10/28/10

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

MEDIA ROOTS- We have major challenges ahead that are unlike anything the average American today can imagine- challenges that the next 20 years of presidential regimes can’t solve. There isn’t a chirp in the trees, and the stillness in the air is just enough to hear a storm rumbling on the horizon.

It’s time to confront the fact that we have forgotten what freedom is. Do we even remember what being free means?

Freedom is not licensing, it’s not a social security number, and it’s not welfare. It’s neither Medicaid nor Medicare. It is not the CPS, the IRS, the FDA, the Department of Indoctrination (Education), and certainly not bailouts. Freedom is not any of the 90+ taxes created that didn’t exist less than a hundred years ago.

Now let’s talk about what freedom is. It is your sheriff, your city council, and your place of worship – even if that place is simply around your dinner table with your family. It is failure when your ideas don’t work. It is helping others when their farm burns down. It is the right to contract freely, pay what you feel is fair, and charge what you know is right. It is to walk, drive, fly, or slide wherever your heart desires, and without a license. Of course with this freedom comes accountability to the equal rights of others.

Freedom is the feeling that you get when you look your family, friends, and neighbors in the eye, and know you can really trust each other, because of the time you spent together backing each other up and making things happen for yourselves. So how did we wind up here, so far from this?

We’ve been sold the idea of a massive social empire, rather than separate sovereign states. Washington is too out of touch with the problems of average Americans to make effective decisions with our money, and they are too far out of reach to be accountable to the taxpayers. This is why the founders designed mechanisms to prevent an insidious development of a coercive Empire into the founding documents. They knew Washington D.C. would inevitably seek to throne itself, promising heaven on earth if we agreed to sign on the dotted “taxation without representation” line.  The founders believed that you were naturally only subject to your need for food, water, shelter, defense, and personal accountability. 

How free are we without having control over the means of food production? How free can we be if the material essential to our existence come from China, er Wal-mart?  Even the currency in our monetary system is legally counterfeited – it subjects you to the will of a select few, making you dependent as any slave ever was.

Stalin’s 5 year plans; Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”; grand ideas of collectivization resulted in the death of 120 million farmers. Never before in history had so many locally self sufficient people found an early grave at the hands of so few. It was made possible by them subscribing to the myth of a utopia and voluntarily surrendering their means of production. Now we’ve done the same.

What techniques did Hitler, Stalin, and Mao implement to affect the totalitarianism described in our history books? If those at the top are to bring about a massive social state, how on earth do they affect the thinking of millions to agree with a group of central planners? 

In order to bypass free expression, societies indoctrinate their population. Step one in the United States is to subvert the first amendment, which was ratified to protect the ideas despised most. History has shown us time and time again that we must subject ourselves to a polarization of opinion. 

Woodrow Wilson campaigned to steer us clear of the war in Europe. At the same time, the German embassy had placed ads in papers throughout the US, including the New York Times, urging the US to steer clear of the dangerous waters surrounding Britain. Then the ammo laden ocean cruise-ship Lusitania sunk, and over one thousand civilian passengers died. Americans seethed while Germans state-side experienced persecution like never before. Lynching became common-place as Americans sent 100,000 sons to their deaths in Europe.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign rhetoric assured America that, “If we face the choice – the choice of profit or peace – this nation will answer, this nation must answer. We choose peace.” 

After he took office, FDR immediately initiated a policy to starve the Japanese of oil. Admiral Richardson begged to bring his fleet in Hawaii back home to San Diego, claiming that they were undermanned, and over-exposed.  He was fired. Ten months later, 3,000 Americans are slaughtered at Pearl Harbor in “a day that will live in infamy,” 150,000 Japanese-Americans are jailed in internment camps, and American parents send 400,000 sons to die in the Second World War.

Is it adding up yet? War promotes and sensationalizes the myth that our individual safety is dependent upon a larger government. War centralizes people around a leader. The bigger the threat, the more they centralize. In order to convince a country to mobilize for such hell, governments must stifle polarizing opinions, and promise heaven will follow. 

The Constitution provides Washington the ability to act as a conduit for the states to rally together in the face of a threat too large for any one; the states have strength in numbers for national self-defense while maintaining freedom for their individuals. Why haven’t we managed to do this? How have we come to accept warrantless wiretappings, unreasonable searches, and incarcerations?

As Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus melt in the face of judicial review, we have to ask: what are we getting ready for? Why have we surrendered integral freedoms in the pursuit of defense? 

The answer is that we are not defending freedom. Instead, we’re picking a fight with an individual decision to experience terror, a war within our own minds.

Right now we have cartels over running the southwest, ranchers getting killed, Iraqi veteran sheriffs with bounties on their heads, and states being sued by the Federal government. Meanwhile you and your spouse are working your asses off, your kids are never home, your extended family is spread all over the globe, your television continuously lies to you, and you barely have time to mow the lawn you should be cultivating. No wonder we feel so powerless.

We let this happen. We’ve subjected ourselves to unconstitutional taxing, banking, currency, corporations, welfare programs, military growth, and imperial expansion. We’ve outsourced labor and material from tyrannical third world nations, and have bought into an education system that requires us to incur massive personal debt for a degree no one needs. Yet we’re looking around, confused? 

We have sold ourselves out!  We abandoned the belief in our own communities, the true source of our wealth, and traded it for the scraps of Washington’s printing press.  Are you going to throw your sons and daughters into the infernos of the next Great War based on promises from congressional critters?  Do you have any idea how far down this road we’ve gone? 

This country is about to drive off a cliff, and this is our last chance to put the brakes on before there is no avoiding the freefall into the jagged ravine below.  The wealthiest are jumping ship and dealing with the scraps they get as Washington taxes 70 plus percent of their transfers to the far-east. All of this is happening as you continue to struggle daily to make ends meet. Still think everything’s going to work itself out after these next elections? 

The time has passed to be able to affect change in our federal government. It’s over. Let all the unscrupulous history go. Forget about trying to understand “the issues”. You’ll never understand 2000 pages of unconstitutional healthcare reform. 

If you really want your life, your street, and your town to be better, it starts by understanding that you are the answer! Whoever is seated in the Presidential throne isn’t supposed to matter, but whoever holds your sheriff’s position does. Those who represent your state in the federal seat of government have failed you. The system is not working right now. On the other hand, your city council can work for you.  Every time you vote for a president you get screwed. You don’t need to understand everything to know things are fucked up. So what can “We the People” do about it? 

Rally. Find your neighbors. Have BBQs. Talk about things. Make it normal to have serious conversations.

I will get out there and say “no John, I’m not saying collectivism is bad. It’s just as natural as individualism, but there’s a time for both. No one argues against helping those who can’t help themselves. The real question is at what level do we collectivize to do so? For what reasons should we mobilize to deal with challenges? Shouldn’t we have the right to abstain from a collective effort if we don’t support? Whether we rally around Washington, our state capital, our town, or this grill, a government isn’t of the people through involuntary servitude.” 

Having a government of the people is not a spectator sport. It’s a contact sport. If you’re retired, get off the golf course. We need you. If you’ve lost your job, or can’t find one, then regroup with your family, and look for a leader.  If you can’t find one guess what? It’s you. I know…. scary, huh? The founders felt the same way. No one in their right mind should seek out public service. What I’m describing is exactly what happened in 1776, only they had something we don’t- the ability to survive locally. Chances are, you don’t have this ability. But you have something they didn’t, something they thought worth fighting for, worth dying for: The Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America. And they certainly paid for it.

So what can this document do for us legally? It can fix everything almost immediately. In the face of recent armed raids on organic food stores, illegal federal searches of political activists’ homes, unconstitutional firearms regulations, taxes levied for enumerated powers, random IRS audits, we can re-assume the state sovereignty that is articulated in the 10^th Amendment, and we can reclaim the natural rights implied by the 9^th Amendment by demanding that your sheriff, your city council, and your town justice serve you by keeping their word to be American and to follow the Constitution!

If you don’t care about your natural rights, your local sovereignty, and the radically liberating ideas upon which our Republic was founded, then clearly America is over. However if you do care, and haven’t learned what these documents can do for you and your family, it’s less than 20 pages long – read it while it’s still here. You will quickly see how these ideas have led us to be the most industrious, most innovative, most charitable culture in human history since July 4^th, 1776 – in spite of the constant attacks on our civil liberties from within since day one.  This has been a 234 year civil rights revolution, and for it to survive and thrive it must be firmly planted in a fertile mind, a mind that truly believes in itself.  Please spend time with your wonderful neighbors around the grill, peacefully rally for sovereignty, and find the answers to heaven on earth closer to home.

