A Letter From Michael Moore

Seventy percent of American’s do not want a mosque built near ground zero????

I’m ashamed.  The truth is seventy percent of the people who live here falsly call themself American.

Read the letter, as always, it is very good, and don’t worry, I donated for 10 of you.

If That ‘Mosque’ ISN’T Built, This Is No Longer America

OpenMike 9/11/10
Michael Moore’s daily blog

I am opposed to the building of the “mosque” two blocks from Ground Zero.

I want it built on Ground Zero.

Why? Because I believe in an America that protects those who are the victims of hate and prejudice. I believe in an America that says you have the right to worship whatever God you have, wherever you want to worship. And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you.

There’s been so much that’s been said about this manufactured controversy, I really don’t want to waste any time on this day of remembrance talking about it. But I hate bigotry and I hate liars, and so in case you missed any of the truth that’s been lost in this, let me point out a few facts:

1. I love the Burlington Coat Factory. I’ve gotten some great winter coats there at a very reasonable price. Muslims have been holding their daily prayers there since 2009. No one ever complained about that. This is not going to be a “mosque,” it’s going to be a community center. It will have the same prayer room in it that’s already there. But to even have to assure people that “it’s not going to be mosque” is so offensive, I now wish they would just build a 111-story mosque there. That would be better than the lame and disgusting way the developer has left Ground Zero an empty hole until recently. The remains of over 1,100 people still haven’t been found. That site is a sacred graveyard, and to be building another monument to commerce on it is a sacrilege. Why wasn’t the entire site turned into a memorial peace park? People died there, and many of their remains are still strewn about, all these years later.

2. Guess who has helped the Muslims organize their plans for this community center? The JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER of Manhattan! Their rabbi has been advising them since the beginning. It’s been a picture-perfect example of the kind of world we all want to live in. Peter Stuyvessant, New York’s “founder,” tried to expel the first Jews who arrived in Manhattan. Then the Dutch said, no, that’s a bit much. So then Stuyvessant said ok, you can stay, but you cannot build a synagogue anywhere in Manhattan. Do your stupid Friday night thing at home. The first Jewish temple was not allowed to be built until 1730. Then there was a revolution, and the founding fathers said this country has to be secular — no religious nuts or state religions. George Washington (inaugurated around the corner from Ground Zero) wanted to make a statement about this his very first year in office, and wrote this to American Jews:

“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy — a policy worthy of imitation. …”It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens …”May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”3. The Imam in charge of this project is the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. Read about his past here.

4. Around five dozen Muslims died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Hundreds of members of their families still grieve and suffer. The 19 killers did not care what religion anyone belonged to when they took those lives.

5. I’ve never read a sadder headline in the New York Times than the one on the front page this past Monday: “American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?” That should make all of us so ashamed that even a single one of our fellow citizens should ever have to worry about if they “belong” here.

6. There is a McDonald’s two blocks from Ground Zero. Trust me, McDonald’s has killed far more people than the terrorists.

7. During an economic depression or a time of war, fascists are extremely skilled at whipping up fear and hate and getting the working class to blame “the other” for their troubles. Lincoln’s enemies told poor Southern whites that he was “a Catholic.” FDR’s opponents said he was Jewish and called him “Jewsevelt.” One in five Americans now believe Obama is a Muslim and 41% of Republicans don’t believe he was born here.

8. Blaming a whole group for the actions of just one of that group is anti-American. Timothy McVeigh was Catholic. Should Oklahoma City prohibit the building of a Catholic Church near the site of the former federal building that McVeigh blew up?

9. Let’s face it, all religions have their whackos. Catholics have O’Reilly, Gingrich, Hannity and Clarence Thomas (in fact all five conservatives who dominate the Supreme Court are Catholic). Protestants have Pat Robertson and too many to list here. The Mormons have Glenn Beck. Jews have Crazy Eddie. But we don’t judge whole religions on just the actions of their whackos. Unless they’re Methodists.

