[AGL] Fwd: From cacklinggrackle

[Harry Edwards]

from brother Ramses Wiggins on the Doppelganger. Who said Mormons  
aren't eloquent? Long but well worth the read.                   twisty

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ramsey Wiggins <ramseywig at GMAIL.COM>
> Date: May 3, 2006 11:00:29 AM CDT
> To: GHETTO2 at LISTS.WHATHELPS.COM
> Subject: From cacklinggrackle
> Reply-To: Remembrances of Austin Ghetto <GHETTO2 at LISTS.WHATHELPS.COM>
>
>  This is the real deal, posted at the salt lake city gov website. I  
> may have to rethink my position on Mor(M)ons
>  
> RW
>  
> [Grackle note: A Mormon Utah mayor gave this speech.  He's hugely  
> popular
> there, by the way.  Can you imagine even *one* lone congressional  
> Democrat
> giving this speech?  Conyers?  Doubtful.  Obama?  Hell, Obama supports
> most of what Anderson is criticizing here.  This is a program for  
> taking
> back the country, if the Dems wanted to use it.  But they'd rather side
> with Bush.  Against the rest of us.  And I suspect Rocky Anderson will
> not be invited to speak at the Democratic Convention in 2008.]
>
>   
> http://www.slcgov.com/mayor/speeches/2006%20speeches/ 
> SPiraqrally42906.pdf
>
> Rally at City & County Building
> Remarks of Mayor Ross C. Rocky Anderson
> April 29, 2006
>
> We are gathered here today to say, No more!
>
> No more killing.
>
> No more expenditures of almost $6 billion per month on this tragic
> war.
>
> No more denial of health care coverage for over 42 million
> Americans, when we are paying more for this outrageous war than what it
> would cost for universal health care throughout the US.
>
> No more dependence on foreign oil, while we could become
> independent if we focused resources wasted in the Iraq war on clean,
> renewable sources of energy.
>
> No more attacks on immigrants who work so hard to build better
> lives.
>
> No more inaction by Congress on fixing our hypocritical and
> inconsistent immigration laws and policies.
>
> No more complacency by our news media, much of which has served
> as little more than a bulletin board for false government propaganda.
>
> No more raping and pillaging of our people by the outrageous  
> profiteers in
> the oil industry, by the health care insurance industry, and by the
> billionaire buddies of Bush and Cheney like the crooks at Enron and
> Halliburton.
>
> No more war in Iraq.
>
> No more reliance on fiction rather than the science of global warming.
>
> No more historic deficits forever demonstrating that our President and  
> our
> Congress are total hypocrites and liars when they call themselves  
> fiscal
> conservatives.
>
> No more torture of human beings.
>
> No more holding people in detention camps without charges  without
> lawyers  without any semblance of due process.
>
> No more sending people off to be held and interrogated in countries
> where torture and brutality is expected to occur.
>
> No more arrogant, blundering, incompetent leadership of our military.
> Which means no more Donald Rumsfeld.
>
> No more manipulation of our media.
>
> No more arrogance and incompetence posing as leadership in the
> White House.
>
> Which means no more Bush and Cheney!
>
> And no more arrogance, incompetence, and timidity posing as
> leadership in the United States Congress.
>
> No more illegal wiretapping without warrants.
>
> No more complacency by the American people.
>
> No more members of Congress who voted to turn into felons 12
>  million people our nation has encouraged to come here to work.
>
> No more disastrous cuts in funding for those most in need in our
> cities.
>
> No more destruction of American Indian urban health care centers.
>
> No more cuts in Community Development Block Grant funding.
>
> No more cuts in Community Oriented Policing federal funding for our
> cities.
>
> No more lies about a tie between Iraq and 9-11.
>
> Which means no more Dick Cheney.
>
> No more butchering of the English language.
>
> Which means, of course, no more George Bush.
>
> No more killing thousands of innocent people.
>
> Which means no more of the Bush Administration.
>
> And no more of those in Congress who have sat passively by while
> the slaughter continues.
>
> No more killing.
>
> No more maiming of men, women, and children, Iraqi and American.
> No more apathy by the American people.
>
> And no more refraining from saying No more!
>
> We are gathered here today because we care deeply. We are gathered  
> today
> because we cant and wont remain silent in the face of tragic  
> dishonesty,
> tragic violations of international law and human rights, outrageous war
> mongering, and continually shifting excuses for beginning the war a war
