Dear Loyal Supporters of the OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS:
You have been with OOA for some or all of these thirty years. Yes, our struggle for justice and peace continues.
NICARAGUA
In the mid 1970’s Theresa and I heard the cry of the Sandinistas to end the Somoza dictatorship. Father Ernesto Cardenal came to our campus at California State University Northridge to explain the nature of the FSLN revolutionary movement. Our colleague from Maryknoll, Father Miguel d’Escoto also came to Los Angeles and told us about his role with the Sandinistas together with that of many other priests.We understood their message because it had so many similarities with my own service as a Maryknoll Father in Guatemala in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s. At that same time Theresa was serving as a Maryknoll Sister in Southern Chile.
We marched in the streets of Los Angeles until that day on July 19, 1979 when the Sandinistas were victorious. The Nicaraguan solidarity leader Manuel Valle went from our demonstration directly to the Los Angeles Consulate of Nicaragua. He told the consulate staff that the Sandinstas won and without hesitation they walked out of the office giving him the keys.
Manuel and I then went to Managua to get his papers as the new Consul of Nicaragua in Los Angeles. Within a few days after my return Theresa brought a second delegation. The Nicaraguan government then asked Theresa and me to begin sending US citizens to Nicaragua to see the Sandinista government in action. And thus we began a series of delegations in solidarity with their people and marking a new form of peacemaking.
We brought delegates to areas of conflict and to the Miskito Coast where indigenous Nicaraguans were being moved south from the Nicaraguan border with Honduras. We saw the difficulty of governing while under siege and how quickly the Reagan Administration organized the illegal CONTRA WAR attempting to overthrow the revolution. This was the beginning of mercenary armies which are now used by our government throughout the world.
Upon their return to the US, our delegates made their reports to churches, civic organizations and to the media. These delegations continued on a regular basis. From 1979 to 1990 we brought thousands of people to Nicaragua by organizing ten such groups each year.
OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS OPENS ITS DOORS
From 1979-1985 CONTINUOUS DELEGATIONS TO NICARAGUA. This included offering information and commentary to mainstream and independent media as well as to scholarly publications; scheduled TV and radio commentaries; press conferences and background briefings. In 1983 Theresa realized that our home was becoming unlivable because of the activity of this new movement. So we called together some of our friends and asked them to form a board of directors for OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS. An office was obtained and we incorporated as a non-profit educational corporation in April of 1983. It was as if the office was meant to be. The phones started ringing, media and people in general called to express their interest. Some wonderful celebrities including Martin Sheen contributed and went to the war zones with us. So while we actually started the work in the mid 1970’s we now mark our thirtieth year as a corporation for justice and peace.
1985-1986 THE INTERNATIONAL MARCH FOR PEACE IN CENTRAL AMERICA
This march was initiated by the Norwegians who asked our office to lead the US component from Panama to Mexico City. Some 30 countries were involved and up to 400 marchers. We began to receive death threats and harassment as a byproduct of our work.
1986-1990 CONTINUOUS DELEGATIONS INCLUDING GUATEMALA, CUBA AND EL SALVADOR
This period included assisting in documentary and feature filmmaking and TV productions; bringing President Ortega and other Central American leaders to the United States; lecturing at universities, providing information on legislative issues and testifying as expert witnesses in Federal Immigration Court to prevent deportation of refugees fleeing persecution.
1990 THE ELECTION OF MRS. CHAMORRO
Yes, we were also present at the election of Mrs. Chamorro and the first peaceful transition of government in Nicaraguan history. The Nicaraguans had lost over 40,000 citizens, mainly non-combatants in a savage war against its population including liberation theologians, social workers and anyone working for the benefit of the Nicaraguan people. The US got the message across that the war would not stop unless Mrs. Chamorro was elected. We were there to witness the absence of any cheering in Managua the night she declared victory, just the hope that Reagan’s massacres would stop. The Sandinistas stood down from the presidency and continued organizing until the reelection of Daniel Ortega who is now serving as president of Nicaragua. Reports on development there are very positive.
