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The Democrats Bow to Bush on War: How the Anti-War Movement Failed

Alexander Cockburn picks through the rubble after Dems vote war funds. Wars inside America: Eyewitness reports from Andrea Peacock amid a Migra raid in Arizona and from George Corsetti amid gunfire in the collapsing city of Detroit.

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Today's Stories

June 2 / 3, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Last of the Texas Outsiders

Marc Levy
Iraq Dead Ahead: a Brief Military History and Civilian Guide to Arlington National Cemetery

Diana Johnstone
Great Power Meddling in Kosovo

John Ross
The Oaxaca Volcano Stews

Uri Avnery
On Generals and Admirals

Richard Neville
Were the Hippies Right?

Nisrine Abiad
and Victor Kattan
The Hariri Tribunal: a Fait Accompli?

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon, Bush and the Three Stooges

Margot Pepper
Deconstructing "Return to Sender"

Eric Stewart
Censorship and Cop Brutality in the New Bison Wars

Ralph Nader
The Halberstam Camp

Richard Rhames
Selling Five Acres in Crawford


June 1, 2007

Dave Marsh
The FBI and the Godfather (of Soul): James Brown's FBI Files

Saul Landau
Return to Cuba: 47 Years Later in Havana

David Phinney
How the Baghdad Embassy Was Built: Forced Labor and Worker Abuse

Robert Jensen
The Bigot and the Boycott

Stanley Heller
Arrest Robert McNamara

Yifat Susskind
Indigenous Women Fight Back

Robert Weissman
Corporate Power Since 1980

Paul Buchheit
Africa and Its Discontents

William S. Lind
The Folly of Maximalist Objectives

Sherwood Ross
78,000 Iraqis Have Been Killed by Coalition Airstrikes

Stephen Lendman
Terrorism Defined

Website of the Day
Desert Autonomous Zone


May 31, 2007

Robert Bryce
The Language Barrier

Patrick Cockburn
Killing with Impunity: Iraq's Militias Under the Surge

Gary Leupp
Appropriate Disillusionment: the Despair of Cindy Sheehan and Andrew Bacevich

Kathy Kelly
Being Hope

Marjorie Cohn
The Unitary King George

Chris Kutalik
and Tiffany Ten Eyck

Fallout from the Sale of Chrysler: Jobs, Health Care, Pensions, All in Jeopardy

Corporate Crime Reporter
Zheng Xiaoyu Meet Lester Crawford

Dave Lindorff
Our Monica: a Hero of the Constitution

Website of the Day
Know Your Rights!

 

May 30, 2007

James Ridgeway
The Bi-Partisan Con on Synthetic Fuels

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon and the Planned US Airbase at Kaleiaat

Terrence E. Paupp
Withdrawal Symptoms

Uri Avnery
To the Shores of Tripoli

Alan Maass
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Green Masquerade: Corporate America's Latest Counter-Attack

Rock and Rap Confidential
Watching the Detectives: the Political Censorship of Hip Hop

Ralph Nader
Taming the Giant Corporation

Nirmal Ghosh
China, CITES and the Fate of the Tiger

Jean Daniels
Dealing Democrats: Folding to Mr. 28%

Tom Barry
Meet Robert Zoellick: Bush's Pick to Head World Bank

Website of the Day
Petuuche Gilbert on the Rights of Indigenous People


May 29, 2007

Stephen Soldz
Shrinks and the SERE Technique at Guantanamo

Eliza Ernshire
Refugees Forever: Inside Bedawi Camp

Ron Jacobs
The Exit of Cindy Sheehan

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Signing Statements?

Evelyn Pringle
What Qualifies Bush to Lead Iraq War

Mike Whitney
Bush's New Middle East

David Swanson
How We Got Here: The Democrats and the Antiwar Movement

John Holt
Gating Montana, Part Two: the Feedback Loop

Cynthia McKinney
Dreaming of a True Memorial Day

Martha Rosenberg
Mad Cows, Mad Pigs and the Horse Slaughter Lobby

Website of the Day
The Ruminant


May 28, 2007

Bill Quigley
Katrina Activists: "Less Meeting, More Fighting"

Col. Dan Smith
The Paranoid and the Dead

Cindy Sheehan
Why I Am Leaving the Democratic Party

Dr. Susan Block
Dr. Laura's Little Monster

Jeeni Criscenzo
What I Learned About Being a Dickhead

Douglas Valentine
Memorial Day: a Poem

Website of the Day
Peace TV

 

 

May 26 / 27, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Greenhousers Strike Back and Out

Michael Donnelly
Green Sabotage as "Terrorism"

Patrick Cockburn
Sadr's Dramatic Reappearance

Franklin Lamb
Inside Nahr el-Bared: "Another Waco in the Making"

Jean Bricmont
The Moral Collapse of the Moral Left

Gary Leupp
Cheney, Israel and Iran

James Petras
Imperial Rot: The Beginning of the End of the American Empire?

