A WORKING CLASS HERO IS SO HARD TO BE

Imagine


John Lennon

Born: October 9, 1940

Assassinated: December 8, 1980


IMAGINE

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try,
No hell below us, above us only sky,
Imagine all the people, living for today.
Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too,
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Selfishness--self-centerdeness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.

Stop Blocking the Light:

LIGHTEN UP (Morcheeba)

Video Code provided by VideoCodeZone.Com

STILL FURTHER

The merry pranksters and their bus "Further" were a major influence on me and the community I lived with. Their story is told in the book "Electric Koolaid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe.

Furthur lives on

Kesey’s Merry Pranksters’ bus rises from the swampBy JOHN FOYSTON
The Oregonian

PLEASANT HILL — Four decades ago, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters rolled across the country as psychedelic shock troops in a brightly painted bus called Furthur.

Recently some remaining Pranksters — plus kids, companions, young acolytes and dogs — met at Kesey’s farm to help his son Zane make Furthur roll again.

The Pranksters were lysergicized proselytizers, the transition from the Beats to the hippies, a rainbow-hued crew seeking to wake America from two decades of self-satisfied slumber. They were harbingers of a tectonic shift in American culture — a shift that doubled back on them in the early 1970s, submerging the subculture once again.

Furthur is one of the enduring symbols of that time. But it was road-weary and

50 years old when Kesey towed it to oaky bottomland at his farm near Eugene. He built a replica from a newer bus as the original languished in the swamp, and Kesey, who died four years ago following liver surgery, stoutly resisted all suggestions to move it.

That’s why the most recent journey on a late October day was more significant — heavier, even — than its distance might imply: Zane Kesey and crew towed the bus just a couple hundred yards from the swamp to a flat spot up by the barn.

Short as it was, it was a journey that many of the Pranksters never thought they’d see. “It’s sweet to see it back out of the swamp,’’ said Prankster Mike Hagen, a quiet man who uses the word ‘sweet’ often and can even get away with the occasional ‘far out.’ “Who would’ve believed it?’’

“I don’t know what Kesey would think about it, but we can’t worry about that now. I’ve been trying to e-mail him, but the server must be down,’’ joked Ken Babbs, who knew Kesey for 43 years.

“It’s been a miraculous day because we had no idea what would happen. We didn’t know if the brakes were seized and the wheels would even roll. We didn’t know if it would break in half when we got a chain on it, but the vibe was right.’’

What happens next is the question.

“Our goal is to restore the bus and tell its story,’’ said David Houston, who owns Barney’s Beanery, a famous Los Angeles restaurant. “This is a priceless piece of American history.’’

Lit by full sun for the first time in years, Furthur looked the part. Festoons of moss drooped from its flanks; ferns grew from its fenders; mice had colonized the interior, which was stripped bare except for the driver’s seat where Neal Cassady often sat. Furthur’s once flamboyant, fanciful hide is faded and rusted — making it look like the relic of a lost civilization that it is.

But it’s beautiful and imposing for all that — or because of it: it’s a faded Renaissance fresco or an aging beauty still possessed of the most amazing cheekbones. It’s imposing because history happened here. This was the locus of many lives and so much energy that you want to encapsulate it — moss, rust and all — in a block of Lucite and appreciate it as the cultural artifact it has become.

“This feels like a perfect time for a new subculture,’’ said Stephen Greene, Houston’s partner in the possible restoration of Furthur.

“It feels like something was pulling it out of the swamp. Since Jerry Garcia died, another of the doorways to a different culture closed. We want to restore Furthur and take it on the road for kids to learn different ways to live and how to take care of each other. ”

But which Furthur do you restore? Set aside the problems of restoring a machine ravaged by age and you face a philosophic question — Furthur was the constantly evolving work of dozens of creative souls. As inspiration enshrined, its livery might change overnight and then again in a month or a year.

“Oh, I remember when it was that color, I think I painted that,’’ said Mountain Girl, a longtime Prankster and mother of Kesey’s daughter, Sunshine. “I remember every one of these flakes.’’

