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Raging Grannies, by Cindy Sheehan
Source Dan Scanlan
Date 06/04/22/19:38

Raging Grannies and Raging Americans

By Cindy Sheehan

04/21/06 -- -- 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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