Human Rights | themcglynn.com/theliberal.net

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"If you assume that every child is sensitive, vulnerable, readily injured, and easily broken, then you will never be far from the truth. If you assume that all children are motivated by pride and justice, you will be able to communicate with them. If you assume that all children should be treated as sacred trusts who deserve your full measure of devotion, you will be on the right path. If you seek to find the vulnerable, precious child in yourself and in all other adults at all times in your dealings with yourself and others, you will have achieved enlightenment. You will become a gift to the children in your life to whatever degree that you remain enlightened in your dealings with them." Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Reclaiming Our Children: A Healing Plan for a Nation in Crisis ******************** Submitted by Maureen

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The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They’re in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of “no” to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law. In the days since the passage of health care reform, they’ve gone as far as inciting mobs to violence against their fellow congressmen and senators — bricks thrown through windows, death threats made, coffins placed in the yards of their adversaries. One day soon, somebody with a gun or an explosive device, someone with a very sketchy sense-of-self, and perhaps a recent record of personal failure and humiliation, is going to sacrifice himself to become the Tea Party’s first martyr by shooting up a shopping mall in some blue district.

James Howard Kunstler

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honor its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

Jimmy Carter / Palestine Peace Not Apartheid

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal

'Newt Gingrich is a stupid person's idea of a smart person.'

Alan Grayson

Noah’s Ark : Everything I need to know, I learned from Noah’s Ark .. ONE: Don’t miss the boat. TWO: Remember that we are all in the same boat! THREE: Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark. FOUR: Stay fit. When you’re 60 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big. FIVE: Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done. SIX: Build your future on high ground. SEVEN: For safety’s sake, travel in pairs. EIGHT: Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs. NINE: When you’re stressed, float awhile. TEN: Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals. ELEVEN: No matter the storm, there’s always a rainbow waiting. Most people walk in and out of your life, but FRIENDS leave footprints in your heart.

Unknown

Hope........And it is not a dream of a fancy proud,
With a fool for its dull begetter;
There's a voice at the heart that proclaims aloud--
'We are born for a something better!'
And that Voice of the Heart, oh, ye may believe,
Will never the Hope of the Soul deceive!'

Friedrich Schiller

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Leonard Cohen

Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors…. Incidentally this preparation will benefit the manufacturers of munitions and war machines…. Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder! Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction!

Helen Keller at Carnegie Hall January 5, 1916

there is no longer any doubt as to whether the (Bush) administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Maj. Gen. Antonio, M. Taguba / Investigator of Abu Ghraib

There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.

Eugene O'Neill

When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and the princes are home, When the shephers are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among brothers and sisters, To make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives…inside ourselves.

Albert Camus

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak , to associate with and defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. . . .(Senator McCarthy) didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. . . Cassius was right, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Edward R. Murrow

“Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli...........................................

The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli..............................................

Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy, are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil, and we owe them the biggest responsibility of providing them with a happy present and bright future.”

Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat

'God shouldn't be put in charge of everything until we get to know Him a little better' Kurt Vonnegut, The Nation, 11/28/81

Kurt Vonnegut, The Nation, 11/28/81

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil … is for good men to do nothing.~~

Edmond Burke

'The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer'

James Baldwin, The Nation, 7/11/66

“Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.”

Molly Ivins

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear.”
Quote by:
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
Date: 42BC

Archive for the 'Human Rights' Category

15 May

The agreement marks a historic moment in the long history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to unjust Israeli actions

Dear The McGlynn,

Yesterday morning I felt chills talking to our close allies in Palestine/Israel as they shared with us the news: nearly 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners holding one of the largest hunger strikes in history had succeeded.

As details emerge, we should all look to Palestinian civil society leaders to interpret the nuances of the agreement.But for now, there is one thing all of us can all agree on. This agreement marks a historic moment in the long history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to unjust Israeli actions.The success of the massive hunger strike may very well inspire a new generation of unarmed struggle.

Yesterday, as long term strikers entered their 77th day, and 2,000 more approached a full month of refusing all sustenance, Israel was compelled to allow family visits for prisoners from Gaza, end the policy of solitary confinement, and significantly reduce and limit the use of detention without trial, also known as administrative detention.

The hunger strike inspired unprecedented support throughout Palestinian society and the world. And Jewish Voice for Peace supporters were an important part of the story.

The leaders of unarmed resistance in the villages of Palestine, the Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee, came specifically to Jewish Voice for Peace to ask for our help.

And we did not let them down!

