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CONTACT: Gilda Carbonaro 301-792-8854 Gold Star Families Speak Out
Mike Ferner 240-274-9785 DemocracyRising.US

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


LAURA AND JENNA BUSH PROMOTE “READ ALL ABOUT IT,” A GOLD STAR MOTHER ASKS THEM TO READ HER LETTER

Mother of Marine killed in Iraq delivers letter to Bushes at book signing event at D.C. Borders


On Friday, April 25, at 7:00pm, at the Borders bookstore at 14th and F Streets, NW, the mother of a Marine Corps Sergeant killed in Iraq will deliver a letter to Mrs. Bush and her daughter, Jenna, who will be at the store promoting their children’s book, “Read All About It.”


THE LETTER:

Gilda Carbonaro
Bethesda, Maryland





Laura and Jenna Bush
c/o Borders Books
14th and F Streets NW
Washington, D.C.


April 25, 2008


Dear Laura and Jenna Bush,

As you promote your new children’s book, “Read All About It,” and advocate for literacy tonight I hope you will take but a few moments to read these heartfelt lines.

I write to you as one of thousands of parents and family members whose loved ones have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan; whose child, parent or spouse has returned blinded or deaf, armless or legless, or unable to ever move their limbs again; or perhaps have returned apparently unharmed, but with nightmares and a ticking timebomb in their minds.

You may think this a grim postscript to an evening’s chat about a book for children, but when someone you love has been taken from you forever, or returned so terribly damaged you barely know them, it becomes foremost in your thoughts every waking moment. You then begin to understand what is truly grim. And, I must add, there are those among us who still carry such unspeakable pain and anger they’ve become all but exhausted.

But many of us have felt exhaustion be replaced by an energy and a clarity of purpose we have never experienced before. One thing that has become clear to us is an answer to the question, “How could anyone send the youth of its nation to invade Iraq?” We see now how differently someone would answer that question if they suffered the anguish of a family member being killed as the result.

Your children, Mrs. Bush, are safe and I am glad for you. But I wonder, have you ever urged them to enlist in this heroic adventure? Your husband has told us many times how important this cause is. Your children appear well qualified, and as part of the First Family you’ve no doubt taught them the value of demonstrating leadership for the nation.

Why, then, has the price for this war been paid only by people like my son, Marine Corps Sgt. Alesandro Carbonaro, who died May 10, 2006, eight days after being horrifically burned in an IED blast in Al Anbar Province, Iraq?


Can you not see the simple, basic unfairness of asking others to do what you yourself are unwilling to do? Have you drifted so far from an understanding of fundamental justice that you cannot see the contradictions apparent to so many of us?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are as real as the knot in our stomachs and the ache in our hearts. It is time – and past time – that you face these questions without blinking or dodging and give us a satisfactory answer.


Most sincerely,



Gilda Carbonaro
Bethesda, Maryland

Goddess speed, Mrs. C. Never back down!

Help hold contractors accountable

Hi,

Jamie Leigh Jones was working in Iraq for a subsidiary of Halliburton when she was drugged and brutally gang-raped by several coworkers.

For the last two years, she's been asking the US government to hold the perpetrators accountable, but the men who raped her may never be brought to justice because Halliburton and other contractors in Iraq aren't subject to US or Iraqi laws.

I just signed a petition urging Congress to investigate the rape of Jamie Leigh Jones, hold those involved accountable, and bring US contractors under the jurisdiction of US law. Can you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/contractors_accountable/?r_by=11800-4538487-tjOcr8&rc=paste

Thanks!

1. My uncle is dying. I couldn't say we're close, but he's the only one in the family with a clue about who I really am. He calls me Gypsy. We're doing a lot of traveling these days to visit him, take my dad to the doctor, etc. Any day now, my uncle will slip into a coma from cancer that has moved from his lungs to his brain. That sucks.

2. The weather is too good. It's still in the 80s here. We have a serious drought on our hands.

3. The news is too bad. The Democrats are either too lame or making too much money to oppose the Bush junta. Bush continues to dismantle the Constitution. Blackwater is committing murder. Our troops are dying for no reason. Darfur is in the grips of its 4th year of genocide. pResident Bombs A Lot is going to attack Iran, and I don't even want to think about what could happen there. If you've got friends in Israel, tell them you love them.

