Are we not Spartacus, Are we not Bradley Manning?

When whistleblowers in this or any country who uncover MISDEEDS are treated as Mr Manning has been treated, by our government (which is us) We must say NO!

The president, a "constitutional scholar" and "Nobel Peace Prize Winner" offered an opinion that his (Bradley Manning's)  treatment was fair, and then without benefit of a trial, suggested that he was guilty - We still have the right to a trial. We must oppose, we must stand in solidarity in opposition to torture in opposition to illegal warfare. 

And while technically you have a point, we are not the starving sleeping in the streets, we are not the homeless, who have been criminalized, we are not the people of compassion who tried to feed them and are also criminalized. 

But, if we don't stand with them. If we fail to understand the power of SOLIDARITY. Then leftist, rightist, republican or democrat alike we will all be subject to totalitarian excess. If we refuse to oppose government misdeeds if we ignore the end of HABEAS CORPUS, then we are all in jeopardy.

The black holes, the torture, the waterboarding, the censorship, the crippling immorality - If we do not stand together and oppose Mr. Mannings treatment, then we are assisting the slide into a New Dark Ages. And woe indeed is anyone who then dares to oppose the REGIME, the OPPRESSION, the EXCESSES. 

And if that's not crystal clear to you, then, I've wasted every letter I've typed and every thought I tried to express. Why were they all Spartacus? These slaves? 

Why why aren't you?

Walk like an Egyptian

My Egyptian Brothers and Sisters

Congratulations my fellow freedom fighters

You stood alone and unarmed with only your dreams for a democratic future to protect you.  Led by ideas and hope not despots or generals or business tycoons, or bankers or dangerous men and women armed with plastic explosive and infrared glasses, dropped from gunships in the dark of night.

I can see, Thomas Jefferson and the proud General Washington looking on in admiration even Thomas Paine, looked up from his pamphleteering to smile for a moment before he went back to his work of reminding men and women that they must be free of despots.

You said, no to the security state, you turned away in horror, from the whips, and iron bars and electrodes of those secretive butchers down below in the dark forcing screams from the innocent. You didn't need martial law, you didn't need special security rules and terrorist bombs.

You just said no, and no further. You were braver than the enforcers, you were braver, than the secret men who pulled the despots' strings.

We don't need such bravery in these fair lands, we have the pATRIOT aCT. We don't need the sinew to face down a charging band of secret service cavalry on horses and camels, we take our shoes off at the airports. We don't need the kind of brave hearts that can hold a town square like Tahrir, we have universal surveillance on our streets and the internet. 

We don't need no democracy down home, we have lobbyists and purchased legislators, and bankers here in the land of the free. We're too busy inserting enforcing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and sending in via cruise missiles into Pakistan. 

We don't need the kind of inconvenience of camping out in Tahrir Square. We have Homeland Security and a Constitutional Scholar to keep us safe from Habeas Corpus. But Good Luck Egyptians... We don't need your kind of new fresh citizen activists. We have pre-owned political parties to choose the faces who are purported to be in-charge on TEE VEE.  

Why has no nation brought the War Crminals to the World Court

My theory:

The reasons no nation or national leader has acted against the war criminals at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Because the bloody foolish oaf, who blunders breaking cities and bones across the planet:
a. still has money falling out of his ill-guarded pockets
b. still undeniably is a supporter of the economic & political status quo (which they all benefit from)
c. regardless of the TIN-EAR on Global Warming, and the shaky investment situation
d. the money, and arms trade, secret & open technology deals
e. historic patterns of allegiances

Together all out weigh in reale' political terms, any high moral stand ... with humane values like habeas,
or human rights at ebb tide, no one is rushing for the crown of human rights defender.

The British stance is easy to understand, they just gutted their own HISTORIC HABEAS IDEALS. And they stand equally to profit on the NO-BID Iraqi Oil Deal, but the French silence is harder to understand at least at first since they have in the recent past had more apparent distance than the Brits from our GRAND PLAN for Middle East Occupation...

But since the French Right is now back in power and Sarkosy seems ready to renew cozy relations...
There is no interest in any stand other than benefiting from the mutuality of economic interest.
France is a big arms, nuclear technology and avionics retailer also. Selling Bombs, and Bombers is a BIG BLOODY BUSINESS.

RESULTS & TACTICS

Lets not kid ourselves, the number of incidents in human history when MORALITY trumped vested economic,
and military interests are not numerous. There must be pressure to turn the major powers (either economic or military) away from their profitable albeit bloody and morally bankrupt path.

Who can we count on, to bring these charges at the Hague? Who is free of economic ties to the US?
The list of potential saviors are few. But I think we must find that savior of America in ourselves.
America is our country, the United States, once held the moral high ground, as the Undisputed Leader
in the fight for HUMAN RIGHTS. The remnants of this desire to extend humane values is left to those of us
who can afford to care, who can afford the luxury of spending time, energy and resources on this noble march
toward Liberty.

I believe that these days, during the reign of would be-monarch and dark prince W, will in the future be understood as a retrograde period when our government was put in hands that turned to the dark ages, for answers. An age when wealth (today's royalty) entitles a very small minority to live a life of supreme indifference to the commonwealth.

In fact current social darwinian thinking, makes the middle or working class, an economically disadvantaged, under-educated, "healthcare-free" debt class. Now our government by the wealth-laden ruling class, can dispense with the simplest of humane rights. Now, the work of two hundred years to create a humane and participatory government, with constraints on capital, humane working standards and a society prepared to invest in its youth, its education and library system, and its health challenged, as well as its elderly has metamorphosed into a Corporate-Indentured deaf-to-public interests, Evil Force that can afford WAR, but not education, afford to invest in Bombs, not Libraries, and networks of secret prisons and mercenary armies but not a medical plan for the debt class.

Its is not true that America cannot afford, quality schools, or quality medical care, or libraries or colleges for its citizens, but can build walls in Bhagdad & Palestine. American priorities are in the thrall of those who fail to comprehend a simple humane agenda.

If those priorities are to change - it must be by participation, not by allowing the LOGIC of CYNICISM grafted onto American Participatory Democracy. The only beneficiaries are those who now with their blood drenched hands on it controls, steer toward yet another war. We must participate with a sure knowledge that if we leave the few remaining levers of power behind in disgust. We will have co-signed the pact with the occupiers and their cohort the corporate vampires.

And I say, patriots are made of stronger stuff.

solidarity & peace

rick spisak
miamiforpeace.net
averyvoice