10. If I should ever, God forbid, perish in a terrorist incident, and you or some nutty group uses my death as your justification to attack or discriminate against anyone in my name, I will come back and haunt you worse than Linda Blair marrying Freddy Krueger and moving into your bedroom to spawn Chucky. John Lennon was right when he asked us to imagine a world with “nothing to kill or die for and no religion, too.” I heard Deepak Chopra this week say that “God gave humans the truth, and the devil came and he said, ‘Let’s give it a name and call it religion.’ ” But John Adams said it best when he wrote a sort of letter to the future (which he called “Posterity”): “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.” I’m guessing ol’ John Adams is up there repenting nonstop right now.

Friends, we all have a responsibility NOW to make sure that Muslim community center gets built. Once again, 70% of the country (the same number that initially supported the Iraq War) is on the wrong side and want the “mosque” moved. Enormous pressure has been put on the Imam to stop his project. We have to turn this thing around. Are we going to let the bullies and thugs win another one? Aren’t you fed up by now? When would be a good time to take our country back from the haters?

I say right now. Let’s each of us make a statement by donating to the building of this community center! It’s a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization and you can donate a dollar or ten dollars (or more) right now through a secure pay pal account by clicking here. I will personally match the first $10,000 raised (forward your PayPal receipt to webguy@michaelmoore.com). If each one of you reading this blog/email donated just a couple of dollars, that would give the center over $6 million, more than what Donald Trump has offered to buy the Imam out. C’mon everyone, let’s pitch in and help those who are being debased for simply wanting to do something good. We could all make a huge statement of love on this solemn day.

I lost a co-worker on 9/11. I write this today in his memory.

“The man who speaks of the enemy / Is the enemy himself.”
– Bertolt Brecht

Loose Change

You have heard about loose change – HAVE YOU WATCHED IT? Me neither, so lets watch it together. I remember Bin Laden denied any involvement and then he changes his mind, is that weird or what, well here it is. The Taliban said they’d get him for us if we give them proof, but the FBI has no hard evidence? And this is just the beginning.

Can you say ISI and CIA 100,000 times, me neither, I guess it doesn’t matter.

Yes we can, but no we didn’t????

The pilots who couldn’t, DID???? This is really getting interesting.

“The air plane is 10 miles out,” the young man asks, “do the orders still stand?” “Ofcourse the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary?” Quips the Vice President. And it must have been real difficult for the Secretary of Defense to declare, “we cannot track 2.3 Trillion in financial transactions?” The plane knew just right where to hit, from now on they’ll back sh*t up on a daily basis like everybody else does.

Ok now, all I ask is, think about it. Steel melts and concrete crumbles and a sky scraper falls in seven seconds, it had to be the fire??? Do demolishing experts demolish buildings by starting them on fire? Think, that’s all I ask, think?

It can’t be duplicated, ofcourse not, because that would take a demolishing team.

Now we get the asbestos.

Yet another mystery, an airplane crashes over a six mile area and leaves no debris.

Now we turn to building 7.

9/11 (coverup) commission.

You can tell that this last part is out of date, because now days when people speak out, they get tazzed. This didn’t cover a lot of things, about building 7 and so much convenient information was lost, the new owner of the world trade center, how Israelis who would have been in the twin towers were warned ahead of time, etc, etc, but it’s a good starting point.

American Idiot

I know I heard this song before but I never really paid attention to it until I saw it on America’s got Talent, I’m like wow, how did the sensors miss that.  Maybe because they misunderstood.  They must have thought they are singing about them liberals or something.  We are controlled by the media, more than you will admit to, and that’s the truth.  Anyways, this clip has the words to it so you can read along.

PEACE!

Getting To The Truth of The Matter

http://web.mit.edu/thistle/www/v9/9.11/1columbus.html

[quote]The 1492 “voyage of discovery” is, however, hardly all that is
at issue. In 1493 Columbus returned with an invasion force of
seventeen ships, appointed at his own request by the Spanish Crown to
install himself as “viceroy and governor of [the Caribbean islands]
and the mainland” of America, a position he held until
1500. Setting up shop on the large island he called Espa–ola (today
Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he promptly instituted policies of
slavery (encomiendo) and systematic extermination against the native
Taino population. Columbus’s programs reduced Taino numbers from as
many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three
million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the
governor’s departure. His policies, however, remained, with the
result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely
22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were
recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians
throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled
more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the
Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known.
[/quote]

I have read other accounts as to how they killed these Indians and because their cries annoyed the settlers, sticks were jammed down their throats to muffle the sound.