“I, state your name, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice; So help me God.”

“Oath of enlistment into the United States Armed Forces,” Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962

“I, state your name, hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

“Oath of Allegiance,” 8 C.F.R. Part 337 (2008), taken by all immigrants who wish to become United States citizens

Yossarian.

Photo by Beverly & Pack

DAILY MAIL– An eight-months pregnant woman was dragged from her home and forced to have an abortion because she had broken China’s one-child-per-family law.

Twelve government officials entered Xiao Aiying’s house where they hit and kicked her in the stomach, before taking her kicking and screaming to hospital. There, the 36-year-old was restrained as doctors injected her with a drug to kill the unborn baby.

Her husband Luo Yanquan, a construction worker, yesterday described the moment officials burst into his family home.

‘They held her hands behind her back and pushed her head against the wall and kicked her in the stomach,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if they were trying to give her a miscarriage.

‘Our ten-year-old daughter has been excited about having a little brother or sister but I don’t know how I can explain to her what has happened.’

He recalled how a month before the child was due to be born officials told the couple they weren’t allowed to have another baby because they already have a daughter. His wife, who was filmed in hospital with large bruises on her arms and her dead child still inside her, said: ‘I have had this baby, feeling it moving around and around my belly. Can you imagine how I feel now.’

Her harrowing experience in Siming, near the city of Xiamen, south-west China, on October 10, comes a month after the government in Beijing said there would be no relaxation in strict family planning laws.

Most Chinese families are allowed only one child to reduce the 1.3 billion-plus population and cut unsustainable demand on resources. The policy leads to an estimated 13 million abortions every year, with many of those ordered by local authorities. Infanticide is also widespread in many rural areas.

Read full article about China Forcing Woman into an Abortion at Eight Months.

Photo by MJTR

© COPYRIGHT DAILY MAIL, 2010

MEDIA ROOTS- As the world of art becomes increasingly homogenized, it is growing harder to come across original art that has societal and political significance. With the exception of Banksy and a few others, rarely do you see a prominent artist putting themselves out there to make a bold statement or provoke controversial thought. Like every other commodity in this corporatist system, popular modern art has become an over-produced, unoriginal, profit driven industry.

In times of perpetual wars and endless threats, dissenting propaganda artists have always been a crucial element of communication, organization and reflection. For our generation- there is Nathan Janes (AKA Red Baron), a propaganda artist and political activist who refuses to sell out to the system.

Janes is the mind behind PUPAGANDA, a pop art website countering the societal saturation of ‘meaningless advertising art’ by providing more inspiring, thought provoking work.  According to Janes, “It’s time people quit living a life of constant entertainment and start engaging in critical thought while questioning the barrage of commercial images and propaganda that they are faced with each day.”

His motivation is to open minds by depicting the machinery the global elite use to advance their own agenda.  And he does it with a man’s best friend – Janes uses the comforting imagery of dogs because they serve as an artistic tool for individuals to explore contentious topics.

Janes’s art has been featured in multiple prominent publications and he has been commissioned to do paintings by celebrities like Caprice Bourret and Pete Wentz of the band Fall Out Boy. Media Roots recently sat down with Nathan Janes for an exclusive interview about his artistic and political endeavors.

***

MR: What was your political awakening? Why did you start making political art?

NJ: My political awakening happened about three years ago. My journey began when my musician friend Photon Man gave me a copy of Terrorstorm by Alex Jones. It wasn’t long before I transformed my art from “Pop ARF” to “PUPAGANDA.” My previous “Pop ARF” artwork focused on the heartwarming appeal of dogs; I promoted the message of the prevention of cruelty towards animals but many of my paintings were just aesthetically pleasing without any particular message. While I still have compassion for dogs, my focus today is to awaken the general public to the ways in which we have been trained to follow our masters much like dogs. 

Since I have begun to create more powerful and thought provoking paintings, interest from art publications and other media that once promoted my work has ceased. Today’s artists found in the mainstream media and major galleries, create work lacking careful analysis of society. Artists that make strong statements about the Establishment and the ways in which we are being controlled and managed may never be promoted widely because we are a threat to the status quo.