NOW TO IRAQ
Also, in 1990, George Herbert Walker Bush turns on our ally Saddam Hussein and craves a new holocaust. OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS went to Iraq in late 1990 into 1991. We spent time in Baghdad with Yassar Arafat who made it clear that he could negotiate with Saddam. He was despondent that Bush would not talk to him. “You are in a lose-lose situation,” he said. Our return to the US was marked by demonstrations up to and including the day in January of 1991 when Bush dropped 88,000 tons of bombs on the children of Baghdad in a horrid, illegal blitzkrieg which also illegally destroyed the electric system and the water system of that great city.
From 1991 to 1994 the Office of the Americas coalesced with international peace organizations working in opposition to the Gulf War and the ongoing devastation by the Clinton Administration which took up to one million lives in a combination of sanctions and bombings. When the Baghdad bombing began Theresa, Blase and their son Blase Martin were in jail with scores of others who had been demonstrating at the Los Angeles Federal Building.
JANUARY 1994, CHIAPAS IN MEXICO
On the day that NAFTA took effect the Zapatistas began their revolution in Chiapas, Mexico. We immediately organized a delegation to San Cristobal de las Casas and met with the Mexicans who were trying to mediate in the conflict. It was our privilege to join with the great Bishop Samuel Ruiz who was the only person that the Zapatistas would accept as mediator with the Mexican government. We had the privilege of traveling with Bishop Ruiz and serving on the executive board of his international peace organization.
Don Samuel (as the bishop was called) was responsible for the relative calm between the Zapatistas and the Mexican Government. But with his passing the tensions have revived especially with the return of the Mexican dinosaur party, the PRI.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: WAR FOR OIL
One day after 9-11, Theresa organized the Coalition for World Peace together with the families who lost loved ones in the Twin Towers. This coalition was designed to unite the peace movement in opposition to an expected invasion of Afghanistan. Demonstrations began immediately demanding that their deaths not be used as a cause of war.
An absolutely unnecessary and illegal invasion of Afghanistan began. Every legal expert knew that the attacks of 9-11 were criminal acts and not an attack by a nation state. In an act of international stupidity, the United States savagely attacks one of the poorest and most war torn countries in the world. And this at a time when some 60 nations had offered to help us to find any of the criminals involved in the 9-11 disaster. International law provided numerous ways to deal with this crisis but in its hubris the U.S. ignores international law. We are still killing people in Afghanistan.
THE LARGEST PEACE DEMONSTRATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD FOLLOWS
And then the mindless, banal, shallow, war criminal George W. Bush unleashed hell on Iraq. The apple does not fall far from the tree. So millions have died in the Middle East as a result of greedy war criminals who openly practice torture and thereby endanger our troops and the citizens of the United States. Just think of how much money the war parasites have “earned” with the blood of our young men and women? And now as in previous empires the center cannot hold. We are incapable of administering the requirements of the people of the United States while our taxes pay for fragmentation bombs, depleted uranium, “modern” nuclear weapons, and Israel’s war on the Palestinian people.
UNITE, UNITE, UNITE
The Office of the Americas, through all of these conflicts, has worked with thousands of other activists as our nation continues in a mode of perpetual war. Our rights and liberties have been abolished as war designed by military industrial greed together with governmental complicity terrorizes the planet.
A CHANGE OF STRATEGY: 2010
While continuing with our mission of 30 years we felt the need to forgo our fund raising events. We turned all our attention to the work at hand with the hope that it would be funded in spite of no fund raising events. We must say that our outreach in 2013 has been remarkable. MSNBC brought us for an interview with Chris Hayes, one of their most respected anchors. Al Jazeera also arranged an interview regarding Liberation Theology as related to the new Pope and Church History. Radio and TV interviews have been constant by way of the Institute for Public Accuracy which is located at the Press Club in Washington, D.C. Our program WORLD FOCUS is ranked at the high end for listeners on Pacifica Radio by way of KPFK Los Angeles.
