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War on Iraq

Video: Felicity Huffman, Vanessa Williams, Alfre Woodard Teach Us The True Story of Mothers Day

By Robert Greenwald, Brave New Foundation. Posted May 7, 2007.


The original Mother's Day was not conceived to sell us stuff we don't need, it was a day started by mothers to bring warfare to an end!

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Mother's Day is this Sunday. Chocolate or flowers? What kind of flowers? Maybe a plant...

In the past, these have been the most profound questions for many of us around Mother's Day. And now, thanks to some wonderful friends, our eyes have been opened. The original Mother's Day was not conceived to sell us stuff we don't need, it was a day started by mothers to bring warfare to an end!

Julia Ward Howe, the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, wrote the original Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 calling upon the women of the world to unite for peace. She had just witnessed the carnage of the American Civil War and the start of the Franco-Prussian War.

In honor and respect for the real Mother's Day we bring you a 21st century video reading of the proclamation with Vanessa Williams, Felicity Huffman, Christine Lahti, Alfre Woodward, Fatma Saleh, Ashraf Salimian, and Gloria Steinem, on behalf of an organization called No More Victims.

No More Victims is a non-profit organization which brings war-injured Iraqi children to the United States for medical treatment. Like Salee, a ten-year-old Iraqi girl. Last November, she lost her brother and both her legs just outside her home in Hasswa. Donations to No More Victims would help go Salee to Shriner's Hospital in Greenville, South Carolina to receive six months of surgery and prosthetics services.

Robert Greenwald

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See more stories tagged with: iraq, peace, brave new foundation

Robert Greenwald is the director/producer of "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," as well as many other films. He is a board member of the Independent Media Institute, AlterNet's parent organization.

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On Mother's Day
Posted by: philstowe on May 7, 2007 12:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Excellent! If you haven't watched it - WATCH IT!

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No More War?
Posted by: White middleclass male on May 7, 2007 12:44 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Than what would us apes do for fun?

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» World of Warcraft, dude. Posted by: medstudgeek
» RE: No More War? Posted by: boblecht
Support former Senator Mike Gravel for President in 2008.
Posted by: johngary66 on May 7, 2007 4:02 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He helped get us out of Viet Nam and he says he would get us out of Iraq yesterday. Check him out at You Tube. He won the first Presidential debate hands down. Imagine a President we could actually be proud of.

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Every day should be Mothers Day.
Posted by: HughScott on May 7, 2007 5:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And every American who cares about other human beings should celebrate by protesting Bush's insane war of choice.

Hugh E. Scott, Vietnam veteran and the editor of King-George.biz, the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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Thanks Ladies
Posted by: NoPCZone on May 7, 2007 6:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If you stand for peace you are a friend of mine. I guess we can add Mother's Day to the list of American Holidays that have been warped away from the original intent.

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Women seem to prefer receiving gifts they don't need
Posted by: ateo on May 7, 2007 6:34 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree that cards and useless nick knacks or whatever are pointless wastes of money as gifts. However, women seem to prefer those over something more practical.

You can't place all the blame on the Hallmark industry. There is obviously a huge demand for these things.

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Women are the change we are waiting for
Posted by: odcherenow on May 7, 2007 6:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am sending this to my entire email list. Initiatives of women can make serious impact on the carnage of the world, remember the Russian mothers who went to take their sons from active duty in Chechnea. What we need is a convocation of women to end this endless war!

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so..
Posted by: JoshuaLudd on May 7, 2007 7:45 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is this just more of the sexist pap we got last week about women being some sort of avant guard of peace and environmental movements and if we had just had them in power instead of men we wouldn't have ever had any such problems.. nevermind women like Clinton, Thatcher, etc...

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» My sentiments exactly. Posted by: justaguy
» RE: so.. Posted by: yoursfaithfully
» Its the overarching theme. Posted by: JoshuaLudd
Ah Mother's Day
Posted by: andrewstromotich on May 7, 2007 8:25 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I almost forgot it, which would have been a sin against my wife who is ready to give birth to our second child soon. thanks for reminding me to get my head out of work...

just thought though, as we celebrate motherhood. mothers have never been the problem, it's always been fathers that have sent us off to war (well, I consider thatcher the 'iron lady' more of a male anyways). if only we could encorporate a message of peace into fatherhood...

If only we could wake up daddy to the fact that agression and violence and aloof disdain for all those who stand resolved against it, are actually contravening the hidden code of fatherhood.

Having a child changed my life (of course it did!), and having a child during war awoke me to the responsability i have to all of my daughters brothers and sisters.

We are a collective of algae on a rock in the sea of space, and until father's accept that they are keepers of the rock, one rock for all, we are doomed as are our children (so many of them being put to the sword right now, it's hard not to despair)... I wish fathers were even half as aware of this as mother's...

maybe paternity leave should be considered more seriously by all those fathers out there that don't or haven't had the true experience of fatherhood.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY w

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» RE: Ah Mother's Day Posted by: NeoLotus
you are right
Posted by: andrewstromotich on May 7, 2007 8:29 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
that is an awesome idea,

a whole cluster of mother's looking for their son's in Iraq to bring them home would have a massive impact (i forgot about chechnya). i wish i knew how to organise this...