MR: Why do you paint dogs and how does that fit into the messages you relay?

NJ: Dogs are the perfect subject to communicate my message because people still have empathy and compassion for dogs. We have been exposed to dehumanization through a constant flow of images on television, in movies, and in print depicting so much violence against our own kind that people no longer have compassion for one another. When something tragic happens to another human being, we are unable to react but if a dog is abused in anyway there is a sudden swell of compassion. There are also many parallels between the ways that dogs are trained and how we are conditioned by culture, which make for powerful paintings.

MR: What mediums do you usually work with?

NJ: I work in acrylics and usually paint on stretched canvas.

MR: Did you have any art school training or does painting come naturally for you?

NJ: I am a graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. My work today is a representation of my hard work and incredibly intensive practice.  I began training to be an artist as a freshman in High School. I am not talented or gifted; I have just applied myself and developed my skills and technique over many years.

MR: You just launched an international campaign that sparked attention worldwide, including a plug from Adbusters. What is Unplug the Signal, and why should people get involved?

NJ: Unplug the Signal is a campaign to turn off televisions.  I designed the campaign to create awareness of the gross manipulation of reality that is broadcast by the six major corporations controlling the content of television. With the average American adult watching more than 4 hours of television each day, the television plays a major role in continually creating the perceived reality in which we live.  The television has been used as a weapon of mass deception for the last half a century; it manages society and culture through such techniques as perception management, behavior placement, predictive programming and crisis creation.

People should get involved with this campaign because the television remains our greatest threat to individual sovereignty and the largest obstacle to becoming a truly informed individual. In order for individuals to see the real locus of control and look beyond such things as the false left/right paradigm, they will first need to be able to get beyond the paradigm conditioned by the television. In order for people to wake up, this information needs to be shared between families, friends, and neighbors. The campaign has just begun and already the message is spreading. I am very happy with the feedback it has been receiving.

MR: What are your three favorite pieces and what do they represent?

NJ: My three favorite pieces would be those that focus on the engineering and control of society through television:

Total Indoctrination, Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 48”, 2009

This painting represents how totally absorbed someone who regularly watches television can become, where they see everything within their lives relating somehow to television. It depicts a life where anything outside TV is rejected and all thoughts and discussions are just recycled conversations from TV and slogans from those sold to us as authorities and experts.

TV Mind Control, Acrylic on Canvas, 36” x 48”, 2009

This piece depicts the hypnotic affect of television as those who watch become a subject of mind-control. Too often the brain is switched to standby and all information is collected and accepted as truth without any questioning.  When viewing television, we do not consciously rationalize the information resonating within our unconscious depths; the hypnotic affect makes us highly suggestible.

Unplug the Signal, Acrylic and Masonite, 20″ x 16″, 2010

“Unplug the Signal” represents the constant flow of information that is transmitted by the television 24 hours a day. It is this signal which places the viewers all on the same page and makes them highly predictable. Plato’s Cave serves as an allegory for this phenomenon. In Plato’s cave, people view the shadows on the wall and interpret these shadows as reality. When one of them finds a way out of the cave and returns to tell the others what is outside, he and his message are rejected. When individuals are so thoroughly engrossed by the message of television, they will reject any information outside of the paradigm it presents while attacking and ridiculing the messenger.

MR: What is in store for Nathan Janes?

NJ: I am currently working on a painting of the President’s dog. This painting is a critical assessment I created in response to the threats to our liberties as sovereign citizens of this Republic. As for what’s in store, I will be working on a painting on Tiananmen Square, Chemtrails, implantable microchips and other projects that will spread the message of the Unplug the Signal Campaign including poetry, song writing, and the development of an literary allegory.

****

Find out more about Nathan “Red Baron” Janes at PUPAGANDA, or follow his work on Facebook and YouTube. Get involved in his Unplug the Signal campaign at UnplugtheSignal.com

Abby

MEDIA ROOTS- As the world of art becomes increasingly homogenized, it is growing harder to come across original art that has societal and political significance. With the exception of Banksy and a few others, rarely do you see a prominent artist putting themselves out there to make a bold statement or provoke controversial thought. Like every other commodity in this corporatist system, popular modern art has become an over-produced, unoriginal, profit driven industry.