OFFICE OF THE AMERICAS ARCHIVES AT UCLA
The UCLA Research Library and its Department of Special Collections has created Special Collection 1590 which now holds some 130 file boxes from the Office of the Americas where all of our history is archived. We believe that this collection will help future historians to understand the failure of US foreign policy and how the current LATIN AMERICAN RENAISSANCE has become an example for world development in justice and peace. We were recently informed by a research scholar that on May 11, 1981 a 19 year old Barack Obama arranged for us to participate in a symposium at Occidental College. We can’t help but wonder what else our archives will reveal to future researchers.
SUPPORT NEEDED
The Office of the Americas needs your support NOW as much as ever. We have survived even after ending fund raising events but with the generous support of our sustainers and donors. We humbly ask all of you, our friends, to make this new system effective. Please click the “Donate” button on the upper right of the website where you can donate through PayPal or send a donation to the Office of the Americas at 8125 West Third Street, Suite 202, LA, CA 90048.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES…WITH YOUR HELP—PEACE!
Theresa and Blase
The Last Letter of Tomas Young
Click here to read the “Last Letter” of dying Iraq War veteran Tomas Young to George Bush and Dick Cheney. Please feel free to save and share this important letter.
Nominate Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning needs to be honored, not imprisoned, for his courageous action for Peace. Please join the OOA in signing these important petitions.
Click here for a petition to nominate Bradley for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Click here to submit a nomination for Bradley to win the Presidential Citizen’s Medal. For this one, you’ll need some additional information, such as:
- Bradley Manning
- Born in Crescent, OK
- Age 25 years
- Was this nominee’s service performed outside of his or her regular job: (you must check “YES” for Bradley Manning to be considered.)
- You’ll be asked to explain why he should receive the medal. Below is a sample response:Faced with the choice to stay silent about war crimes committed by the US government (the easy choice, the coward’s choice), or to become a whistleblower and tell the truth (the difficult choice, the brave choice), Bradley Manning chose the path of integrity and honor and truth. No other citizen in the US has done more than Bradley Manning to bring forth the truth, to try to restore dignity and honor to the US. Rather than having been hailed as the hero he is, he has been imprisoned for more than 1000 days, many of which were in conditions the UN Rappatuer called “torture.”— You’ll be asked what impact his actions have had on the community. Here is a sample response:
The US military can hold Bradley Manning up as an example of bravery in service to country, and the most deadly era of the US imperialist invasion into Iraq was deescalated – making Iraq and the US safer. That is, Bradley Manning had positive impacts not only within the national community (US citizens), but on the international community as well.
Blase on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes
Click here to watch video of Blase on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes on Saturday, March 16, 2013, discussing the church in Latin America.
World Focus – 3/3/13 – Blase’s Commentary on Bradley Manning
Blase Bonpane on WORLD FOCUS,
Blase’ Commentary on Bradley Manning and Iran
Aired on PACIFICA RADIO NETWORK by way of KPFK, Los Angeles
March 3, 2013
Blase: Hello, this is Blase Bonpane with World Focus coming to you from KPFK/ Los Angeles. We are podcast and available 24/7 on kpfk.org where we’re heard internationally.
Now we’re going to have a new Pope. We have one that has retired. His predecessor, John Paul II and Benedict XVI both seem to be trying to turn around the Second Vatican Council of the revolutionary John XXIII and what was it that bothered them about the Council? What was it that was so upsetting? Well, we were in the field at the time of that Council in Guatemala and we could see that coming from Rome was a new message – make up your mind in the field how to enter in to the hopes, desires and anxieties of your people wherever it takes you. So, this led us to looking at the preferential option for the poor. Which led us to what was later called Liberation Theology, looking at theology from the base community, from people gathered together to talk about their needs and their anxieties and coming to a conclusion or a praxis – a reflective decision on what to do, and that led to great power in the church which has really been part of the transformation of Latin America and it’s a transformation that we can see very clearly.
