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Columns Harvey WassermanA SPEECH FOR PEACE: Martin Luther King Day January 20, 2003 GOOD MORNING.... We are gathered here in joy to celebrate the technologies of peace. The road to peace, to justice, to prosperity leads through the sun and the wind. Never has the contrast been so great. In tragedy and fear, we are looking down the barrel of the gun of a war for oil. A war for the technologies of the past. A war for global warming and dead oceans. A war to kill pollution control and to drill in Alaska. A war about ending affirmative action and burying the Bill of Rights. A war to make abortion illegal and imprison those who need medical marijuana. The Republican party has become the Al Queida of the environment. The Bush Administration has chosen economic ruin over peace and prosperity. We are here to reverse that choice. We are in the bright sunshine, looking at the path of peace. Cars that are nonviolent. Solar panels that worship nature. Wind mills that embrace what's holy. We are living proof that throughout history, peace has prevailed and tyrants have fallen. This is how it's done. With good people, gathering in harmony, but in firmness, to say NO to war. NO to tyranny. NO to stolen elections. NO to phony consensus. NO to media monopolies. NO to official terrorism. Saddam Hussein should never have been put in power by the US government. He should never have been given chemical weapons with which to fight Iran. He should never been encouraged by the US military to subjugate his people in the name of stability. But it is not now the place of a President to order people to die for those mistakes. It's not the duty of reservists to leave their families here to kill families there in the name of a democracy which no longer exists here and will not be installed there. George Bush the First ordered a war in Iraq in 1991. The men and women who fought that war are still dying from it. Tens of thousands suffer from illnesses the government denies exist. But we know they do. They may have come from chemical poisoning. Or from innoculations. Or from bad food. Or from insects. Or from radiation from the depleted uranium shells that have turned that entire region into a nuclear waste dump. Only one thing is certain: the men and women who go this time will come back with the same afflictions. They will enter the same hell. And George Bush II will once again deny they exist. And refuse to pay their medical bills, or to compensate their families. We cannot let history repeat itself. We have it in our power to go the road of peace. These hybrid cars and solar panels, these wind turbines and efficiency light bulbs---they make the entire idea of war even more absurd. Lets celebrate them. Lets celebrate each other. We can choose peace. We can choose life. Thank you for coming today to do just that. Email this article to a friend |
Don't forget to check out articles from 2007 and 2008
"Was Willie Horton Gay? Will George W. Bush be the hate-homosexuals candidate?"
December 23, 2003
"Was Bush's turkey trip to Baghdad aimed at Hillary Clinton? "
December 2, 2003
"Bush to veterans: Drop Dead"
November 12, 2003
"The Cheney-Bush energy disaster is about to come to a vote"
November 1, 2003
"The Gropenator knows government like Rush knows football"
October 5, 2003
"Arianna outs Arnold the Barbarian"
October 1, 2003
"California nightmare: Arnold stalks for Bush 2004"
September 24, 2003
"Fabulous Farm Aid rocks corporate ag while Bush babbles"
September 10, 2003
"Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead"
September 2, 2003
"Forget Arnold, "Blackout Pete" Wilson is the electric terminator"
August 17, 2003
"The latest bogus fossil-nuke blackout: this grid should not exist"
August 15, 2003
"Ayatollah Robertson's supreme fatwah and Bush's desperate attack on America: Is the Superpower of Peace turning the corner?"
July 25, 2003
"Will Ohio's hole-in-head nuke machine of mass destruction soon reopen?"
July 7, 2003
"Urgent Davis-Besse nuke alert: hole-in-head machine of mass destruction must be kept shut"
July 3, 2003
"Truth is the weapon of Bush's self-destruction: The Superpower Of Peace has the ultimate force "
June 18, 2003
"Bush's Military Defeat: The Superpower of Peace is our only hope"
May 2, 2003
"Bob Fitrakis for City Council"
April 20, 2003
"The Superpower of Peace and the fundamentalist nightmare"
March 29, 2003
"The emerging Superpower of Peace"
March 15, 2003
"Has Bush suckered the UN and Iraq?"
March 9, 2003
"A regime that hates democracy can't wage war for democracy"
February 22, 2003
"Will Bush/Iraq crash our spaceship earth?"
February 6, 2003
"A SPEECH FOR PEACE: Martin Luther King Day"
January 20, 2003
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