In times of perpetual wars and endless threats, dissenting propaganda artists have always been a crucial element of communication, organization and reflection. For our generation- there is Nathan Janes (AKA Red Baron), a propaganda artist and political activist who refuses to sell out to the system.

Janes is the mind behind PUPAGANDA, a pop art website countering the societal saturation of ‘meaningless advertising art’ by providing more inspiring, thought provoking work.  According to Janes, “It’s time people quit living a life of constant entertainment and start engaging in critical thought while questioning the barrage of commercial images and propaganda that they are faced with each day.”

His motivation is to open minds by depicting the machinery the global elite use to advance their own agenda.  And he does it with a man’s best friend – Janes uses the comforting imagery of dogs because they serve as an artistic tool for individuals to explore contentious topics.

Janes’s art has been featured in multiple prominent publications and he has been commissioned to do paintings by celebrities like Caprice Bourret and Pete Wentz of the band Fall Out Boy. Media Roots recently sat down with Nathan Janes for an exclusive interview about his artistic and political endeavors.

MR: What was your political awakening? Why did you start making political art?

NJ: My political awakening happened about three years ago. My journey began when my musician friend Photon Man gave me a copy of Terrorstorm by Alex Jones. It wasn’t long before I transformed my art from “Pop ARF” to “PUPAGANDA.” My previous “Pop ARF” artwork focused on the heartwarming appeal of dogs; I promoted the message of the prevention of cruelty towards animals but many of my paintings were just aesthetically pleasing without any particular message. While I still have compassion for dogs, my focus today is to awaken the general public to the ways in which we have been trained to follow our masters much like dogs. 

Since I have begun to create more powerful and thought provoking paintings, interest from art publications and other media that once promoted my work has ceased. Today’s artists found in the mainstream media and major galleries, create work lacking careful analysis of society. Artists that make strong statements about the Establishment and the ways in which we are being controlled and managed may never be promoted widely because we are a threat to the status quo.

MR: Why do you paint dogs and how does that fit into the messages you relay?

NJ: Dogs are the perfect subject to communicate my message because people still have empathy and compassion for dogs. We have been exposed to dehumanization through a constant flow of images on television, in movies, and in print depicting so much violence against our own kind that people no longer have compassion for one another. When something tragic happens to another human being, we are unable to react but if a dog is abused in anyway there is a sudden swell of compassion. There are also many parallels between the ways that dogs are trained and how we are conditioned by culture, which make for powerful paintings.

MR: What mediums do you usually work with?

NJ: I work in acrylics and usually paint on stretched canvas.

MR: Did you have any art school training or does painting come naturally for you?

NJ: I am a graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio. My work today is a representation of my hard work and incredibly intensive practice.  I began training to be an artist as a freshman in High School. I am not talented or gifted; I have just applied myself and developed my skills and technique over many years.

MR: You just launched an international campaign that sparked attention worldwide, including a plug from Adbusters. What is Unplug the Signal, and why should people get involved?

NJ: Unplug the Signal is a campaign to turn off televisions.  I designed the campaign to create awareness of the gross manipulation of reality that is broadcast by the six major corporations controlling the content of television. With the average American adult watching more than 4 hours of television each day, the television plays a major role in continually creating the perceived reality in which we live.  The television has been used as a weapon of mass deception for the last half a century; it manages society and culture through such techniques as perception management, behavior placement, predictive programming and crisis creation.

People should get involved with this campaign because the television remains our greatest threat to individual sovereignty and the largest obstacle to becoming a truly informed individual. In order for individuals to see the real locus of control and look beyond such things as the false left/right paradigm, they will first need to be able to get beyond the paradigm conditioned by the television. In order for people to wake up, this information needs to be shared between families, friends, and neighbors. The campaign has just begun and already the message is spreading. I am very happy with the feedback it has been receiving.

MR: What are your three favorite pieces and what do they represent?

NJ: My three favorite pieces would be those that focus on the engineering and control of society through television:

Total Indoctrination, Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 48”, 2009

This painting represents how totally absorbed someone who regularly watches television can become, where they see everything within their lives relating somehow to television. It depicts a life where anything outside TV is rejected and all thoughts and discussions are just recycled conversations from TV and slogans from those sold to us as authorities and experts.