She pored over multicolored paint chips that flaked off the bus when it was pulled out from between two trees that tightly flanked it. (So tightly that the trunk of one had to be notched to allow the open bus door to pass without snagging.)

Mountain Girl (her driver’s license may show a different name, but the world knows her as Mountain Girl and her friends call her MG) looked up as people pushed the bus around a corner to ready it for the tow up the hill.

“We used to do that a lot,’’ she said. “We used to have to push it to get it started when the starter motor didn’t work. Usually one of three things — the starter, the brakes or the clutch — was always either busted or just fixed and ready to go out again in about three days. We got to know every junkyard and parts store in the West.’’

Zane Kesey allowed two days to extricate Furthur, but it was out of the swamp shortly after noon of the first day. Which is not to say the operation went off with military precision — that’s just not the Prankster way.

No, the scene down in the swamp (a mercifully dry swamp, thanks to a lack of rain) was marinated in the same cheerful anarchy that Kesey and the Pranksters brought to those long ago Acid Tests.

“No control freaks,’’ Sunshine Kesey said. “Keep it loose. Dad encouraged randomness.’’

Dogs and kids romped, mostly ignoring the trampled blackberry vines. Characters milled about — young neo-

hippies, one of whom later unslung a mandolin to sing “All You Need Is Drugs’’; a documentary film crew; silver-bearded Prankster Izzy Whetstine in Technicolor tie-dye: Zane Kesey in purple tie-dye of his own; and Phil Dietz, who calls himself the last Prankster and who tapped a hand drum as people took a strain on the ropes and chains.

Picture this: Zane Kesey on a small farm tractor hitched to a Chevy flatbed where seven people crouched to increase traction. A yellow tow strap hitched the truck to chains looped around Furthur’s rear axle. But it wasn’t enough to overcome years of immobility.

So they lashed a thick rope to the tow strap, and people grabbed the robe in a tug-of-war with Time itself. Black smoke snorted from the tractor’s stack, the truck’s engine revved and its rear wheels spun, then bit. The pullers put their backs into it and Furthur inched backward as David Tipton walked alongside and shouted steering commands to Prankster George Walker in the driver’s seat.

“Is there a new plan?’’ Izzy Whetstine asked Hagen as the crew readied for the third and last attempt.

“It’s a constantly moving plan,’’ Hagen said.

“Was there an old plan?’’

“It was old the moment it became a plan.’’

But Kesey’s daughter was OK with the plan, whatever it may be.

“My dad would’ve been thrilled that there’s a new surge of energy behind the bus,’’ Sunshine Kesey said. “It’s not necessary to leave it as a story of the past because he wanted other people to take the craziness on the road.

“To him it wasn’t just the bus, it was the action of people coming together to make something happen. His philosophy was live in the moment and call the dance.’’


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright © 2005 Corvallis Gazette-Times

COULD YOU BE NEXT?

Monday, December 5th, 2005

AN EXCERPT FROM www.democracynow.org

The scandal over the Bush administration's use of so-called "extraordinary renditions' is reaching new heights. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in Europe today for a five-day trip to address the issue directly. Last month the European Union wrote to Rice expressing concern over reports that the US was using secret jails in Europe for its rendition program. Rice will reportedly respond by telling allies to "back off" over the issue.
The highly controversial practice of rendition involves transporting suspects seized overseas by US agents to countries known for using torture and holding them there for interrogation.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union has announced it is taking the CIA to court over its rendition program. The lawsuit - which will be filed on Tuesday - charges the CIA broke both US and international law when they authorized agents to abduct an innocent man, detain him incommunicado, beat him, drug and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that the US admitted to German officials in May 2004 that the CIA had mistakenly imprisoned a German citizen for five months but asked the German government to remain quiet about it.

The man, Khaled El-Masri, was arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He says he was handed to US officials and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he was held in appalling conditions and interrogated as a terrorism suspect. He was returned to Europe five months later when the CIA realized they had the wrong man.

