Swans

For The Asking

by Michael W. Stowell

September 17, 2001

I'm reminded of Mr. George W. Bush's authorization of continued bombing in Iraq; of Mr. William Jefferson Clinton's bombings in the Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and Iraq; of Mr. George H. W. Bush's bombings of Panama and Iraq; of Mr. Ronald Reagan's bombings in Libya and Grenada; of the murder of East Timor; of the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; of so many others.

A moment of silence, please, for the 500,000 children under the age of five who have died at the hands of American "terrorists." A moment of silence, please, for the Palestinian people who have been terrorized for fifty-three years.

After more than forty years of economic "terrorism," the people of Cuba speak with one voice: "The government of the Republic of Cuba has received, with sadness and grief, the news about the violent and unexpected attacks that took place this morning against civil and official facilities in New York and Washington cities, which have brought about a great number of casualties."

"It is known the position that Cuba holds against any terrorist action. There is no possibility in which our people can forget that they have been victim of such actions for more than 40 years, which have been promoted from the very territory of the United States. Due to historical reasons, as well as for ethical principles, our Government strongly rejects and condemns the attacks made on the aforementioned facilities and gives its most sincere sympathies to the American people because of the painful and unjustifiable human losses that such attacks have caused."

"On this painful moment, our people joins in solidarity with the American people and expresses its total disposal for cooperation, with its modest possibilities, with sanitary institutions or institutions of other medical or humanitarian kind of that country, for the care, assistance and rehabilitation of the victims that have arisen from the attacks that occurred this morning."
Havana, September 11th, 2001

Dear friends, it is time to speak truth to power.

William Blum quit his job at the State Department in 1967 because of his opposition to the U.S. war on Vietnam. He became a freelance journalist and author. Mr. Blum has documented more than one hundred separate, serious "interventions" by the U.S. government into seventy or eighty countries. Read his books: Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's only Superpower. If you contact Bill at his e-mail address, bblum6@aol.com, he will tell you how to get the books at a cheaper price than his publisher charges, in fact, he will sign them. You can read some of the chapters of his books at: http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm and http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm.

Now is the time for acts of courage, so arm yourselves with truth and speak out. The atrocities will continue until the American people start asking their government the right questions.

Michael W. Stowell is chairperson of both the City of Arcata, Humboldt County, CA, Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission and the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Arcata Library. He is the producer/editor/videographer of numerous public access television programs; he is a naturalist, a gardener, a bicyclist and a Swans columnist.

[Ed. Note: The City of Arcata, incorporated in 1858, is located in Humboldt County, on California's Redwood Coast, at the juncture of California Highway 101 and 299 West. The city is approximately 289 miles north of San Francisco, 150 miles west of Redding and 760 miles north of Los Angeles. The 1990 census reported Arcata's population as 15,197 and the county population as 119,118.]

Please, DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work on the Web without the expressed written authorization of Swans, which will seek permission from the author. This material is copyrighted, © Michael W. Stowell 2001. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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