I’m supporting Amnesty because I’m sick of being spun, because we need some proportion in our lives, and because I can’t contain my anger any more. I’m supporting Amnesty because Amnesty is the true no spin zone. Amnesty supports human rights, what’s right and human–REGARDLESS of politics.

Here is Kerry Kennedy at the EDLC (Amnesty Executive Directors Leadership Council), talking to Tim Aiken, Legislative Director for Congressman James Moran of Virginia, about the URGENT need of the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) : “There’s genocide, and we can’t get 20 damned helicopters!”

We’re spending $5000 a second in Iraq and we can’t find a few helicoptors to save the people of Darfur?

Here is the charismatic Democratic Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia, addressing the Amnesty Delegation on the Bush Administration outrage known as Gitmo, where people are being held for YEARS without charges, without even knowing why they’re being held:”These detainees were brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 to avoid United States laws and public scrutiny. Most are innocent of any crime, and were captured by the Pakistanis when the US was giving cash rewards.”

Cash rewards? I’d bet my life that we could fill a Guantanamo exclusively with Americans prisoners if the US government offered Americans cash rewards of, say, $5000, to turn people in. Then maybe then we’ll set up a concentration camp to hold these people indefinitely and without charges. Maybe we should build it in Topaz, Utah, the place where Japanese Americans were held during the hysteria that followed Pearl Harbor.

Hysteria? You bet I’m hysterical. Who are we, and what way of life are we defending if America holds people without charges and tortures people like the torturers all over the world do?

Public scrutiny? Are we even a public any more? Or are we sheep, consuming and entertaining ourselves to death?

Who is going to be held accountable for all this? Are we so spun that we actually believe that wearing a flag pin has more to do with patriotism than exercising our right to speak out about outrages being committed in our name?

And here is Congressman Jim Moran on Gitmo detainees: “More have committed suicide than have been brought up on charges.”

And Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts on the issue of how America is viewed in the world, and on the broadening anti-American sentiment being a threat to American security: “We’re in trouble, folks.”

White-haired white men speaking truth.

And just in case you think I forgot what I said before about the non-partisan nature of Amnesty’s work, here’s a grim-faced Chris Shays, who happens to be my Connecticut Congressman, speaking about the last eight years: “There’s no excuse for the arrogance of Cheney and Rumsfield… We ALL think Gitmo should be closed.”

I did, of course, notice that he didn’t mention Bush along with Cheney and Rumsfield, but still……….. If you ALL think Gitmo should be closed, why isn’t it closed?

Chris Shays: “We should have no secret prisons and we should send (these people) back to their home countries.”

Bill Delahunt: We can’t send people back to their home countries. They’ll be tortured.”

SO YOU KEEP THEM INDEFINITELY? THIS IS NOT AN ANSWER. NOT IN THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA. NOT EVEN JUST OFF SHORE. AND I SAY THAT AS A PATRIOT.

Yes, let’s do talk about grief. This is grief unbound.