William Peace
Ashley Unlawfully Sterilized

Judith and John Sharpe
The Saga of Our Son, Lt. Commander John Sharpe: Under Investigation for Antiwar Sentiments

Saul Landau
Four Dead in Ohio: From Kent State to Tiannamen Square

Paul Craig Roberts Democracy in Iraq, Tyranny at Home?

Jonathan M. Feldman
Congress and the Iraq War Vote

Dave Lindorff
Democratic Blood Money

Missy Beattie
Congress Plays Dead

Mike Whitney
Swan Song of the Democrats

Badruddin Khan
AIPAC Intervenes on Iran and Congress Folds, Again

Ron Jacobs
The Crime of Silence

Zoe Blunt
The Antidote to Despair

Arjun Chowdhury,
Mark Hoffman
and Kevin Parsneau
The Can-Do Troops and the New Anti-Politics

Heather Gray
The 1969 Riots Against the Chinese in Malaysia: a New Explanation

N. D. Jayaprakash
Disarmament Negotiations: A History and Prospectus

Joe Allen
and Paul D'Amato

Cartoons with Class

Poets' Basement
Gowani, Ford, Anderson and Simon

Website of the Weekend
Addicted to War



May 25, 2007

Robert Jensen
What the Finkelstein Tenure Fight Tells Us About the State of Academia

David Vest
So You Thought They'd End the War

John Stauber
Democratic Spin Won't End the War in Iraq

Evelyn Pringle
Congress Gives War Profiteers Another $100 Billion

Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Corporate Social Responsibility Programs are a Fraud

Susan Rosenthal, MD
What's Missing from the Health Care Debate

Roberto Rodriguez
Us vs. Them in the Immigration Debate

Steve Fournier
Goodie, Goodie Goodling

Patrick McElwee
Venezuela and RCTV: Is Free Speech Really at Stake?

Robert Weissman
Resisting the Commercialization of Public Schools

Website of the Day
New DNC Motto: "We Suck"

 

 


May 24, 2007

Franklin Lamb
Who's Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon

Corporate Crime Reporter
House Democrats Buckle to Big Oil: Strip Down Price Gouging Bill

Robert Fantina
Giuliani: Righteous, Indignant and Wrong

Norman Solomon
Deadly Illusions, Rest in Peace

Dave Lindorff
Kerrycrats All!: Now It's a Democratic War

Sen. Russell Feingold
We are Moving Backwards on Iraq

Fred Gardner
Doctor of Last Resort

Mike Whitney
Paulson in China

Kevin Parsneau, Arjun Chowdhury and Mark Hoffman
Becoming Imperialist: a Warning to Iraq War Critics

Caroline Paul
My Brother the "Terrorist": Animal Liberation and Prosecutorial Overkill

Eva Liddell
In Defense of Lying on Job Applications

Website of the Day
Johnny's Jumped the Shark


May 23, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Opium: Iraq's Newest Export

Rev. William Alberts
Faith-Based Imperialism

Joe DeRaymond
Colombia's Civil War and the US

Sudhanva Deshpande
and Vijay Prashad

The Political Economy of a Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Republicans in Self-Destruct Mode

Glen Ford
A Less "White" USA

Rannie Amiri
The Great Bank Heist of Tripoli

China Hand
China's Great Wall of Cash?

Zoe Blunt
Tales from the Tree Tops: Veteran Tree Sitter Tells All

Nivien Saleh
Who's to Blame for Iraq?

Website of the Day
Debating the Israel Lobby


May 22, 2007

Robert Fisk
A Front Row Seat for the Bloodbath in Lebanon

Joshua Frank
Hillary Clinton's Achilles Heel?

Harvey Wasserman
Drop Dead, New Yorkers: Giuliani and the Toxic Fallout from 9/11

David Mos Masumoto
An Orchard Without Workers

Sonja Karkar
Israeli Forest Named After Australian Prime Minister

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Quagmire

Dave Lindorff
A Widening Chasm on Impeachment

Jeffrey Kolakowski
Meet Us in Detroit: an Open Letter to John Konyers

Evelyn Pringle
A Misleading Suicide Warning

Jim Baumer
Politics Gary, Indiana-Style

Website of the Day
Should the Democrats Fear Mike Gravel?