Citing interviews with current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials, the Post reported that after the September 11th attacks, the staff of the CIA's Counterterroist Center - or CTC - quadrupled in size nearly overnight. The center's Rendition Group is made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists.

According to the Post, members of the group follow a simple but standard procedure: "Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons...which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe."

The CIA, working with other intelligence agencies, has captured an estimated 3,000 people since 9/11. There is no tribunal or judge to check the evidence against those picked up by the agency. The CIA's inspector general is now investigating a growing number of what it calls "erroneous renditions." One official told the Post about three dozen names fall in that category.


Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined now in our New York studio by Michael Ratner. He’s president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Welcome to Democracy Now!

MICHAEL RATNER: Welcome, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, this is an amazing story in The Washington Post, especially in its details about what happened to this one man, Khaled Masri. Beginning with the cooperation of the German government, which was anti-Iraq war, and the U.S., Dana Priest, the writer, begins, “In May 2004, the White House dispatched the U.S. ambassador in Germany to pay an unusual visit to that country's interior minister. Ambassador Daniel Coats carried instructions from the State Department transmitted via the C.I.A.'s Berlin station because they were too sensitive and highly classified for regular diplomatic channels, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation.”

Priest goes on to write, “Coats informed the German minister that the C.I.A. had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public. The U.S. officials feared exposure of a covert action program designed to capture terrorism suspects abroad and transfer them among countries and possible legal challenges to the C.I.A. from Masri and others with similar allegations.” A remarkable story.

MICHAEL RATNER: Well, Dana Priest's story was absolutely amazing because of the detail. I mean, we have all known about the extraordinary rendition program for a long time. The Center for Constitutional Rights has had this case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained at Kennedy airport, sent to Syria where he was tortured, but what this story does is put detail on it. It talks about this unit that’s set up in the basement of the C.I.A., 1,200 people working on extraordinary rendition. It talks about “black sites,” which are C.I.A. sites, which may even be in Europe, Romania and Poland. And then, of course, it has the story of Khaled El-Masri, who was innocent, picked up, taken to Afghanistan, interrogated, tortured and then released, with the Germans closely involved.

And what I think is going on here is that Europe has been deeply involved in this whole process. Certainly, the intelligence agencies of Europe have been involved. And hundreds of flights, hundreds of flights have gone out of Germany, taking people, C.I.A. flights, all over the world to be tortured. And now that it's being exposed, Europe is sitting there demanding -- supposedly demanding from the U.S., ‘Tell us what's going on. Tell us what's happening.’ Yet at the same time, they have been involved in not only some of their countries allowing these camps to be there, but in allowing these flights to go from Sweden, from England, from Germany, from Spain, all over Europe, to take people to torture facilities everywhere in the world.

What it reminds me of, and I think people should really be aware of this, we all see now that Pinochet in Chile is being condemned and may actually have to stand trial for the Operation Condor, the running of essentially a gulag through South America, where he picked up people, had them tortured and killed and taken to various facilities. And you have to ask yourself: What's the difference between what the United States is doing now in cooperation with Europe, essentially in running a worldwide gulag of detention and torture facilities?

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE READ

FINALLY A PROPOSAL TO ADDRESS THE CURRENT STATE OF THE NATION THAT MAKES SENSE. PLEASE IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE ON THIS BLOG, READ THIS AND EMAIL IT TO FRIENDS. THERE IS AN EMAIL BUTTON AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.


It's Time to Face the "Not-See" Menace
By Steve Bhaerman


My wife Trudy was born in Germany and came here as a young child. When she was in her late teens, she returned there for a year to live and work. As she began to reacquaint herself with family members, she felt bold and comfortable enough to ask them the difficult questions: How was it that the Holocaust could happen? What had they known? What had they done?