> that has resulted in the unnecessary deaths of probably more than  
> 100,000
> Iraqis and almost 2400 American members of the United States armed  
> forces.
> Add to that tragedy the terrible injuries sustained by tens of  
> thousands
> of people, and our nations conscience will forever be shocked and
> burdened.
>
> We are not gathered because we are Democrats or Republicans or
> Greens or Independents or members of any other party.
>
> We are not even because we are disgusted with the complacency,
> impotence, and timidity of so many so-called leaders in both of the  
> major
> parties.
>
>  We are not gathered here because we seek to divide this nation. In
> fact, we seek to unify this great country behind principles of justice,
> compassion and an end to an outrageous, unnecessary war.
>
> And we are not here because we are nut cakes.
>
> There are those who have said, Stand behind our President, right or
> wrong. They say, We are duty-bound to follow and support them.
>
> We are gathered here today to insist there are much higher authorities
>  than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld to whom we must
> listen for moral guidance.
>
> Those who say we should blindly follow our governmental leaders are
> calling for no less than shameful individual moral abdication.
> Never has so much evil been perpetuated than from following that
> call. A culture of blind obedience is a culture of immorality.
> Nazi Germany was a society comprised of millions of people who did
> not question and who did not object. They followed. They followed
> blindly. They left it for their leaders to make the decisions  even the
> decisions as to what each individual would do, including the most  
> inhumane
> treatment toward other people.
>
> That culture of blind obedience was not one where most people asked
> themselves, What should I do?. The answers were already furnished by
> leaders bent on world domination  leaders who thought nothing of
> torturing, killing, and maiming millions of innocent men, women, and
> children.
>
> People were not gathering together to say No more. Rather, they
> were calling out Heil Hitler, abdicating to political leaders the moral
> choices they each could have  and should have  made as individuals. In
>  short, they forfeited the most important part of what makes each of us
> human.
>
> We are gathered here to assert our moral autonomy  our moral power-
> our moral insistence that we will not be a part of the dishonesty, the
> brutality, and the hypocrisy behind the current war of aggression. And  
> we
> will call out together for an end to the insanity  an end to the  
> obscenity
> known as the Iraq war.
>
> At times like this, silence is complicity. Silence is an affirmation of
> the status quo. We will only see change when the people assert their  
> own
> moral authority and no longer leave it to the self-serving, shiftless,
> sycophantic servants of the corporate rapists and pillagers of our  
> people,
> like Dick Cheneys buddies at the  
> sole-source-contracts-in-Iraq-profiteer
> Halliburton; like Exxon, the plunderer of almost every person in our
> nation; and like the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies  
> that
> have made certain the American people do not have affordable, universal
> health care coverage.
>
> Rwanda was a culture of blind obedience. Tens of thousands of people
> heeded the call to slaughter their Tutsi and moderate Hutu neighbors,  
> most
> of whom used machetes to hack men, women, and children to death. These
> were not people who asserted their personal moral authority.
>
> Instead, they betrayed their role as moral actors as what most
> fundamentally makes a person a human being, by blindly following those  
> who
> said, Go kill the cockroach Tutsis. As a result, 800,000 people were
> slaughtered, while our nation, while the United Nations, while the
> international community, which had been so hypocritically smug in
> insisting Never again since the Holocaust, turned a blind eye to the
> Rwandan genocide.
>
> We are gathered here today to say no more will we stand by.
>
> No more can any person asserting free agency stand by in good
> conscience.
>
> No more will we abandon moral decision-making to so-called
> political authorities.
>
> Let us each embrace our moral authority, let us each embrace our
> humanity, let us each embrace our responsibility  and insist in every  
> way
> within our means: No more human and civil rights violations; no more
> hatred and inhumane treatment toward hard-working immigrants and their
> families; no more killing and maiming. No more Iraq war.
>