May 21, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Secret US Plot to Kill Sadr

Nicole Colson
Much Ado About the Fort Dix Pizza Plot

John Ross
Shooting for the Top: Mexico's Drug Gangs Take Aim at Calderon

Stephen Fleischman
Werewolf of Washington: Wolfowitz Comes Full Circle

M. Shahid Alam
Chosenness and Israeli Exceptionalism

Ron Jacobs
Green Mountain Days: Return to Vermont

Peter Rost, MD
Pfizer CFO Resigns

Alan Farago
Can the Everglades Save Florida?

Paul Buchheit
The Dark Side of Democracy Promotion

Website of the Day
Code Monkey: Live!


May 19 / 20, 2007

Andrew Cockburn
Why America Lost the War in Iraq

Uri Avnery
The Next War

Peter Gelderloos
My Arrest in Spain: The Easy Road from Tourism to Terrorism

Saul Landau
Bush's Accomplishments

Robert Fantina
Iraq's History: Lessons for the Present and the Future

Fred Gardner
Hemp vs. Pot, a False Dichotomy

Ralph Nader
Timid Democrats and the Antiwar Movement

Jean Daniels
Waiting for Obama

Reza Fiyouzat
Vietnam Syndrome: Dead or Alive?

Missy Beattie
Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani and Osama's Fatwah

Robert Alvarez
Magical Thinking About Nuclear Waste

Sonja Karkar
The Palestinians of Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Mumia Case on Hold

Jeff Sher
Keep Workers Healthy and Reduce Health Care Cost: Eliminate Co-Pays

Julian C. Holmes
Torture, Maine Style

Clancy Sigal
Red Mutiny: 11 Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin

Prairie Miller
The Murder of Fred Hampton

James Murren
The Dog Ate Karl Rove's Homework: When Turd Blossom Met the Teachers of the Year

Poets' Basement
Davies, Valentine and Engel

Website of the Weekend
Yellowstone's Shame: Harassing Newborn Bison

 

May 18, 2007

Adam Jones
When Does Genocide Purify? Ask the Pope

Sharon Smith
The Death of Triangulation Politics?

Christopher Brauchli
Cheney's Middle East Adventure

Peter Rost, MD
Bribes and Spies in the Drug Industry

Denise Maloney Pictou
The Murder of Our Mother, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash: After 31 Years, It is Time for Justice

David Swanson
Of Snoops and Dupes

Ali Khan
The Lawyers' Mutiny in Pakistan

Susan Rosenthal, M.D.
Cho Seung-Hui Delivers His Message

Samer Assad
Israel and the Refugees: Fifty-Nine Years of Dispossession

CP News Service
Bidding for Extinction: Ivory Trade on eBay Threatens Survival of Elephants

Website of the Day
Another War Criminal Goes to Harvard

 

May 17, 2007

Tariq Ali
The General vs. the Judge

Yifat Susskind
Honor Killings in the New Iraq: The Murder of Du'a Aswad

Dave Zirin
Being Ali or Being Owned: an Open Letter to LeBron James

Brian J. Foley
Hell, No, Harry Won't Go!

W. John Green
The Godfather of Colombia: Uribe and the Para Scandal

Eric Johnson-DeBaufre
Challenges for the New Sanctuary Movement

Badruddin Khan
Rebirthing the Neocons: Bernard Lewis' Latest Call to Arms

Martha Rosenberg
From Cockfighting to Foie Gras: On the Menu and on the Docket

China Hand
Pope Rat in Brazil: "The Amazon Tribes Longed for Christianity!"

Dan Vojir
Falwell's Tinky Winky Legacy: Who Will Battle the Telebubby Threat Now?

Website of the Day
Welcome to the Terrordome


May 16, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Chalabi Speaks

Ashley Dawson
Who's Afraid of Wolfowitz?

Joshua Frank
Obama's Cash Flow: Maverick or Kidder?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Corporate Drug Pushers

Ray McGovern
A Four-Letter Word for Tenet

Glen Ford
Black Labor and the Big Mission

Joe Bageant
The Ghosts of Timothy Leary and Hunter S. Thompson

Sonja Karkar
The 59-Year Catastrophe

Mickey S. Huff
Preaching Hate: Farewell, Falwell

John Chuckman
Falwell's Lone Act of Kindness

Kaz Dziamka
What Ever Happened to Rogerian Argument?