It’s the reason that I wrote my book, “Imagine No Religion.” The concept is something that came to us from Vatican II which at the outset they agreed that to say that the spirit of God is limited to the Roman Catholic Church is heresy. Where did that come from? It came from the church. It came from the Council. It came from Vatican II that we have to see the spirit of God in all sorts of things. Not only in the rocks and in the air and in the water and all these wonderful things that the Buddhists talk about, which is a wonderful perspective and an appreciation of all the efforts to understand things that are beyond us. That’s really why I wrote “Imagine No Religion.” It’s not a call to atheism. I think that sometimes atheism can be a very fundamentalist approach which can really be very offensive to many people. So it isn’t meant to do that. It’s not a question of the bifurcation between theism, non-theism, atheism, and agnosticism. It’s an understanding that people are in different places. We respect them all but we don’t take a fundamentalist approach, neither to the Roman Catholic Church nor to any other religion and we fully respect people who are doing beautifully without any religion and have a very strong perspective spiritually in their pursuit of peace and justice. This is the great perspective that was given to us from Vatican II and later began to be known as Liberation Theology and I think it frightened John Paul II and Benedict. But we hope to move on to something better, but whether we do or not is not the important thing. The important thing is that we understand our freedom and the freedom to do what is necessary.
Brief interlude
Bradley Manning for President!
Why? Because he’s dealt with the most pressing problems of state, authoritarianism, endless lying, unnecessary violence, secrecy, police state laws and cover-up, the need for power from the base for the privates of the world. That’s what we’re looking for. Not for the generals. Have you ever noticed how many generals go completely nuts and are totally out of their minds? Power corrupts. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely. We need truth. A lack of it is bringing spiritual death to the United States.
As Dr. King said, “A nation nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
Well, it certainly isn’t very far away. The lying that creates wars is killing us. Can you imagine the latest Gallup poll? This is unbelievable. 99% of Americans think that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to the United States! Our warmongers have planned to attack Iran. And they’ve prepared our people with war propaganda in film and news media. We’re so really sorry to see the impact of films like Argo. Here, over the past twelve months rarely a week, let alone a month, went by without predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack. Then, into the frame comes Argo. A decontextualized, ahistorical, so-called true story of orientalist proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization and bearded barbarians culminating in popped champagne corks and rippling stars and stripes celebrating our heroism and the triumph of their frustration and defeat. This is just so unfortunate that the film industry is into this. Look at how we pictured the Japanese people in World War II and how we pictured the Germans in World War I and WWII as evil and now we’re doing it with Islam with the same fury that the Germans attacked Judaism.
Islamophobia is a great way to destroy our country and I think that people like Bradley Manning have helped us greatly. And I think that he will soon be old enough to run for President even if he has languished in prison. Most of our great patriots internationally have languished in prison. Nelson Mandela in South Africa languished in prison, Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay, spent years in prison in solitary confinement, living with insects and rats. These are the great patriots – Evo Morales in Bolivia. Dilma Rousseff, President of one of the great countries of the world, Brazil, spent years in prison. Prisoners of conscience. Let every schoolchild of the next millennia memorize your statement in court, Bradley Manning. I have 37 pages here that are absolutely unbelievable because of the incredible technical knowledge you had, together with your humanity.
“Wearing his Army dress uniform, a composed, intense and articulate Pfc. Bradley Manning took ‘full responsibility’ Thursday for providing the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks with a trove of classified and sensitive military, diplomatic and intelligence cables, videos and documents. . . .
“Manning’s motivations in leaking, he said, was to ‘spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general’, he said, and ’cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.’
“Manning explain[ed] his actions that drove him to disclose what he said he ‘believed, and still believes . . . are some of the most significant documents of our time’ . . . .
“He came to view much of what the Army told him – and the public – to be false, such as the suggestion the military had destroyed a graphic video of an aerial assault in Iraq that killed civilians, or that WikiLeaks was a nefarious entity. . . .
“Manning said he often found himself frustrated by attempts to get his chain of command to investigate apparent abuses detailed in the documents Manning accessed.”
