End the U.S. National Security State!
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 30 Dec 2013
James Albertini – TRANSCEND Media Service
According to the Biblical account, when the three wise men from the east, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, alerted King Herod of the birth of Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, Herod saw trouble. He saw a Messiah, in Roman occupied Judea, as a threat to his throne and to the overall power of the Roman Empire. Herod’s response, like that of all empires, was to send in the military. Herod had every baby boy under the age of two in the Bethlehem district of Palestine summarily slaughtered. The Christian church commemorates this tragic day annually on Dec. 28th as the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
In the U.S. people are rightly horrified when innocent children are gunned down in U.S. school shootings. But that same sense of horror doesn’t seem to apply when innocent children are slaughtered by U.S. Predator and Reaper drone attacks in far away places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, etc. Or Palestinian children dying in the Holy Land today under Israeli occupation with $3 billion annually of U.S. military aid.
The U.S. is addicted to violence and war. Assault weapon sales, even “AK-47 Christmas sales” continue to skyrocket. The U.S. military has begun to use the phrase “harvest” to describe the killing done by drones. The U.S. has now become a National Security State, a global empire, “harvesting” children – Holy Innocents, at home and abroad. When will it end? It will end when we stand with the children and say…
Ground the Drones! Say No to War!
- Mourn all victims of violence.
- Reject war as a solution.
- Defend civil liberties.
- Oppose all discrimination, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, anti-Hawaiian, etc.
- Seek peace by peaceful means through justice in Hawai`i and around the world.
Hilo Peace Vigil, Jan. 3, 2014– 641th Week – Friday 3:30-5 p.m. Downtown Post Office, Hilo, Hawai’i.
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James Albertini is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and director of Malu `Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – P.O. Box AB Kurtistown, Hawai`i, 96760, USA. Phone 001 808 966 762 email ja@malu-aina.org http://www.malu-aina.org.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 30 Dec 2013.
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