Much talk of the Aztecs who preserved the Mayan wisdom, they also were almost wiped off the face of this earth and most all of the Mayan writings were destroyed.

This became there justification to continue on:

http://www.americanindiansource.com/columbusday.html

[quote]the Pope’s declaration ultimately had dire consequences for native inhabitants of the Americas. Beginning in 1514 Spanish conquerors adopted “the Requirement,” an ultimatum in which Indians were forced to accept “the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world” or face persecution. If Indians did not immediately comply, the Requirement warned them:

“We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do all the harm and damage that we can.” [11]

Often the Requirement was read to Indians without translation, or in some cases even from ships before crew members landed to kill Indians and take slaves. [12][/quote]

and yet

[quote]Since 1971 Columbus Day has been celebrated in the U.S. as federal holiday, and on October 9, 2002, President George W. Bush issued a presidential proclamation celebrating “Columbus’ bold expedition [and] pioneering achievements,” directing that “the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of Christopher Columbus.” [/quote]

It is easy for me to understand why some people hate religion. I have some good friends who are Christian and sometimes I offend them by things that I say so I try to be careful.

All I can say is that Confucius, as wise as he was, was also confused and often questioned how it was that the most ignorant and wicked of men were to become rulers of others. He mistakingly believed that if the people could vote for their leader, then there would be justice in the land. G.W. Bush didn’t exactly prove him wrong, because those elections were fixed, the majority of the people did not vote that man in. But it was embarrassingly close. To many people believed in that man, Christians mostly, and some, far too many still do. So yes, I can understand how some would blame religion.

All I can say is, question everything and have an open mind. Don’t just believe the first thing that you might conclude, but question even yourself and that is the only way to the truth of the matter.

This is Satan’s World Unless We Take It Back

In response to “This One Is All About Me”

Quote Quote:

it is the people who have to start the change and make it happen, or the change doesnt happen! thats the law of nature. most people in the world have already forgotten religion. those few that are left are causing their own downfalls.

I did not mean to imply that this is the fault of the Pakistani people. You and I have been friends for years and I’ve learned a lot from you.

What is happening in Pakistan concerning the floods is the fault of global warming and some of us wonder, me included, if this could be a result of HAARP (that would be a reach, but still a possibility, either intentional or by accident) Though our government might have to put money out for emergency aid, they could save a bunch of money in future military spending, again though, that is a reach without evidence.

The terrorists in Pakistan, mostly in Afghanistan was a creation of our own CIA, Hillary Clinton admits this on national television, at that time we were at war with communist Russia. There was an instance once, four times in a row after Desert Storm and again it just happened recently here in Oklahoma, when our soldiers come home, they would kill their wife and children and then kill themselves. It is not to difficult for me to believe that mind control experiments are done on our soldiers, perfected, to only be used as weapons of propaganda for an agenda that is kept hidden from us. There was no such thing as suicide bombings until U.S. involvement.

Common sense tells you that air planes did not take down those sky scrapers. My government is not stupid and I’m not smarter than they. They know air planes did not take those buildings down, but they are willing to believe that and propagate this which means, they, our government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack. If they could be that evil, what other evil could they be involved in.

I don’t believe that the Pakistani people are being punished, but victims. Global warming is mostly a result of coal and oil along with an industrialized market economy. It’s like drunk drivers who get in a car and drive and then have an accident. It always seems that they live while some innocent person dies. Those who have taken advantage of coal and oil investments and an industrialized market economy, they are fat and happy while the innocent suffer the consequences of their indulgence.

While you may not believe that Jesus was crucified. Death would have been a favour compared to the punishment of hatred, slander and torture from those he offered good will.
But that is this world, a world ruled by Satan. With leaders who pretend to be for us to gain our power but are always against us at every turn.

I can’t change it and you can’t change it, but all of us together can. Jesus (peace be upon him) and many others have been sent to teach us how to change this world, but we have to follow those teachings. Not you or I, but all of us. Satan knows the power of the collective conciousness and so takes every opportunity to divide us up one against another.