The answers she received could be summed up as: "We'd heard rumors about the death camps, but our government told us it was American propaganda -- and that's what we believed." Now before we cast judgment about how bad the "good" Germans were, a little perspective. In his book Laughter In Hell: The Use of Humor During the Holocaust, Steve Lipman (who is Jewish) maintains that in the early days, Hitler was an object of ridicule. Many, if not most Germans didn't like him. However, once Hitler came to power -- and showed muscle -- the average non-Jewish, non-communist, non-homosexual German faced a decision: Enroll themselves in Hitler's vision of Deutschland Über Alles -- or make their lives unpleasant and their deaths untimely.

In "Matrix" language, they could either choose the Red Pill of painful awareness, or the Blue Pill of blissful ignorance. Those Germans whose conscience and consciousness offered them no choice but to choose the Red Pill realized they were very likely choosing a death sentence. For the Germans who swallowed the Blue Pill, the initial decision was easier. But as the war dragged on and the illusion shattered, they too ultimately had to face the awful truth about the devil's mission they'd signed on to. While some continued, no doubt, to deny any wrongdoing until the day that they died, others had to live with the sad truth that there had been a "tipping point" which gave the Nazis absolute power -- and that the German people had missed the point.

Fast forward sixty or seventy years from Nazi Germany to Not-See America, and those of us who haven't swallowed the pill of "American Security Through World Domination" are seeing that tipping point looming on the horizon and coming closer each day. To use a familiar analogy, when you throw a frog into boiling water (please don't try this at home), he will immediately leap out and save himself. But if you put a frog in room temperature water and bring it to a slow boil, the frog will never sense the increase in temperature ... until he's cooked.

As soon as Richard Nixon left office in disgrace nearly thirty years ago, a small cadre of conservatives made their own twisted vow of "never again." Beginning with the Reagan Administration (which friends of mine living in Washington at the time called "the meanest and most ruthless" they'd ever seen -- up until that point, of course), on through the Lee Atwater campaign for George the First, through Gingrich era in Congress, through the stealing of the election in 2000, and up to the current stonewalling going on, the temperature has been rising. And folks, we're nearly cooked.

1 So what is it that will cause us to sit up, take notice, and jump out of the pot? When will we realize -- a la that 50s song "Stranded In the Jungle" -- that what we smell cooking is our cherished freedom and democracy? What will it take for us to say, "Great googamooga -- lemme outta here!"?

First we must face that it is the "Not-Sees" who enable the Nazis to come into power. In further conversation, Trudy's relatives admitted that they believed what their government was telling them because it was easier to believe that than to face the huge lie and horrible truth. A little closer to home, here is an actual response that a real human being offered recently when confronted with a particularly egregious perpetration by our current Administration: "Well, it may be true but I don't believe it."

Unbelievable? Believe it. Notice how out-of-the-comfort-zone topics get relegated to the box of "conspiracy theories." Here is my new working definition of "conspiracy theory": a conspiracy theory is something that if true, would be too threatening to face. So why even go there? Well, because we may be "going there" like it or not, and if we have the awareness we can stop the chain of events before we find that it is we who are in chains. And maybe it's time for us to call those who refuse to connect the very connectable dots "coincidence theorists."

To put it another way, what if you had a life-threatening condition and finding out about it now would make it treatable and curable? Would it be worth the temporary discomfort -- if not outright horror -- in facing something too threatening to face? There are people, after all, who "wouldn't face the truth to save their life." I assert the body politic -- or at least the design offered to us by the Founding Fathers -- is in grave danger. What Lincoln called "government of the people, by the people, for the people" has not yet perished from this earth. But it is on life support. And its life is in our hands.

So what are we not seeing? And what can we do?

First of all, I think it is wise to not strain the Nazi / Not-See analogy, but rather to use the parallel for clarity. So here is the point: Good, decent people can be manipulated by fear and prejudice to bring to power a force of evil disguised as security and protection. All it takes is for them to look the other way (i.e., not see) or wish it weren't so, for that dark power to entrench itself absolutely. And we all know that in human affairs, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Here are a few dots, and you can make your own connections:

1. The 2000 Election. There is irrefutable evidence that tens of thousands of African-American voters in Florida were purposely disenfranchised by a plan implemented to weed out "felons." Most of the people turned away at the polls were not felons, but no matter. There was no redress, no revote, and the results stood. Tom DeLay dispatched a gang of intimidators disguised as "citizens" to disrupt the vote recount in Dade County. The Supreme Court made the final decision, and the selection results were 5-4, along ideological lines.