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» RE: you are right Posted by: VZEQICVA
Vanessa Williams? You might be getting more false hits on this
Posted by: albrechtkrausse on May 8, 2007 10:32 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
video than expected. Anyone recall the 1984 Penthouse issue? Something of which a mother could truely be proud. Lucky for her it also contained a pictorial of the infamous starlet Traci Lords who at the time was only 16 (she had a fake id apparently) and so is no longer legally available in the USA.

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» RE: Albrecht, you are one sick man Posted by: SatanicJamboree
» So what? Posted by: xconservative
Mother's Day Manifesto, 2007
Posted by: wawa on May 12, 2007 6:19 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mother's Day Manifesto: Not of Caesar, but of God!

The October 2006 edition of The Lancet, a British Medical Journal, concluded that 654,965 Iraqis, [about 500 people a day] have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003. [1]



Nearly 4,000 Americans have also perished and the number of people dying in Iraq has risen on an annual basis.

Fifteen million U.S.A. tax dollars a day provide Israel the means to continue its 40 years of occupation of Palestine; while International Law states occupation is to be temporary.

"Every day, the U.S gives more than $7,023,288 to the Israeli government and military (and at least $108 billion since 1948), but provides nothing to the Palestinians…The indirect or consequential costs to the American taxpayer as a result of Washington’s blind support for Israel exceed by many times the amount of direct U.S. aid to Israel." [2]

...In 1999, the UN dedicated the first decade of the 21st century to Create a Culture of Nonviolence for All Children of The World.

On December 29, 2005, while I was in the Little Town of Bethlehem: Occupied Territory, attending a workshop sponsored by the United Network of Young Peace Builders [UNOY] the Netherlands Expertise Centre Alternatives to Violence informed this reporter that in regards to the United Nations Decade of Creating a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World, America abstained from voting YES and is on the record in the UN as stating:

"We cannot support this initiative as it will make it harder for us to wage war."

As the American government [Caesar?] is unable to support Peace and Nonviolence, it is delusional to imagine a culture of nonviolence becoming reality without the transformation of hearts and minds by those who hold political power.

Gandhi said that personal nonviolence is not much use to society until one weds society to political action.


It is not enough to speak TRUTH to power because power is deaf and doesn't care. We must imagine that we ourselves are but 'actors' in this drama we call life and when enough of us accept and then play our part in seeking peace in nonviolent solidarity as we pursue justice, human rights and international law: Caesar will once again fall...



The Rest:
WAWA Blog, May 12, 2007

http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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Video Not Entirely True
Posted by: ladyoracle on May 12, 2007 6:24 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mother's Day did not catch on until it started in Nazi Germany, in which women were honored for birthing the "right" kind of children. There were medals of honor for women with 8 or more future citizens, or children rather.

This was a government initiative, not something organized by women, and ultimately its goal was to bolster patriotism, the birth rate of the "master race," and to encourage women to raise patriotic children and to be patriotic themselves.

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Peace
Posted by: ShawnaRN&Mom on May 12, 2007 9:06 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Beyond the wrangling, the rhetoric, lies what everyone wants: a safe, sustainable world for all people. Every man, woman and child deserves this - it doesn't matter what your faith is, what color your skin is, where you call home. Peace is being created right now, through individual intention and actions. Happy Mother's Day to us all.

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Vanessa Williams...teacher???
Posted by: The Populist on May 13, 2007 6:59 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Did her kids ever see the Playboy spread? Some teacher!!! We don't bisexual beauty queens to teach us.

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» Are you kidding? Posted by: MatthewSavage
Not Howe's holiday
Posted by: technocrat on May 14, 2007 7:16 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Re Julia Ward Howe and Mother's Day - I beg to differ. According to the May
issue of Smithsonian, it was not Julia Ward Howe but a Philadelphia spinster
named Anna Jarvis that founded Mother'sDay. And the day was not instituted in
Civil War times, but in 1914, when Congress made it official, following a seven-
year campaign by Jarvis and department story magnate John Wannamaker. Jarvis
had sworn at her mother's funeral in 1903 to dedicate herself to creating a
national holiday not to protest war, but to honor mothers everywhere.

Unfortunately, like everything else in a dollar-driven society such as ours,
commercialism jumped in right away and by 1923 Anna Jarvis disassociated
herself from the holiday and its attendant baggage, the "charlatans, bandits,
pirates, racketeers, kidnappers and other termites that would undermine with
their greed one of the finest, noblest, and truest movements and celebrations."
She continued until her death in 1948 to fight the rampant commercialism
attached to the day.

The only connection she had with any war movement was in 1925, when the Society
of American War Mothers erroneously stated at a ceremony at Arlington Cemetery
that the holiday had actually been conceived by a man. So strenuous was her
objection that she was arrested for disorderly conduct.

I'm all for protesting war, Iraq or any other. But you need to get your facts
straight if you want to maintain any credibility.

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Thank you for my Mother's Day Gift
Posted by: A.R. on May 14, 2007 6:00 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
My darling daughter, Autumn Rose, sent me the video as my Mother's day gift. I pray we all demand peace NOW!

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