contributions

by Wayne Besen
This past year, my weekly column has opined on key issues affecting the American people. Heroes have been lauded, hypocrites exposed and crucial gay issues brought to the fore. Here is a snapshot of the tantalizing topics discussed in 2005:
Adultery in the Military: It is time the military bring back adults who care more about winning wars than declaring a self-righteous war on adultery. We might be doing better in Iraq if the Pentagon started paying more attention to the (…)

by Monica Benderman
War — Guns, tanks, chemical weapons, killing, devastation, inhumanity.
Why do we go to war? Why does anyone pursue another to the point of war?
Forget who instigated it. At war - both sides kill. Soldiers are told their side is right - they are given guns and ordered to kill as many on the other side as possible because the “other side” is wrong.
WHO exactly tells us we are right?
Who is it that has decided that our side is right?
Some blame a president. (…)

« Just think of me as your new guidance counselor ... Or just think Mr. Jefferson’s Answer to The Friend of Peace (1816) »
By Greg Moses
In homage to the Nobel Prize for Literature, Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech testifies to gifts of inspiration; hints of realms apart within; callings to craft that expose writers to tempestuous solitudes where lines between truth and unreality are not marked out in advance, where things press against each other in duality, both untrue and real at the (…)

by Mary MacElveen
When I read Howard Kurtz’s article: Bush Presses Editors on Security it reminded me of a CBS movie "Hitler: The Rise of Evil." You may be asking why this movie came to mind. There are many Americans and those around the globe who have compared Bush with Adolph Hitler.
One has only to look at the Patriot Act to know this to be true.
When Hitler came to power, he pushed for an Enabling Act which, as I have stated before, is strikingly similar and during his reign (…)

By Remi Kanazi
The European Union (EU) should be ashamed of itself. It has thrown aside the principals of democracy for partisan politics and hypocrisy. In the run up to the Palestinian parliamentary elections, the EU has addressed Palestinian politics and made threats in the process.
On December 19, the EU’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana stated, “All the political parties have the right to be part of the elections, but there is a certain code of conduct that has to be accepted by (…)

Optimism Brings Victory By Large Signs
By Peter Fredson
December 28, 2005
George and Dick don’t really need any more victories, any more assaults on Iraqi civilians and their homes, any more “advisors”, mercenaries, proselytizers, or even any more troops to declare victory. Victory is declared by George Bush with big smiles, strutting, swaggering, staring intently into the cameras, bobbing his head, making stiff gestures with his hands to show the world that he is winning whatever war (…)

By David Swanson
London, England, December 10, 2005—Fellow PDA National Board Member Steve Cobble and I participated in an historic international peace conference in London on December 10 and in various related events the same week. We met with several Members of Parliament and will be working to facilitate teamwork and future events with them and members of the US Congressional Progressive Caucus.
The conference, hosted by the Stop the War Coalition, was a great success. About 1,500 (…)

Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria in 1970, came to Canada in 1987. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer engineering, Arar worked in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer.
On a stopover in New York as he was returning to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia in September 2002, U.S. officials detained Arar, claiming he has links to al-Qaeda, and deported him to Syria, even though he was carrying a Canadian passport.
When Arar returned to Canada more than a (…)

By OREN BEN-DOR
Today we hear a lot about legal challenges mounted against the wall in the West Bank. I would like to reflect upon a different wall, a metaphorical wall, the wall which remains ethically and legally unchallenged and whose foundations are actually, albeit unwittingly, being fortified by many of the very people who legally challenge the real, physical wall. The heart of the matter is what we might call the "wall within", the psychic wall of unquestioned identification and (…)

by John Dear
The story goes that when the nonviolent Jesus was born into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire, angels appeared in the sky to impoverished shepherds singing, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth!” That child grew up to become, in Gandhi’s words, “the greatest nonviolent resister in the history of the world,” and was subsequently executed by the empire for his insistence on justice.
This weekend, as tens of millions of (…)