contributions

by Joe Garofoli
Crawford, Texas — Asking whether she was "The New Face of Protest?" the liberal political magazine the Nation ran a photo in March of a middle-aged woman holding a picture of her 24-year-old son.
The answer from anti-war organizations as international media have spread the story of Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died last year in Iraq, is a resounding Yes. The anti-war movement has eagerly grabbed the coattails of the 48-year-old Vacaville mom tented up in a drainage (…)

Something’s In the Air But It’s Not on the Airwaves
Watch the Video: Quicktime
While working on a political short film about the war in Iraq, cast member Sarah Rolan, playing the part of a widowed war bride, received news that her long-time friend, U.S. Marine reservist Lance Corporal Daniel “Nate” Deyarmin of Tallmadge, Ohio, had been killed during active duty in Iraq on Monday, August 4, 2005, along with 13 other Ohio servicemen. The eight-minute film has since been dedicated to Nate (…)

By Greg Moses
CAMP CASEY, TX (Part Two) With a dozen or more activists still unbedding themselves from the floors of the Crawford Peace House, and with the push-pot of coffee in the kitchen already pumping dry, I think about that tall cup that Cindy Sheehan was holding this morning and decide to follow her lead to Crawford’s Coffee Station across the tracks.
Trains this morning have headed due north along this Burlington Northern Santa Fe line. Either they tow flatcars double-stacked (…)

by Jerry Fresia
The strategy employed by Cindy Sheehan to hold President Bush accountable needs to be examined for its effectiveness. I believe her effectiveness is rooted in something that Martin Luther King pointed to as an essential feature of any effective non-violent action and that is the use of "confrontation" to make "the invisible visible."
Recall, first, the Birmingham campaign of 1963. The campaign itself was dubbed Project Confrontation. "Instead of submitting to (…)

By Ray Furlong
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has told an election campaign rally that the military option for resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme should be "taken off the table".
"We’re all concerned about the developments in Iran," he said.
"We don’t want nuclear weapons to proliferate further."
But Mr Schroeder said diplomacy was the answer.
"I’ve read that military options are also on the table," he said.
"My answer to that is: ’Dear friends in Europe and (…)

A Political Satire
By Peter Fredson
One day there lived a spoiled, impetuous, impatient, shallow, reckless, irresponsible lad that was somehow given religion, promised he would become rich and powerful, and that he could help kleptocrats and True Believers rule the world.
Several hundred of them got together, thinking the young lad was pliable, gullible and sufficiently dumb to serve as their poster-boy. They also knew he had a rich and powerful daddy and had lots of “right” ideas for (…)

On Saturday (Aug 13), writer Peter Fredson posted an intriguing piece on this site, wherein he admits he shares the same problem with George Bush that most thinking people have — there is no doubt that Bush is a shallow, unlearned, idiotic bully; yet he maintains an eerie control over the entire government.
Fredson writes:
’We must give them credit for manufacturing pretexts to take an entire nation to war, to fool an entire Congress, and most of the media, although the public seems (…)

By Amos Harel
At midnight on Sunday, the Kissufim crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip will be closed to all Israeli civilian traffic, and on August 15, early Monday morning, a year and a half after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan, the disengagement will begin.
About 42,000 soldiers and police officers, divided into at least five divisional command centers, will be deployed. The total number of people involved in the operation could reach 53,000 if additional units (…)

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has asked for forgiveness from the Brazilian people for a scandal that has engulfed his government and promised that the guilty ones will be punished.
In asking for apologies in a TV address to the nation, he insisted he knows nothing about the alleged corruption, including a cash-for-votes scheme in the Brazilian Congress, in which key members of his Workers’ Party (PT) are said to be involved.
He also called for reform to the (…)

Fort Bragg | A Film by Chris Hume QuickTime DSL | 56K Windows Media DSL | 56K
By Cindy Sheehan
Wednesday 22 March 2005 - This past weekend was the two-year anniversary of the beginning of "shock and awe" of the US Government’s aggression in Iraq. If all you did was watch CNN, FOX News, or MSNBC, you would never have known.
There were protests all across our nation. CNN called the over 800 protest events "barely a ripple." I spoke at a protest in Fayetteville, North Carolina where there (…)