2. Sen. Jim Jeffords. In 2001, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont actually left the Republican Party and switched to Independent so as to deny the Republicans a majority in the Senate. Why? He was concerned about the strong-arm tactics being used by the Republican leadership.

3. 9/11. On September 10th, President Bush's popularity ratings were ... well, they were unpopularity ratings. Afterward? He became the Fearless Leader of the "Free" World. Four big unanswered questions about 9/11 still remain unanswered, and largely unasked:

√ Why were the FBI agents on the trail of the actual hijackers in this country -- in their own words -- "thwarted"? Who did the thwarting and why?

√ Who profited from United and American airlines stocks plummeting in the wake of 9/11? Who did the selling?

√ Why were jets not scrambled immediately after the plane hit the first tower? Why the delay?

√ Why were Osama bin Laden's relatives whisked out of the country right after 9/11, and never interrogated by the FBI?

4. The 2002 Election. Let's start with the elephant -- I mean the donkey -- in the living room, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota), and his death in a plane crash. Now imagining that this was "no accident" is far-fetched, and over a line not many of us would like to cross. But when a regime is ruthless and secretive, conspiracy theories proliferate and undermine trust. The fact that many non-paranoid citizens harbor suspicions about this event, should in itself be considered a cause for concern.

So I would leave this one entirely up to the coincidence theorists: Two elections over a two-year period, two Democratic Senators (one of them the leading liberal voice in the Senate, the other running against John Ashcroft in Missouri), and two plane crashes. What are the odds? Pete Rose, can you help us out here? Or, it could very well be that Pat Robertson is right, and God is indeed siding with the Republicans.

Meanwhile in Georgia, where Diebold touch screen voting machines were used, there were two electoral upsets that defied the polls done just days before the voting. Both the Democratic candidate for Governor and the popular war veteran Sen. Max Cleland were inexplicably defeated. Sen. Cleland, incidentally, was subject to a mean and merciless character assassination campaign. Guess that beats real assassination.

5. The War on Iraq. According to recent testimony by Richard Clarke and others, this war was being planned from the day George W. Bush set foot in the White House (earlier, actually) and that the "diplomatic efforts" were a charade while war plans proceeded unfettered (shades of Hitler). In the wake of 9/11 and based on what is now known to be "spun" information, Congress was leveraged into a new War Powers Act, giving President Bush the power to make war on Iraq. While the majority of Americans would have supported this war only with the full backing of the United Nations, the war went forward without the support of the UN, the majority of people in the world, or for that matter the majority of Americans.

6. The Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Case. When Joseph Wilson blew the whistle on the false report of Saddam getting nuclear weapons from Niger, someone at the White House leaked the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, and blew her cover as an antiterrorist CIA operative, putting her life in danger and ending her career. This is not only an act of high treason, but we lost a valuable operative, someone it took years to establish and perhaps millions of dollars to train. So far ... no one has been prosecuted, and the White House has not been held accountable.

And on and on and on. We see an Administration that has put itself above the law in every way imaginable. We have a President who received less than 50% of the popular vote, who was elected by barely 25% of eligible voters. He proclaimed himself "a uniter, not a divider" and a "compassionate conservative," and yet he has consistently represented only two groups: The huge corporate interests that contributed to his campaign, and the Religious Right. He has ruled, not as an elected President but as a dictator who has forced his worldview (or more likely, his handlers' worldview) onto all of us.

The Administration's heavy-handed dictates have squeezed scientists who don't buy the fundamentalist Christian ideology out of research positions, and pushed moderate Republicans and all others who don't agree with him out the door as well. Think of Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke and other lifelong Republicans who were drummed out of government service, then subjected to smear campaigns and worse. Think of the OMB employee who was prohibited from telling Congress the real cost of the Prescription Drug Bill under threat of losing his job.