TV Mind Control, Acrylic on Canvas, 36” x 48”, 2009

This piece depicts the hypnotic affect of television as those who watch become a subject of mind-control. Too often the brain is switched to standby and all information is collected and accepted as truth without any questioning.  When viewing television, we do not consciously rationalize the information resonating within our unconscious depths; the hypnotic affect makes us highly suggestible.

Unplug the Signal, Acrylic and Masonite, 20″ x 16″, 2010

“Unplug the Signal” represents the constant flow of information that is transmitted by the television 24 hours a day. It is this signal which places the viewers all on the same page and makes them highly predictable. Plato’s Cave serves as an allegory for this phenomenon. In Plato’s cave, people view the shadows on the wall and interpret these shadows as reality. When one of them finds a way out of the cave and returns to tell the others what is outside, he and his message are rejected. When individuals are so thoroughly engrossed by the message of television, they will reject any information outside of the paradigm it presents while attacking and ridiculing the messenger.

MR: What is in store for Nathan Janes?

NJ: I am currently working on a painting of the President’s dog. This painting is a critical assessment I created in response to the threats to our liberties as sovereign citizens of this Republic. As for what’s in store, I will be working on a painting on Tiananmen Square, Chemtrails, implantable microchips and other projects that will spread the message of the Unplug the Signal Campaign including poetry, song writing, and the development of an literary allegory.

****

Find out more about Nathan “Red Baron” Janes at PUPAGANDA, or follow his work on Facebook and YouTube. Get involved in his Unplug the Signal campaign at UnplugtheSignal.com

Abby

AL JAZEERA– Since being the defendant in about six trials after I was arrested for protesting the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, it’s my experience that the police lie. Period.

However the lies don’t stop at street law enforcement level. From lies about WMD and connections to “al Qaeda,” almost every institution of so-called authority – the Pentagon, State Department, CIA, FBI, all the way up to the Oval Office and back down – lie. Not white lies, but big, Mother of all BS (MOAB) lies that lead to the destruction of innocent lives. I.F Stone was most definitely on the ball when he proclaimed, “Governments lie”.

Having clarified that, I would now like to examine a case that should be enshrined in the travesty of the US Justice Hall of Shame.

In February of this year, Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani mother of three, was convicted in US Federal (kangaroo) Court of seven counts, including two counts of “attempted murder of an American.” On September 23, Judge Berman, who displayed an open bias against Dr. Siddiqui, sentenced her to 86 years in prison.

The tapestry of lies about Dr. Siddiqui – a cognitive neuroscientist, schooled at MIT and Brandeis – was woven during the Bush regime but fully maintained during her trial and sentencing this year by the Obama (in)Justice Department.

Before 9/11/2001, Aafia lived in Massachusetts with her husband, also a Pakistani citizen, and their two children. According to all reports, she was a quietly pious Muslim (which is still not a crime here in the States), who hosted play dates for her children. She was a good student who studied hard and maintained an exemplary record, causing little harm to anything, let alone anyone.

After 9/11, when she was pregnant with her third child, she encouraged her husband to move back to Pakistan to avoid the backlash against her Muslim children – which was a very prescient thing to do considering the Islamophobia that has only increased in this country since then.

Tortured ‘truth’

Following the move to Pakistan, Dr. Siddiqui and her husband divorced. Her life took a horrendous turn justly after. While Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) – supposed mastermind of the 9/11 plot – was being water-boarded by the CIA 183 times in one month, he gave Dr. Siddiqui up as a member of al-Qaeda. Was this a case of stolen identity, or was Mohammed just saying random words like you or I would to stop the torture?

There is some disputed “intelligence” that Aafia had married KSM’s nephew, a tenuous allegation at best, and even so, guilt by association has no place in the hallowed US legal system.

Following KSM’s torture-induced ‘insights’, Dr. Siddiqui was listed by Bush’s Justice Department as one of the seven most dangerous al-Qaeda operatives in the world. A mother of three equipped with a lethal ability to ‘thin-slice’ your cognitive personality in seconds. If alleged association and a healthy interest in neuro-psychology are the definitive hallmarks of a ‘terrorist operative,’ then Malcolm Gladwell better start making some phone calls to Crane, Poole and Schmidt.

