A blessing from the Franciscan Order.

May God bless you with DISCOMFORT!
Discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart...

May God bless you with ANGER!
Anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and people...

May God bless you with TEARS!
Tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them, and to turn their pain into joy...

And may God bless you with FOOLISHNESS!
Enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done!

President Bush and Vice President Cheney,

It is your policies and the policies of past administrations that have sought easy answers to hard questions. Like the continued bombing of an already devastated country and the death of thousands of innocent children, women and men. Peace can never be achieved through the use of force but by negotiation and a rethinking of present and past policies that oppress, repress and support the death, crippling and exploitation of billions of people around the world. The world continues to tell you no justice-no peace. 

When will you reverse your policies so others may find justice and the world will find peace? 

Is your heart made of stone and your eyes incapable of shedding a tear? 

Are you blinded by your own ambition, so that you can not see the pain of others?

September 11th should have been a wake up call, not a call to arms. People were acting and crying out in desperation, yet you chose to turn a deaf ear, to not see the pain you have inflicted on others. Instead you chose to beat them down further but they will rise up again and again, they will fight to the death that you are pressing upon them. Oh, we may have periods of calm before the storm, as they lie and wait for their chance to strike but you know and I know they will strike again. Unless, you re-examine your course of action.

So unless you become foolish enough to believe spending $400 billion a year to dominate the world is futile and insane; and you think instead of channeling that into helping the poor and the needy (then you could really say God Bless America) you are just continuing the cycle of violence that America has been in since it landed on these shores and decimated the Native American population. You can make a difference in this world, by putting an end to the violence by becoming a peacemaker rather than a warmonger. Can you be men of peace? 

If you think canceling treaties on nuclear weapons, the continued funding of Star Wars, refusing to sign treaties banning landmines, chemical and biological weapons, ones establishing and supporting an International War Crimes Court or environmental treaties is helping to make this is a better, safer world, you are only fooling yourself. Calling others the 'Axis of Evil', while bombing or threatening to bomb countries all over the globe means you don't look in the mirror very often. Hell Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria combined only spent $14.4 billion on their military last year.

The continued sanctions on Iraq have caused the death of over a million innocent people and that is a low estimate and now you can't wait to go back in and do what your daddy and most of your current administration didn't do 11 years ago, get Saddam, no matter what the cost.

In the meantime, you pour money into Israel for the continuing slaughter of innocent Palestinians. It took weeks for you to say anything but Sharon isn't listening and while your words sounded tough, your actions show they were only meant for the cameras and to appease the outcries. Where is the outcry as the UN is kept out of Jenin, as the bodies rot and the army has time to cover its massacre? As long as, the occupations continue the oppressed will lash out whenever they can. 

I am foolish enough to believe that I along with millions of others can make this a better world if we stand together in a non-violent way to call for peace and justice. I will march in the streets, I will expose and oppose your policies every chance I get. I will stand up for my convictions; I will not grow weak or silent. I have heeded the words of the prayer above. No doubt you can try and silence the opposition, by using the so-called Patriot Act but by doing so, others will my take up the cause and our movement will continue to grow in opposition. Even from prison our message would get out. "You can jail the resisters but you can't jail the resistance" (SOA Watch t-shirt).

Blood is on your father's hands, it is on the hands of his administration and it is on your hands and your administration, and the blood of the innocent are crying out for justice, so they can find peace.

Peace, Jeff McKenzie

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ..Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." 
Hermann Goering, Source: Nuremberg Trial

"Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... war will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." John F. Kennedy

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base 
an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." Albert Einstein

"I went to Vietnam to wage war, in order that there would be peace, but there was no peace, only much death and sorrow. And I only hope that from the knowledge of those who have returned, those who will return, and those who will not return, that there will never be a war in our own country.  ' Sp4 Mayo, Chu Lai, South Viet Nam, Dec 1970

'Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."      John F. Kennedy

"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." Martin Niemoeller

"Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. Always."  Gandhi

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."  George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," 1945

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious... you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels... to indicate to the people who run it,... that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!  
Mario Savio, Berkeley Free Speech Movement student leader

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...this is not a way of life at all, in 
any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Dwight D. Eisenhower, 4/16/1953

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty and democracy?" Gandhi 

"Why do we kill people, who killed people, to show that killing people is wrong?" (a sign)

"War doesn't decide who's right, war only decides who's left." (Unknown)

"Bush promised during the presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social Security except in cases of war, recession or a national emergency. 'Lucky me. I hit the trifecta,' Bush told Daniels shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the budget director." 11.29.01