And take the press -- please! We have an Administration playing full-on hardball and a press playing hardly-have-balls, lobbing hittable grapefruits and failing to field the easiest grounders. Where have you gone, Edward R. Murrow, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you? Why isn't the press doing any pressing? Well, probably because the press is owned by the same corporate interests who've bought the Presidency.

Here is an interesting stat: Even when polls show George Bush trailing a Democratic opponent, a majority of people nonetheless believe that Bush will be reelected. What's that about? It would seem to indicate a "disheartenment in the heartland," a sinking feeling that a regime that has consistently used lying and intimidation to thwart the will of the people and flaunt the rule of law will somehow find a way to stay in power once again this fall.

But seriously, folks ... we here in Not-See America may be coming very close to the tipping point where there is no longer any check or balance against a regime that knows no restraint. Or, we may just as likely be reaching a turning point where concerned citizens from all shades of the political spectrum begin speaking out and acting out to return the rule of law to America, and to reestablish a government that is truthful, just, and appropriately transparent.

I guess I am basically an idealist with a profound respect for the vision and courage of our Founding Fathers. They went up against a worldview that had dominated for centuries, proclaiming each individual a sovereign citizen, not a subject. The cliche is that every generation must defend freedom, liberty and our democratic way of life. In the past, this has looked like stepping onto foreign soil armed with a weapon. In our time it means standing on our own soil, unarmed except for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

So, what is to be done? What comes to mind (to the cynical part of my mind, anyway) is the classic cartoon. It's a dungeon scene, and two very old men with long, white beards and in tatters, are strung up in chains. One is saying to the other, "Now, here's my plan..." At the risk of sounding like that cartoon, here is my plan:

1. The Committee of 100. What if one hundred (or more) prominent Americans from all political stripes declared a state of Emerge 'n See, where we emerge from our fear and our Not-See trance, and face the truth of where our nation has been going, and make the conscious and courageous choice to change direction? They say the truth shall set you free, but first it will piss you off. In order to face the truth, we need leadership. And in this case, one hundred leaders are better than one. One hundred leaders can speak in one hundred different places at once. And by sheer numbers, they can encourage other truth-tellers and whistle-blowers to stand up and speak up.

As for who would be involved, I see Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents -- people like Bill Moyers, Arianna Huffington, John Dean, Gen. Anthony Zinni, George Soros, Sen. Robert Byrd, and well-known names from the fields of entertainment and media, the clergy, science and academia, business and finance, arts and letters, organized labor. In fact, I would expect to be surprised by who shows up for this.

Imagine the sense of relief for Americans to realize that we need not fear our own government. Imagine the genuine inspiration for the democratic impulse around the world. Imagine a nation facing the threat of terrorism, and the need to create a just world order -- together, disagreeing agreeably, but focused on finding the wisest and most functional pathways.

The Declaration of Emerge 'n See would be supported by two things: Truth and reconciliation. In other words, the declaration should proclaim that the truth will inevitably come out, and that the truth emerging for us to deal with is more important than punishing any particular perpetrators. Therefore, those who come forward now will experience leniency, if not outright pardon. This is a controversial notion, but it points us in the evolutionary direction of foregoing "getting even" for getting "odd." In seeing our collective complicity in the way things are, in creating a profound ceremony of both grief and forgiveness, we pardon not just the perpetrators, but ourselves -- the tacit participants.

2. The Canary Project. If we are going to ask the truth-tellers and whistle-blowers to emerge from hiding, we must take steps to protect them. The Canary Project is initially a website where anyone can see and hear video affidavits from the "canaries" who have been silenced, intimidated or worse. I say "canaries" for two reasons. First, canaries "sing." Secondly, there is the tradition of releasing canaries into mines to test for toxic gases. If the canaries die, then miners know not to enter. In our toxic political climate, if our own canaries cannot be protected -- well, then ... guess who's next?