A culture of falsehoods

Face it, we all know that since 9/11, there have been numerous false “terror” alerts and lies leading to the capture and torture of hundreds of innocent individuals – and the heinous treatment we have all witnessed to from Abu Ghraib. Additionally, we are supposed to believe that multi-war criminal, Colin Powell, was “fooled” by faulty intelligence so much so that he paved the way for the invasion of Iraq by his false testimony at the UN but we are also supposed to unquestioningly believe the US intelligence apparatus when they lie about others such as Dr. Siddiqui.

In any case, in a bizarre scenario – to make a very long story short – Dr. Siddiqui and her three children disappeared for five years from 2003 to 2008, resurfacing in Ghazni, Afghanistan with her oldest child, a son who was then 11. She claimed that for the years she was missing, she was being held in various Pakistani and US prisons being tortured and repeatedly raped. Many prisoners, including Yvonne Ridley, maintain she was incarcerated in Bagram AFB and tortured for at least part of the five missing years.

After Dr. Siddiqui resurfaced, she was arrested and taken to an Afghan police station where four Americans – two military and two FBI agents – rushed to “question” her through interpreters. The FBI and military, claim that they were taken to a room that had a curtain at one end and that they did not know that Dr. Siddiqui was lying asleep on a bed at the other side of the curtain. As you read below it will become blatantly obvious that personnel involved from both institutions totally fabricated their stories.

This is the Americans’ version: They entered the room and one of the military dudes said he laid his weapon down (remember, they were there to interrogate one of the top most dangerous people in the world), and Siddiqui got up, grabbed the weapon, yelling obscenities and that she wanted to “kill Americans.” All 5’3″ of her raised the weapon to fire and she fired the rifle twice, missing everyone in the small room – in fact she even missed the walls, floor and ceiling since no bullets from the rifle were ever recovered.

Then one of the Americans shot her twice in the stomach “in self-defence.” It was shown at the trial that her fingerprints were not even on the weapon. The only bullets that were found that day were in Dr. Aafia’s body. How many stories of military cover-ups have we heard about since 9/11? I can think of two right away without even trying hard: Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch.

Hopeless injustice

Dr. Aafia’s side is this: After she was arrested, she was again beaten and she fell asleep on a bed when she heard talking in the room she was in so she got out of the bed and someone shouted: “Oh no, she’s loose!” Then she was shot – when she was wavering in and out of consciousness, she heard someone else say: “We could lose our jobs over this.”

Even with no evidence that she fired any weapon, she was convicted (the jury found no pre-meditation) by a jury and sentenced to the aforementioned 86 years.  It’s interesting that the Feds did not pursue “terrorist” charges against Dr. Siddiqui because they were aware that the only evidence that existed was tortured out of KSM – so they literally ganged up on her to press the assault and attempted murder charges.

Even if Dr. Siddiqui did shoot at the Americans, reflect on this. Say this case was being tried in Pakistan under similar circumstances for an American woman named Dr. Betty Brown who was captured and repeatedly tortured and raped by the ISI – here in the states that woman would be a hero if she shot at her captors – not demonized and taken away from her life and her children.

I believe Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is a political prisoner and now the political bogey-woman for two US regimes.

In Pakistan, the response to her verdict and sentencing brought the predictable mass protests, burning of American flags and effigies of Obama and calls for Pakistan to repatriate Dr. Siddiqui. They know who the real criminals are and who should be in prison for life! At present, Hilary’s state department harps on about ‘soft power’ and diplomacy, but what better way to quell US distrust in the Muslim world than to try such cases with due diligence and integrity.

In the US, not many people know about this case. Obviously many people were Hope-notized by the millions of dollars poured into the Obama PR machine – and believed when he said that his administration would be more transparent and lawful than the outlaws of the Bush era.

I guess they were mistaken.

Written by Cindy Sheehan, Photo by EPA

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Specialist Casey A. Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Since then, she has been an activist for peace and human rights. She has published five books, has her own Internet radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Cindy lives in Oakland, CA, and loves to spend time with her three grand-babies. You can learn more about Cindy at Peace of the Action. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

© AL JAZEERA, 2010