Manning also said he “first approached three news outlets: the Washington Post, New York Times, and Politico” before approaching WikiLeaks. And he repeatedly denied having been encouraged or pushed in any way by WikiLeaks to obtain and leak the documents, thus denying the US government a key part of its attempted prosecution of the whistle blowing group. Instead, “he said he took ‘full responsibility’ for a decision that will likely land him in prison for the next 20 years – and possibly the rest of his life.”
But I think it’s time for him to consider a Presidential campaign because the lies of our government are destroying the country. The secrecy, absolutely unnecessary secrecy is destroying the country. The demonization of Islam, the demonization of Iran which has not attacked another country in 200 years!
Fearing fear fearing fear. Fear is the glue that holds corrupt politics together. That’s why I have it as my theme song.
We’re proud of Bradley Manning and we’re proud of what he’s done and we think that this is what we need. As far as technical knowledge, if you read the 37 pages that he spoke to the court, you’re finding an extremely high-tech individual, a genius with an enormously human perspective. A genius-humanist, exactly what we need for the Presidency of the United States because the President must be a moral leader. That’s his main calling, to be a moral leader, not to be a cheerleader for the military, not to be a cheerleader for the insurance companies, not to be a savior of corrupt banks. Not to be one who knuckles under to the wish of the 1%, but a moral leader. And, you know it’s funny but for church and state, the preferential option for the poor is what is necessary today. That preferential option is what would help us to realize that in the United States today, we have over a million homeless people in the richest country in the world. We have 138 million people who live paycheck to paycheck, many of them struggling wondering how they’ll ever get rent or food. These numbers are astounding. So we call for a preferential option for the poor.
Brief interlude
Alan Minsky: We are going to feature the voice and life and lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are Pacifica Radio archives of speeches that they have of Dr. Martin Luther King but for the most part the King family owns the right to those speeches.
Blase: Well, I think Bradley Manning must have been listening to Martin Luther King because he reflects the entire position of nonviolence, of humanity, of love of peace. That’s what he was about and that’s what he’s risking his life for.
Alan: Martin Luther King, Jr. is an icon for the 20th century in the United States for obvious reasons and if you look at how he’s represented in the mainstream media as this icon, he’s very watered down. And it’s not just a matter of watering him down in terms of his economic justice critique which is usually erased. There’s that. But also the real depth of him, as a thinker, as somebody who put his thoughts and theories into practice, and his relationship to Christian theology.
Blase: Look at his understanding of Liberation Theology. He never in his life said, “I want you to become a Baptist.” He was not sectarian. He happened to come up through the Baptist church. That’s lovely and wonderful. That wasn’t his message.
Alan: Right, and I think there is certainly one and still the largest Christian institution in the world that could certainly take a lesson from Dr. King right now.
Blase: Well, that’s what we need right now and that’s why I wrote my book; that’s for sure. They’re too sectarian. They’re too limited. They’re hidebound. Cardinal Martini who just died said that we’re 200 years behind. I think he was 1,000 years off and I think it’s wonderful that even people who are deeply Catholic look upon their leadership the same way a 50 year old son would look at his 90 year old father, with honor and respect and doing exactly what they think they should do. They are not there to listen to a general in the military. The Pope can say what he wants; people will be guided by their conscience whether they are atheists or agnostics or Roman Catholics or Baptists. And Dr. King understood the need of focusing on the gifts of the spirit of peace and justice and love.
Alan: We’re going to hear an excerpt from “King: A Filmed Journey.”
Blase: This was screened in 600 theaters across the United States, just once, in 1970 and it’s all that led up to the great march on Washington and then, of course, what followed that was an increasingly strong Dr. King. He had African-American clergy against him. He had people saying, “You’ve got to wait” and he said “We can’t wait.” He made it clear that the Vietnam War was destroying the country which could not be more clear and has led us into perpetual war. He even lost his contact with President Johnson. He used to be able to call President Johnson and say, “Lyndon, please help us this week. Please send some federal marshals down to Birmingham or wherever he might be because we need some protection.” He lost that after his talk in 1967 in the Riverside Church on April 4th where he said “My country is the greatest purveyor of violence on the face of the Earth.”