A Round World Has Many Sides

I’ve always said that this is a round world and everyone sees their own side and their are many sides to a round world.

The smartest of us are the ones who can see thru the eyes of others.  They can see more of this round world than anybody else.

Because the wise say, “I wonder” and the fools say, “I know.”

How can anybody know when they can only see one side of a round world?

Sweden withdraws arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Assange

From:  http://www.france24.com/en/
BREAKING NEWS
Sweden withdraws arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Assange
Swedish prosecutors have withdrawn an arrest warrant for Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, saying rape allegations against him were unfounded.
I figure I better post this, because you know how it goes.  Most people don’t even read articles, just the headlines.  This second article isn’t really an article and it is doubtful that those who saw the first headlines will see this to correct their perception.

A Poem About War That I’m Not Fighting In

IN THE ECLIPSE OF THE DAWN

Surrounded by sophisticated bob wire
In the eclipse of the dawn
circling overhead is a bat and a dove
They send their love

I’m not understanding why I’m here
protected
Across the fence is life destructed
I know I should feel so lucky
I can’t
knowing that there are lives in destruction
Can somebody tell me why
or better yet
just make it stop
Stop all this life stopping, hurting pain

Its an eclipse of the dawn
when an unknown song is sung
All the angles will be smiling
The dove and the bat will sing along

Surrounded by sophisticated bob wire
Circling overhead the bat and dove
send there love

But I don’t know why
I ask the sky
and there is no reply
Why not I
How is it that I’m so lucky
and they are not
It makes me want to cry

I cannot tell a lie
Thankfully but not happily
I have to ask why
Death and pain is cast upon some
innocent women and children cry to you
As Fathers and husbands unable to protect them
against a wrath of unseeing, uncaring and sometimes even
unknowing eyes

But I am lucky
surrounded by sophisticated bob wire
In the eclipse of the dawn
An unknown song will be sung
The angles will smile
The suffering will end
then

By: Roger Harkness
The Okcitykid

This One Is All About Me

My blood pressure keeps going up and my doctor keeps having to up my prescription, and today I worked very hard and unloaded almost a whole pallet of copy paper, so there was no reason why my blood pressure should have been high.  I have even supplemented my blood preasure medicine with grape seed extract, but still it keeps creeping up there.  So today I figure I should take some extra medication and I accidently took my wife’s Anti Depressant pill.  She takes some good drugs, I am mellow yellow.  The world could be coming to an end and I would be like, “whatever!”

With that said, I feel like talking if anyone cares to listen.

Pakistan, it really bothers me and I even complained to God (as I pray to him in my mind).  I’m like, God how can people believe in you when such terrible things happen.  I mean, here’s the deal, people are hungry, sick and thirsty for some clean fresh water, because that crap they’re drinking is making them sick, and they’re drinking it because they are hungry and it fills their belly leaving them feel sick, yet they have no home.  They have lost everything except what they can carry, and carry they must, for miles and miles treading thru water sometimes up to their waist in hopes to find dry ground, food and clean water.  When it rains they just get wet, and at night, do they have a dry blanket to keep them warm?  I dare anyone to tell these people that if they’re not saved, they will go to hell.  And they will be like, well at least it will be warm and dry there.  To die of hunger and thirst has got to be the worst way to die, because it is a very slow death.

I think we have a serious misunderstanding of God.  I believe if God could do something, God would do something, but can’t.  Because God is the ruler of the spirit world.  By his mere thought he created the physical world, but he is not a part of it and does not rule it.  We are the rulers of the physical world, that’s why we’re here, to make it better.  Jesus and many other leaders have tried to teach us this, but we’re still not listening.

I can’t do anything, but WE can change the world.  It has to be WE.  It can’t be me and it can’t be you, it has to be US, only we can do it.  That is our challenge and we are utterly failing.

Mosque NEAR Ground Zero – A Jewish Perspective

Tikkun to heal, repair and transform the world
A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner Join or Donate Now!

Shame on ADL for opposing Mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) publicly opposes the construction two blocks from Ground Zero of the Cordoba House (also known as Park 51), which the planners imagine as hosting a range of activities similar to those offered at the 92nd Street Y, and including a Mosque at which Muslims could worship. The plan, supported by Mayor Bloomberg, is opposed by some who have consistently used the attack on the World Trade Center as justification for war and fear+hatred of Muslims.