Who knows? Some of these people may need to have their voices disguised or wear cloth bags on their heads. In order for truth to out, there needs to be a place for anyone and everyone to hear the evidence, and the truth. These individuals may in the future testify in a court of law, once protections are guaranteed. And the best way for protection to be guaranteed is to have as many Americans as possible to know about these truth-tellers.

There is the legendary -- and it turns out, apocryphal -- story about King Christian of Denmark. As the story goes, when the Nazis invaded Denmark and announced that all Jews must wear a yellow star, the King and all Danes emerged wearing the star on their shoulders. While this never actually happened, the story accurately reflected the Danish attitude of solidarity with its Jewish citizens. Indeed, Danish citizens often sent care packages to Jews who had been taken to concentration camps, and just this concern made Danish Jews more protected from brutality. The lesson is, when we're all "us" we cannot be separated, isolated, and picked off.

3. Concerned Clergy. Before the invasion of Iraq, many, many clergy people in this country expressed concern and opposition to preemptive warfare. Once the war began -- particularly in the light of Ari Fleischer's ominous warning to "watch what you say" -- many of these concerned ministers, rabbis, priests and other religious people faded back into the "silenced majority."

Facing the truth requires moral authority, and not the moral authority of the Religious Right which rails against the "abomination" of two people of the same sex lying together in love, but looks the other way when an entire government lies together to perpetrate a "bomb-a-nation." Instead we need the simple moral authority of the Golden Rule, a version of which is the keynote of every major religion. We need right now the spiritual power of many, many people of conscience representing any and all faiths coming together to pray for the good of all.

Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum, out of many One. There are many paths, and One Spirit. In recognizing this, we see from a higher perspective, and religion becomes a true moral compass, not a tool for political manipulation. Why not have our spiritual leaders raise the question: How can we create a society where we are One Nation, Under Good -- instead of what we have now, one nation, under guard?

4. Mothers for a Healthier Future. Just as the principles of the Golden Rule (at the heart of every religious path) needs to inform our community and political life, we need the nurturing impulse of the real "pro-life" movement: mothers who care about their children's future. Yes, we must take America back. And to do so, we must have a vision that takes America forward.

The current powers that be in power offer us perpetual warfare, environmental destruction, loss of civil liberties, growing gap between rich and poor, and rule by the Christian version of fundamentalist ayatollahs. They are pointing us directly backward, to a past of feudalism, theocracy and rule by royal decree. Let's allow the mothers of our nation and the world -- the bringers of life -- to point us towards a life-affirming vision where we use our resources lovingly, wisely and creatively.

The fall of the Nixon presidency turned on one small decision that could have gone either way. Katherine Graham, still "green" as publisher of the Washington Post and not part of the old boy network, didn't realize she was supposed to kill the Watergate story. She went ahead with it, and we all know what happened. Right now we have a regime which -- to paraphrase John Dean, who should know -- makes Mr. Nixon look like Mr. Rogers. They've learned their lessons well from the Vietnam and Nixon eras, to slam shut every possible door of inquiry, to make sure Americans don't see pictures of dead soldiers in flag-draped coffins, or dead children, forever collaterally-damaged.

Look at us. The world's biggest and baddest superpower, and we are afraid of our own shadow. Our delicate psyches need to be protected from pictures of returning coffins. It's time to courageously face the heart of darkness - as our Founding Fathers did, and as we are asking our soldiers in Iraq to do - and shine the light of truth on all that we have been unwilling to see.

I propose that we declare this Fourth of July a day of courageous truth telling and visioning for the future of our republic and the healing of the world. We might even call it "Man Hog Day" and declare a State of Emerge 'n See, where we emerge from fear and denial and see our shadow. Otherwise, we face a long, dark winter season that truth, justice and the real American way might not survive.

Steve Bhaerman is a writer and comedian. His alter ego Swami Beyondananda has a new book out in May, Swami for Precedent: A 7-Step Plan to Heal the Body Politic and Cure Electile Dysfunction. Steve and Swami can be found online at http://www.wakeuplaughing.com.