On 8/28/10 Glenn Beck announced that "America today begins to turn back to God" at his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Beck caused me to recall Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" a scalding critique of American Christianity that King addressed to his "Dear Fellow Clergymen".

Inspired by Beck and the "fierce urgency of now" for "direct talks" between Israel and Palestine are scheduled to begin September 2, 2010; and after 20 months of inertia, a new start begins to "resolve all final-status issues...in one year."

And so, I have taken a few liberties with King's masterpiece by adding a few words of mine in bold:

I am on the internet because injustice can be expressed here. I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in comfort and not be concerned about what happens in Israel Palestine.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the world can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; examining one's motives and acting on conscience with direct action.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refuse... [Read More]

“You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life.”- Lewis Mumford, 1946

[Kansas City] Close to one-hundred concerned, thoughtful citizens attended the premier showing of Countdown to Zero, at the Tivoli theater August 13th, and many of them also attended the weekend long conference that culminated on August 16, 2010, when 14 nonviolent anti-nuke activists were arrested for blocking a Caterpillar bulldozer from clearing land at the site of a new WMD Facility in Kansas City, Missouri. Read more...


Jane Stoever is a wife, mother, organizer, activist, writer, editor, and for eleven years had been a Sister of Loretto. The Catholic nuns are committed "to improving the conditions of those who suffer from injustice, oppression, and deprivation of dignity" and are famous for their opposition to nuclear weapons and also the Caterpillar company, which is one of many that enable the ongoing military occupation of Palestinians.

Jane of PeaceWorks Kansas City and her colleague, Ann Suellenthorp, also of Physicians for Social Responsibility-KC, organized the weekend of nonviolent training and Jane said, “Our next civil resistance event will be September 7th and 8th.The official groundbreaking is on Wednesday, September 8thand the good news is we have made them nervous. Jason Klumb,[Read More]

On August 16, 2010, G.W. Bush's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security from 2001-2005, John Bolton, now employed by FOX News as a commentator called on Israel to attack Iran "now" and said Israel had "eight days" left to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility before Iran injects enriched uranium obtained from Russia into it. Bolton warned that after August 21 it "will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because it would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians."

In 2004, John Bolton traveled to Israel, just prior to Mordechai Vanunu’s release from 18 years in prison for providing the photographic proof and telling the truth that Israel had already manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads by 1985, in their still un-inspected Dimona WMD facility in the Negev.

As President G.W. Bush went searching for WMD’s in Iraq, Vanunu offered to direct him to the only site in the Middle East where WMD’s can be found:

5:49 We Are Wide Awake (WAWA) interviews Mordechai Vanunu in 2005

Bolton’s 2004 visit to Israel sought to squelch the truth regarding America’s collusion in Israel's WMD program, and to support Israel’s draconian restrictions against Vanunu which denied but failed to prevent him from having contact with internationa... [Read More]

[Kansas city] On Monday morning, August 16th, 14 nonviolent peace activists were arrested after blocking a Caterpillar truck on the site of a proposed WMD Facility in Kansas City, Missouri.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joshjmac/


Ex-Catholic priest, Frank Cordaro of the Phil Berrigan Catholic Worker House in DM IA, remarked, "It's an honor to be here and get busted! We risk arrest to awaken people from a kind of psychic numbing about the plant. We stand for an alternative to the war economy; we try to temper the U.S. death wish as an empire. Catholic Workers see people hungry; we feed them. We see violence perpetrated by governments; we resist. It's just that simple. It is not an accident that nine of the fourteen arrested come from Midwest Catholic Worker communities. The Catholic Worker movement is a radical... [Read More]

On August 8, 2010, Israel released Mordechai Vanunu from solitary confinement, but his torture continues, for Israel still denies Vanunu the right to leave the state.


This morning on my Youtube Channel, Vanunu left this message:


vanunuvmjc (1 hour ago)

NO ONE CAN EVER TAKE FROM YOU YOUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH, ESPECIALY NOT ME.
Today August 8.2010.,i am free from israel 3 months prison,
I survived one more hard life in israel prison,in Isolation,in Humiliations.
May 12 th' " 3 judges of israel supreme court decided 3 months
prison,started May 23 rd' 2010.
The only thing I can say is, that 24 years to wait for my freedom is a long, long time for all the world, states.communities,to do for my freedom.




