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Activism See other Activism Articles Title: Moscow invades Mexico, citing Yucatan’s terrorism threat Moscow invades Mexico, citing Yucatan’s terrorism threat Consider the following scenario: It’s 1966 -- the height of the Cold War -- and the Soviet Union sends the Red Army 7,000 miles across the globe to gratuitously invade Mexico, entirely without provocation or credible cause. The illegal, immoral aggression is predicated on a preposterous lie about the Mexicans supposedly being an imminent, awful threat to Mother Russia. Moscow overthrows the Mexican government, uses controlled elections to install a puppet regime, and then proceeds to appropriate the hapless country’s oil wealth. In the course of the initial attack and the Mexican patriots’ resistance during the ensuing, hated occupation, tens of thousands of people are killed. All over the planet, huge protest demonstrations take place. A common placard at those angry gatherings is one that reads, “Leonid Brezhnev: The World’s Number One Terrorist.” In the neighboring United States, everyone is outraged. American conservatives, especially, are justifiably livid. They condemn the Soviet travesty, correctly comparing what’s occurred to Hitler’s fascist expansionism. Now, flash forward from an imaginary outrage too crazy to ever have possibly happened. We’re in 2006, and it’s the United States under George Bush that’s occupying Iraq, after a shock-and-awe aggression that blew to pieces not just vastly outgunned Iraqi defenders, but elderly men, terrified women, and small children as well. More than 100,000 of them died. The fabricated rationale for needlessly going to war has been thoroughly exposed as ridiculous. Documents exist showing exactly how Iraqi oil wealth is to be diverted into U.S. corporate coffers by duplicitous means. Collaborators and opportunists comprise the Quisling regime that Washington has installed, while those devoted to true Iraqi freedom and self-determination are gunned down by Marines, or tortured at Abu Ghraib. Angry protests sweep the world. Placards emblazoned with “George Bush: The World’s Number One Terrorist” crop up everywhere. In the United States, however, conservatives lavishly praise Bush’s wretched war. They drive SUVs and own oil company stock. While emitting hypocrisy like a volcano spews clouds of billowing ash. The Oppressed Become Oppressors Eight hundred Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota are serving in Iraq. Unemployment at Pine Ridge exceeds 80 percent. Alcohol and drug abuse are epidemic. The general health and education status lags behind many Third World countries. I’ll often get panhandled on the streets by destitute souls without homes or food. They sleep under the freeway, and eat at a mission. Most are “Indians,” some of whom left Pine Ridge to try for better lives in the white man’s city. Meanwhile, others from the reservation are risking improvised explosive devices in Iraq to facilitate the same theft of someone else’s land and resources that made Native American existence a trail of tears to begin with. There are no tumbleweeds or coyotes in the badlands north of Baghdad, but otherwise it’s an old, familiar, sad story. When Will They Ever Learn? A young couple has their first, precious baby. With boundless love in their hearts, they watch as it grows, becoming a toddler, then a pre-schooler. It’s a treasured time of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and alphabet sing-a-longs on Sesame Street. Kindergarten follows, then later grades and real learning. Soon the child brings home books, reads stories, does math. Gold stars reward good performance. Mom and Dad are so proud. Middle school comes next, along with team sports. How great it is to be a kid having fun in America! In high school, first love and a first job bring new excitement to everyone. The child is doing well scholastically. College is on the horizon. Moisture streams down both parents’ faces as they watch a diploma being presented to the light of their lives at graduation. The child has grown into a young adult with great promise. Acting on a sincere sense of service, the graduate joins the National Guard. It’s only part-time duty, and it will bring the reward of helping the community during emergencies such as hurricanes or floods. But when the natural disasters arrive, an unnatural disaster keeps Guard members from being there to assist. A dishonest, malicious president has launched a dreadful war of choice in the Middle East. National Guard units are sent abroad for a lie about weapons of mass destruction that never existed. One by one, and increasingly in groups, young American Guardsmen and women start dying, the victims of people with guns and bombs who simply want foreign soldiers out of their sacred land. One day the front doorbell rings at the home of the youngster who was happily playing backyard games not that many years ago. Two men in uniforms tell the mother, who is trembling and weeping even before a single word is uttered, “We regret to inform you . . ." She screams. On the television in the living room, a smug, smirking man at a podium talks about “honoring those who’ve fallen” by “staying the course” until “complete victory” is achieved. But that can’t happen, for there is no honor in pursuing a misrepresented endeavor that’s destined to fail. In a few days, Mom and Dad will have their child’s entire life flash before their flowing eyes in the few moments it takes to lower a coffin six feet beneath a cemetery‘s manicured lawn. Meanwhile, across town, another young person prepares to leave for the battlefield. And at the local hospital, new parents beam as they marvel over their just-born infant. A muted radio on the bedside table plays an oldie from decades past: “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, urges everyone to help guarantee a decisive turnout for street protests marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war, on March 19. He can be reached at dennisr@cp.duluth.mn.us.
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#6. To: robin (#0)
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
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