himself and his well-documented penchant for employing his media outlets to advance his political and business interests.

Maybe we ought to be most concerned with the health of our media system. Media consolidation, by its nature, diminishes the variey of voices represented in our media. With fewer points of view available, those select few with an outlet increase their capacity to shape public opinion, politics and daily life.

Today’s media system isn’t simply the evolving result of capitalism at it’s best,
it is the result of policies created by Congress and enforced by the FCC. Without those policies, Murdoch couldn't have built his media empire. Only by restoring public input in the policymaking process, can we reverse this trend and make America’s media a healthier place where a variety of ideas and the free market can co-exist.

When Adolph Hitler took power in Germany he also took over the media, and he used it to shape a modern, civilized country to his ends. With full control of the national press his propaganda minister Paul Josef Goebbels developed sophisticated and very effective tools of propaganda to control public opinion in Germany, and even in other countries. He proved that if you repeat a lie often enough in mass media, most people will accept it as the truth.

This is very powerful, and propaganda may be the most dangerous weapon developed in the Second World War. The atom bomb scared so many people that we had mass movements trying to control it, but the general public seems to have missed the significance of the power of propaganda.

As media conglomerates like Murdoch and News Corp continue to be allowed to buy up every means of information resources, the propaganda of conservatism will continue to give the public a pre-arranged slant of reality.

Hitler took over the media and he used it to further his own goals of hate and power, while the current spread of conservative propaganda in the media is being used to place political parties into power, start wars and silence the critics.

The conservatives with their media conglomerates like News Corp and others, are practicing the same philosophy used by Hitler during his reign of terror. If we the public sit idly by while media giants control our flow of information, then we will fare worse than Hitler's Germany.

STEREOTYPES *

Please read Larry's excellent article "Stereotypes" below. But first I want to add this riveting news. Bush is trying to sell the Saudis a large cache of U.S. made high-tech weaponry for a $20 billion dollar asking price. Just now on Randi Rhodes show, evidence was presented that this is absolutely high treason, considering that most of the 911 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. And right now Saudi Arabia is emptying their prisons to unleash all their high-risk criminals. Guess where they are sending them? To Iraq, to kill American soldiers.

Remember, our government once upon a time, PROMOTED Saddam! We were “in his corner,” giving him support. Until he was no longer useful to us, that is, and served us better as a “bad guy” (which he already was, granted, but up to then we found it convenient to ignore that fact).

And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t trust us.

According to CNN, one of the more controversial proposals will probably be selling the Saudis, for the first time, satellite-guided bombs known as JDAMs. The sale may include a 500-pound and a 2,000-pound version of the aerial bomb. The Israelis are said to be very concerned about the Saudis having that precision-strike capability, so the United States will discuss basing the weapons as far away from Israel as possible, the official said. Other elements under discussion are new naval vessels, an advanced version of air-to-air missiles already used by the United States, and advanced Patriot missiles.

Hmmm... Bush wants to sell our weapons to the Saudis. Will we never learn? - Lydia



Stereotypes
Guest Blog by Larry

We all face being stereotyped in one way or another. That is just a part of life, a view that people may have of us, right or wrong. Some stereotypes are totally inaccurate, while a few may be close to reality.

Some of us are viewed as having the world at our fingertips, that we can do no wrong, when in reality the private world may be filled with insecurities and failures that are masked to the public eye.

Some of us may be stereotyped as elusive and cold when in reality we are shy or just not comfortable with being open with others for fear of betrayal or possibly even disbelief.

There are some of us who are stereotyped as being perhaps merely a country hayseed, one who can barely string two audible sentences together, or write anything of significance, when in reality we may be fluent in the proper settings and have the gift of written words.

Whatever the stereotype you fall under, you are viewed in a certain way by those who have never taken the time to know you. They have never taken the time to see the person inside of you, and what you are all about.

In 2000, America was presented with a projected stereotype of George W Bush. There were millions who were led to believe that George W Bush was a kind man, a compassionate man. A man of good morals.

Millions of Americans were led to believe after 9/11 hit, that Mr. Bush was a fearless leader who would seek those who harmed our country and bring them to justice. Some believed that Mr. Bush was the only one who could save our country.

Often in stereotypes, we discover that the person we have one view of is totally different than what we once believed. We find that those we thought had it all together is really scrambled and confused, that the country hayseed is really very articulate and gifted with words.

Those millions who thought George W Bush was a kind and compassionate man, discovered he is really cold and calculating. Those who thought Mr. Bush was filled with morals and principles now see a man with the principles and morals of an alley cat.

Those millions who stereotyped Mr. Bush as honest and trustworthy now see a vision of corruption and greed. Those of religious beliefs who once thought Mr. Bush was a man of peace, now see a man filled with hate and war.

As we see people we barely know in a vision we have in our minds, we often see the wrong stereotype. We see what we want to see, not what is behind the surface of the inner person.

After nearly seven years, America now has the true stereotype of George W Bush. As we see the arrogance and contempt for our rights and freedoms being stripped away, as we see thousands die shameful deaths due to greed and power, we now have the true stereotype.

Let us all hope if we get another opportunity to choose a leader for America, we will look inside the soul of the person before we choose. America can't afford another stereotype of shame.