4. Halliburton is coming to Kentucky. People here think liquifying coal is a good idea - it isn't. Why does progress here always involve a deal with the devil?

4. I'm taking art classes and I can't decide whether to talk about that here or start yet another blog on this site. Then that begs the question should I redesign this site. Or change servers. Change domains? and on.. and on.... it never ends.

5. I'm having an identity crisis. I am completely unprepared to have lived this long. I figured I'd never make 30, yet here I am at 46. What do you do when you can't be who you want to be? Who am I? What am I? What's the point? Why are people so much dumber than I am so much more successful at almost everything? Why do my days feel like they're an hour long? Do I leave my hair long and dark or cut it off and bleach it blonde, which will piss everyone around me off? Why do I alternate between feeling numb and feeling ovewhelmed? Why do my dreams feel more real than my waking hours? Why can't I paint? I could go on like this for hours, and do...

6. I'm worried I may lose my health care. I'm stressed about money. I'm getting nothing done on my book. I hate my clothes. My room is a disaster of epic proportions. My sick mother needs more from me than I have to give.

I could go on, but you get the point, if there is such a thing. I'll write more when I can do something besides whine.

Peace.

Facing South:

Bill Quigley
Guest Contributor

In a small, still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all-white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by black students.

The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the "white tree" at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The black defendant, 17-year-old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other.

The jury quickly convicted Bell of two felonies -- aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other black youths await similar trials on attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy charges.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The rest of the story, which is being reported across the world in papers in China, France and England, is just as chilling.

I don't know whether to cry, scream or throw up. For the love of Goddess, who loves ALL of her children, please go read the rest of the story. The entire succession of events, and the fact that the whites are virtually unscathed while the black are being victimized by the entire system, including a prosecutor who told the black kids "that if they didn't stop making a fuss about this "innocent prank I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." "

Apparently he's trying to do just that and it's working.

From the article:

People interested in supporting can contact:

The Jena 6 Defense Committee,
P.O. Box 2798
Jena, LA 71342

jena6defense@gmail.com

Friends of Justice
507 North Donley Ave.
Tulia, TX 79088,
www.fojtulia.org

ACLU of Louisiana
P.O. Box 56157
New Orleans, LA 70156

www.laaclu.org or 417-350-0536.



This is an urgent situation, so if you can send money, please do. If nothing else, join the ACLU because your dues go for things like this. This affects all of us, not just because the world is watching, but because none of us is free when shit like this can go down, and you know the Alberto's Justice Department won't do their jobs and stop this the way they should.

The Huffington Post

This year's theme of a powershift completes a cycle that began in 2000 at the high moment of American triumphalism, before the dot.com bust and 9/11. For the first time in its history, an American president, Bill Clinton, addressed the WEF, descending on Davos, helicopters arroar and loudly echoing across the pristine ski valley, with practically the entire American cabinet in tow. I wrote then that "paradoxically, Clinton's presence codified the triumph of the American challenge the WEF was founded to resist." It was paradoxical because this annual gathering two hours up the mountain from Zurich had first been organized 30 years earlier under the name "European Management Seminar" as a way for Europe's business leaders to come together and figure out how to respond to what French author Jean -Jacques Servan Schreiber had called "the American challenge."

I wrote then, not wrongly but now far less true, that "clearly, globalization is an American-led phenomenon. Those gathered in Davos were in awe of a US economy in the midst of its longest expansion in history with full employment and low inflation thanks in good part to freer trade and advances in information technology.

"Industrial titans from Europe and Asia sat gaping as Microsoft's Bill Gates, AOL's Steve Case and Viacom's Sumner Redstone offered their version of how to make billions in the new economy. Sessions on the other great revolution underway in genetics were also dominated by Americans, from the scientists to the regulators.

"From so high up in the Alps you can see clearly all the way to the future. And the future, if this year's Davos meeting was any indication, will be undeniably American."

In the intervening years, Bush's unilateralism, the war in Iraq, the torture at Abu Ghraib, the warrantless wiretaps, the revelation of racism and inequality after Katrina and the aggressive religious right have all tarnished America's luster.

Bush wanted America to rule the world, but was too unaware of international relations to know that we already did. Then he went in a screwed it up to the point that it will take generations for America to recover, if we ever do.

Way to go, George.