ADL leader  Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization that claims to oppose discrimination by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of “shooting and crying” (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having “forced” us to attack them). The key to that statement was this:

“Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.”

This kind of argument is deeply mistaken. It was not “Muslims” or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred. We see the same thing happening in the name of Christianity (many of those who justified the war in Iraq were Christians who felt they were acting from a Christian ethical perspective) or in the name of Judaism (the immoral behavior of some of the settlers who use Judaism as their cover for stealing land and destroying the olive trees of their Palestinian neighbors).  Just as we would rebel against others dismissing Judaism or Christianity, or prohibiting Jews and Muslims from constructing our holy places of worship or community centers where we wish because some of those who had suffered from the immorality of some Jews or some Christians had decided that it was painful to them to see the presence of these institutions near the site of previous suffering, so we reject this claim.

Arthur Waskow asks us to imagine how we would feel if some group of Muslims in the US, identifying with the suffering of Palestinians, and including within them some who had lived in Israel and had to leave to protect themselves from the oppression of Occupation that they labeled as “Jewish oppression,” had opposed the construction of a synagogue in their predominantly Muslim neighborhood because it would cause some of the victims of Israeli policy to experience more pain. Would we accept that? Certainly not.

Underlying the ADL position is its references to the Holocaust and the need to respect the feelings of its survivors. Sadly, the memory of Jewish suffering is appropriated by right-wing forces to justify special privilege for Jews in general and Israel in particular, now is to be extended to victims of 9/11 (but not, for example, to the survivors of US military assaults on civilians in Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, or Afghanistan). The aggression of others is always evil, ours always justifiable, to the political right. That’s bad enough. But shame on ADL in particular for now using our suffering in the Holocaust to justify discrimination toward others, whether in Israel or in the U.S.

Actually, to those of us who take seriously the Torah command to “love the stranger” (the Other), it seems clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero should include the construction of an interfaith center in which all of the world’s religions could be represented, particularly that of Islam as a way of affirming and supporting those many Muslims who do not adopt an extreme anti-American or anti-Jewish perspective.

The American Jewish Committee tried to adopt a more nuanced position, but wanted to withhold endorsement till they can establish that the source of money for this building did not come from extremist elements in the Muslim world. Yet how would we feel if construction of a Jewish center was similarly conditional? Would money from those who support the settlers or others who believe that Jews have a right to all of the Biblical Land of Israel and have a right to use violence to achieve that end be sufficient reason to prevent the construciton of a Jewish center? Would a Church that received money from sources in the Christian community that believed it appropriate to engage in violence to create the world they wanted (e.g. to support a US military intervention in Iran) be sufficient reason to deny them the right to build their Christian center? I don’t think so.

No wonder, then, that we at Tikkun–seeking to build a world in which animosities among religions can be dramatically reduced so that all of us can recognize our common humanity (or what we Jews call “being created in the image of God”) and recognize the immediate global environmental emergency to overcome national and religious antagonisms so that we can work together to save the planet and its peoples from destruction–strongly endorse and support the construction of the Muslim community center/mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Shame on ADL and the American Jewish Committee for not understanding the moral imperatives of this moment! They not only betray Jewish values (“do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do to you”) and American values (government should not interfere with the operations of religious communities), they unintentionally but nevertheless certainly increase the tensions between Jews and Muslims at a moment when all sane people in both communities recognize the need to build bridges of understanding, friendship and mutual caring as a prelude to supporting peace in Israel. Given that both ADL and the AJCommittee have consistently supported the most outrageous actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinians, is it possible that unconsciously they are taking these kinds of stands because they do not see the supreme importance of creating caring and sensitivity to the needs of the other?  Yet it is this sensitivity which is the necessary prerequisite for a lasting peace with justice and security for both sides  in the Middle East conflict. And that peace would be a major step toward undermining the support that terrorists have been able to amass,  in part because such a peace is absent.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.tikkun.org, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, Ca. and author of eleven books, most recently the national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right.  If you wish to support this kind of thinking, please join our Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org.
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