Vanunu then published his message to the world taped just prior to his solitary confinement which began May 23, 2010:

1:18
 NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN ISRAEL-MAY-23-2010.mov vanunuvmjc


During his 18 years in Ashkelon Prison, Vanunu wrote:

"Any country, which manufactures and stocks nuclear weapons, is first of all endangering its own citizens. This is why the citizens must confront their government and warn it that it has no right to expose them to this danger. Because, in effect, the citizens are being held hostage by their own gove... [Read More]

PRESS RELEASE

CALL FOR FREEDOM FOR MORDECHAI VANUNU

ON NAGASAKI ANNIVERSARY, 10^TH AUGUST, 2010

Many hundreds of people from around the World have signed an InternationalPetition (http://humanrights.change.org/petitions/view/release_mordechai_vanunu), calling on President Obama, Prime Ministers Netanyahu and Cameron, and other world leaders, to ‘do all they can’ to gain the release from Israel of Mordechai Vanunu (the Israeli nuclear whistleblower).

Vanunu was released from Ramle Israeli Prison, on Sunday 8^th August, 2010,after serving almost 3 months in solitary confinement under cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions.This further sentence was imposed on Vanunu for speaking to foreign media. Although now out of prison he is still not allowed to leave Israel.The draconian restrictions remain on him, and he is unable to speak to foreigners, foreign media, or move freely within Israel without Government permission.

Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, who together with Gerry Grehan, Chair of the Peace People, launched the International Appeal for Vanunu’s release, said today:

“It is unacceptable that Vanunu continues to be punished by the Israeli Government for telling the world that Israel has nuclear weapons.After 18 years in prison (12 years in solitary confinement), and a further six living under severe restrictions, including the recent 3 month prison sentence, how much longer will Israel continue t... [Read More]

Vanunu was released this morning, August 8, 2010, from his most recent imprisonment in solitary confinement that began on May 23, 2010.

What Vanunu will say about his days in solitary remains to be heard, but it began with a whimper from a spokesman for the prisons authority, "Mordecai Vanunu was freed from prison on Sunday morning."

What Vanunu wrote after his first 8 years in prison was:

"Solitary confinement is living in a grave to live alone is living with yourself, talking to yourself in your mind remembering yourself in the past, living the past in the present, living the past many times. In the present time you are Dead. A dead man walking in his grave. To be alive is to be free. Here I am a blind man my eyes, walls, can see eight years far away from trees, flowers, sea, women, birds -freedom. Now iron gates, doors, grills, cement in this concrete world solidifying me. Only my mind, my spirit is free-free to remember why I am in prison but not prison for my spirit, they cannot chain my mind. And I am free to keep my belief in my action against all psychological brainwash until I can fly from this state prison - until my dead body will rise again from this tomb like an agent who came back from the cold to serve the world in the war against nuclear Holocaust, nuclear proliferation, against nuclear secrets...to be free to live to be alive.” [1]

What Vanunu said in 2006... [Read More]

During my first of seven trips to Israel Palestine in 2005, I was in the midst of writing my first book, KEEP HOPE ALIVE.

If all goes as planned I will be in Iran this November researching for my fourth book, What YOU were doing when my gods were Beatles and Dylan.

My third book, BEYOND NUCLEAR: Some of my Experiences of Mordechai Vanunu and the Holy Land: 2005-2010 would not, could not have been written without stumbling into a meeting with Mordechai Vanunu, who became my muse, that led me to become a reporter who stumbled into documenting Vanunu's FREEDOM of SPEECH TRIAL, since it began on January 25, 2006, which was just a few weeks before Vanunu spoke about his first years in solitary confinement:

Mordechai Vanunu Addresses ...

It was while researching for my first book-KEEP HOPE ALIVE- in 2004, that I stumbled upon Mordechai Vanunu’s incredible story and wrote him into a chapter; and then I crossed paths with him a few months after.

In the Chapter: “Thanksgiving Eve, 1987” from KEEP HOPE ALIVE, Dr. Jake Hunter, a fictional character says:

“I have yet to read or heard a word from the A... [Read More]