And it’s gotten worse.
Audio of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” – April 16, 1963
Blase: Dr. King gave his own eulogy in his last sermon which was at his Atlanta church on February 4th, 1968, and he said,
…tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say, tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have 300 or 400 other awards, that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I’ve tried to be right on the walk with them. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.
His last sermon at his own church in Atlanta.
I think Bradley Manning is one of the legacies of Dr. King. He understood that he had to speak, that silence was complicity, that you can’t remain silent in the name of such criminality and terrorism conducted by your own government. You can’t do it and Bradley is supported by the legal community of the United States, people like Michael Ratner speaking out on his behalf.
Michael Ratner is president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He said today: “The rule of law is not in peril; it is no more. The country under Obama is utterly lawless. There is nothing legal or moral about murdering with drones or assassinations, continuing indefinite detention, military commissions and renditions. There is nothing legal or moral about attacking other countries such as Yemen, Pakistan or Libya. There is nothing legal or moral about a massive surveillance state. And then just to make sure no one reveals our evil we persecute and jail our truth tellers: [Julian] Assange, [Bradley] Manning, [Jeremy] Hammond, [John] Kirakou, while the real criminals go free. What you are seeing here is the recognition by the U.S. that it is weakening as a world power and it is striking out in ways that aren’t always rational but that are certainly inhuman and lawless.”
That is one of our greatest lawyers, Michael Ratner, speaking out on what has happened to our country. We need Dr. King. We need Bradley Manning.
Break for Audio of Dr. Martin Luther King & Bull Connor
Friends, look what King was fighting here. He was fighting against a whole culture. A whole culture of a whole country, not only the South. I can’t help but remember being in Baton Rouge. It was a problem with the white churches, the black churches. There was Bishop Schexnayder down there in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and I was talking to him in the early ‘60’s and I said, “Bishop Schexnayder, I think we have a serious race problem here in Louisiana” and he said, “Father, we don’t have a race problem in Louisiana,” in other words, “Shut your mouth.”
Dr. King was a prophet. Prophets are people who told the truth. They usually stood outside the city, outside the gates because inside the gates everything was a lie perpetrated by the leaders. They stood outside the gates until they were stoned or crucified but they told the truth and their truth remained and that’s exactly what happened with Dr. King. What he said then was true now and will be true in the future.
Interlude for More Audio from “King: A Filmed Journey”
Friends, we heard Dr. King speaking about people being taken from their homes, beaten, and sometimes killed. Well, the same thing was mentioned by Private Bradley Manning, his legacy, one of millions of his legacy, giving classified documents to WikiLeaks which included Collateral Murder which depicts US forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists and wounding two children. And of course all of the releases that he gave showing what home invasions are. Home invasions in the South in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, home invasions in Iraq, home invasions in Iran, home invasions in Pakistan, drones – these things are unacceptable and we cannot tolerate or coexist with them, and this is what Dr. King was telling us then, and Bradley Manning is his student.
When you hear the life in Dr. King, you can hear the death in our foreign policy repeating the same lies that they used to destroy Iraq for destroying Iran. They’re not even capable of making up new lies. Here’s Condoleezza Rice, “No one ever said we knew precisely where all these agents were, where they were stored.” Basically, she’s saying that we know they’re there. And then we had the absolutely illogical statements coming from Donald Rumsfeld,
“My personal view is that their intelligence has been, I’m sure, imperfect, but good. In other words, I think the intelligence was correct in general, and that you always will find out precisely what it was once you get on the ground and talk to people.”
We’re hearing this same babble about a new war! Is there anything else we can do besides kill people and kill children?
Audio from March on Washington -1963
We have to listen to the prophets of old because they’re speaking for the present. They’re speaking at a time when war criminals in our country and elsewhere want to have a war with Iran and we don’t want that war and we think they are criminals for initiating another war after Iraq, after Afghanistan, some of the poorest countries in the world and here we are looking for another one. I think we have lost our mind.
Thanks for listening. This is Blase Bonpane.
