Dear Friends,

Doing a little Spring cleaning in the old inbox and I came across this partial portion of a message thread that had originally been started by one Arlan Feiles, singer/songwriter extraordinaire, a week or two prior during the holy week of Yom Kippur. Arlan, who as most people know is also a very passionate humanist and activist for peace and human rights. At one point last fall he sent out a scourging letter to his entire fanbase to get more actively involved in fighting the American Government’s illegal occupation of Iraq. One could tell from reading Arlan’s email that he just hit “that wall” that many of us have hit over and over again in the last five years and was really grieving by the thought of another year, another month, another day of people over there killing each other in an invasion that at current academic statistics took an estimated 950 separate and direct lies told by the American White House Administration to the six billion of the world in order to justify.

Mad? Sure Arlan was mad. Any living, breathing, thinking person on planet earth right now is mad. Beyond mad probably. One cannot put into words the loathing that the world feels for the current United States White House Administration. These are people so ugly with evil and deceit that it is truly hard to look at their pictures let alone say their names. So let’s not. We all know who they are. History will forever haunt humanity with the names of these wretched decrepit monsters and maniacs who somehow got away with disguising themselves as human and were responsible for the cruel useless and indecent death of so many hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

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The ANSWER Coalition is organizing or supporting activities throughout the week in commemoration of the “Nakba,” the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. Over the last few days there have been important rallies in San Francisco, New York City and Washington DC, as there have been in scores of other cities across the globe. The ANSWER Coalition encourages all who can to attend the Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim, California this weekend. The Convention will conclude with a march on Sunday, May 18. See below for details.

6th Al-Awda Int’l Convention to Mark 60 Years of Palestinian Nakba
May 16-18, 2008, Anaheim, California
Palestine: 60 Years of Forced Exile, Time For Return

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Dear fellow TuneInTurnOnHelpOut peeps,

United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is an organization which gets a lot of support from us around here. For many reasons. One of its principles, Bill Dobbs, had a good hand in turning me on to what activism was really all about. I had some opportunity to watch him in action during an organized Free Trade protest event that lasted days and days a few years back and the man was just tireless. Absolutely persistent, relentless, and committed to the goal of helping to get the word out to the mass media and to the world at large about the potential dangers and pitfalls of Free Trade. I learned much from watching him work. It taught me a lot about what it means to be “an activist.”

Since that time, I have been a UFPJ member and supporter when i could be, and at the very least always try to get the word out on what they are up to. Because what they are up to is always about “us” — their main concern is helping us even during times when we may not be aware of a potential problem yet. Such as right this very minute congress is about to vote on another bill to give the “white house” more money to continue to illegally occupy another country. Now this is some tricky stuff of course. Because Iraq really is no longer another country since we took it over. It now essentially belongs to us if we’re all going to just be honest here. And yes there is also the fact that if we leave, though what the US White House Administration did was illegal and immoral and grossly barbaric, we take the risk of this new Nation falling into the hands of some who may not have our best interest at heart. This argument may be where I and UFPJ differ. I am against the invasion of Iraq. Read the statement above again. But I also understand that we just blew a hole in that part of the world the size of, well, a small country, and we don’t want to leave a gaping wound for just anyone to come and fix up. This poses a huge security risk for us and other EU nations. Unfortunately it was us who started this war, and now we are going to have to be the ones who resolve things over there until the job is done.

But at the same time, I recognize that UFPJ has been very supportive of this group of Iraq Veterans Against the War — these are the actual soldiers who have been serving over there on our behalf. If you go to YouTube, you can spend a good number of hours watching them speak right into the camera about what it is like over there. I highly recomened it. Both veterans still there, and veterans now home. Both veterans for the invasion and veterans against it. It is a good idea to get THEIR side of the story since after all they are the ones over their risking their lives, getting killed, and getting hurt, injured, deformed, and maimed for life. (more…)