Just hours before the strike ended, we delivered our 8,000 signatures to the United States State Department with our friends at the US Campaign to End the Occupation. And over 500 of us from 350 cities around the world had already volunteered to lead solidarity protests on Thursday. Many thousand more were set to join us.

The news yesterday is surely cause for celebration, and it’s also a great reminder of what will be possible if we redouble our efforts in the nonviolent movement for justice in Palestine/Israel. This morning our allies in Palestine/Israel issued a statement about the hunger striker victory and a call for further action.

Click here to read more from Palestinian leaders about the hunger striker victory and what you can do now!

Stefanie Fox,
Jewish Voice for Peace

Posted in General, Human Rights, US Middle-East Policy by: The McGlynn
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15 May

War Criminals

The McGlynn: Another country these criminals better stay out of.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their legal team are war criminals. So says a War Tribunal in Malaysia – which convicted Bush and key officials in his administration of war crimes on Saturday – and ordered reparations be given to the torture victims. After hearing testimony of victims who were tortured at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq – the tribunal found that the United States violated international law and the principles of the Nuremberg Charter. One of those legal advisers convicted was former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo – who was recently cleared in a United States court of any torture charges. While this verdict is mostly symbolic – the tribunals plans to submit findings and records of the hearing to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the United Nation’s Security Council. It should be troubling to Americans that other foreign nations are doing what we SHOULD be doing – holding our own war criminals to account. Time for justice to be served against the Bush torturers.

Posted in Human Rights by: The McGlynn
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11 May

Top Romney Adviser: We’ll Campaign on Constitutional Marriage Ban

By Josh Israel

Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, told Chuck Todd on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown that the campaign would make President Obama’s support for marriage equality an issue this November and that Romney will actively push for a constitutional amendment to take away the right of states to voluntarily extend marriage equality to same-sex couples.

Gillespie told Todd that same-sex marriage “will be another bright-line difference in this campaign.” He added that the GOP intends to campaign on the issue:

TODD: Will you guys campaign on this, campaign on this issue of marriage?

GILLESPIE: Sure. I think it’s an important issue for people and it engenders strong feelings on both sides. I think it’s important to be respectful in how we talk about our differences, but the fact is that’s a significant difference in November.

Later, Gillespie added that Romney believes a federal marriage constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage “should be enacted.” Watch the video:

Gillespie is no stranger to using same-sex couples as a wedge issue; he served as President George W. Bush’s Republican National Committee Chairman during the 2004 campaign. During that campaign, Republicans pushed for anti-LGBT state constitutional amendments to get out the conservative vote. They also wrote the following into the Party’s official platform: “We strongly support President Bush’s call for a Constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage, and we believe that neither federal nor state judges nor bureaucrats should force states to recognize other living arrangements as equivalent to marriage.”

Popular support for marriage has soared since then — most Americans now support same-sex marriage. The fact that a number of states enacted constitutional amendments back in 2004 has little bearing eight years later.

Romney has played up his pro-discrimination stand throughout this presidential campaign, boasting that he’d fought to take away marriage equality from same-sex couples and that he’d dug up an an obscure 1913 law (originally intended to limit interracial marriage) to keep out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. “On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage,” Romney told a CPAC Convention in February.

Posted in Human Rights, Politics by: The McGlynn
No Comments

10 May

Mr. President, Thank You

Dear The McGlynn,

Yesterday, Obama made history, becoming the first sitting president to endorse marriage equality.

Today, the knives are out. Ed Gillespie, a top GOP strategist currently advising the Romney campaign, promised to attack Obama for supporting equality for gay couples.

What’s Romney’s alternative? Enshrine discrimination into the U.S. Constitution by passing an amendment banning marriage equality everywhere.

It’s critical that Obama knows we have his back. Already, more than 25,000 people have signed our Thank You card to the President.

Click here to add your name to Obama’s Thank You card before we send it off.

Best,

Judd Legum
Founder, ThinkProgress.org

P.S. If you’ve already signed the card, please forward this email to your friends and urge them to show their support for the President’s stance on marriage equality.

Posted in General, Human Rights by: The McGlynn
No Comments

10 May

Why Does The Military Keep This A Secret?

Posted in General, Human Rights by: The McGlynn
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Archive for the 'Human Rights' Category

The agreement marks a historic moment in the long history of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to unjust Israeli actions

War Criminals

The McGlynn: Another country these criminals better stay out of.

Top Romney Adviser: We’ll Campaign on Constitutional Marriage Ban

Mr. President, Thank You

Why Does The Military Keep This A Secret?

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Archive for the 'Human Rights' Category

The McGlynn: Another country these criminals better stay out of.