Website of the Day
We're All Going to Hell

 

May 15, 2007

Michael Neumann
Two States, One State and Snake Oil

Patrick Cockburn
An American Nightmare

Ashley Smith
How the US Set Iraq on Fire

Marc Gardner
Parole and the Long-Distance Trucker

Dave Lindorff
and Linn Washington, Jr
Mumia Case Reaches Its Climax

Ben Terrall
Benchmark as Theft: Iraq Oil Workers Strike to Stop Privatization

Ron Jacobs
Cheney Threatens More War

Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Seabrook

Marcus Mabry
Shopping During Katrina

Dr. Susan Block
Cheney and the DC Madam's Cookie Jar

Website of the Day
Save Jean Klock Park from the Mega-Developers!

 

May 14, 2007

Jennifer Roesch
Giuliani Time: the Mussolini of Manhattan

Jeffrey St. Clair
Humans, CO2 and Climate Change

George Bisharat
For Palestinians, Memory Matters

Diane Wachtell
The Real Imus Lesson

Ramzy Baroud
From Palestine to Rotterdam

Rosemary and Walter Brasch
When the National Guard Goes Missing: An Ill Wind and American Policy

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Blair's Exit

Roberto Rodriguez
The Elusive Bars of Justice

Jonathan Culp
Cutting Out Collage: Copyright and Art in Canada

Website of the Day
Uranium Rock


May 12 / 13, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Who are the Merchants of Fear?

Patrick Cockburn
State of Surge

Jeffrey St. Clair
High Line Fever: a Trip Across the Dark Side of Montana

Diane Farsetta
Untold Stories from the Pat Tillman / Jessica Lynch Hearings

Ralph Nader
Strip Mining the Newsroom: Mr. Zell and the Tribune Company

Jean Bricmont
The Great Illusion: Sarkozy and the "Decline" of France

Marcus Breen
Cheering Sarkozy: the US Media and the Rightwing Takeover of France

Joe Bageant
Rising Above Politics

Conn Hallinan
European Missiles and the Camel's Nose

Fred Gardner
The Unreported I-880 Fire

Juan Santos
and Leslie Radford

Public Terror: Escalating the War on Migrants

Eve Bachrach
Inside Colombia's Flower Industry

Missy Comley Beattie
Shame

Ron Jacobs
The Bitterness of Regis Debray

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Sepoy Mutiny After 150 Years

Susie Day
Jesus Christ Weds Pat Robertson

Poets' Basement
Newberry, Engel, Landau, Katz and Davies

Website of the Weekend
The Shipyard: Recycling as Art

May 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Blair's Depature: the View from Baghdad

Kathleen Christison
Playing at Peace

Mike Ferner
Collateral Genocide

John Holt
Gating Montana: A Ghastly Disneyland with High Rise Outhouses

Laurie Hasbrook
This Minute and Then the Next: a Plea from an Antiwar Mother

Christopher Brauchli
The Children of Limbo: Will the Pope Finally Set Them Free?

Margaret Kimberley
GOP Openly Embraces Gipper Values: Racism, Violence and Control

Dave Lindorff
Use It or Lose It: The Democrats and the Impeachment Clause

Nicole Colson
Anger Erupts at Conditions in For-Profit Indiana Prison

John V. Walsh
Beware the Do-Gooders in Body Armor

Website of the Day
Take the Terrorist Quiz!

 

May 10, 2007

Tariq Ali
Adieu, Blair, Adieu

Patrick Cockburn
Killing of Teachers Turns Iraqi Sunnis Against al--Qa'ida

Neve Gordon
and Yigal Bronner
In Israel Not All Blood is the Same: The Death of Samir Dari

Marjorie Cohn
Fighting Terror Selectively: Washington and Posada Carriles

David Rosen
The New Disappeared: Sex Offenders, Civil Confinement and the Resurrection of "Evil"

Alan Farago
Why the Everglades Have Dried Up: Developers and the South Florida Drought

John Hellman
France: From Pétain to Sarkozy

Kathy Rentenbach
A 100 Days of Rafael Correa

BANCO
The Stage is Set for Sentencing Another Innocent Black Man

Richard Rhames
Is Paris Burning?

Website of the Day
Tame the Corporation


May 9, 2007

Jeff Leys
Iraq and Afghanistan Supplemental Spending, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign Minister on Iran and Iraq

Glen Ford
No Black Plan for America's Cities

Paula Rothenberg
Feminism Then and Now

Kathryn Weber
A Conversation with Norman Finkelstein

John Chuckman
The Likely Historical Significance of the War in Iraq

Jordan Flaherty
Looking for Justice in Jena, Louisiana

Dave Lindorff
Pelosi's Toothless Threat to Sue Bush

Stephen Lendman
Criminalizing Speech: the War on Free Expression in a Post-9/11 World

Website of the Day
"Fifth and Market": a Short Film About the Iraq War

 

 

May 8, 2007

Dave Lindorff
The Great Oil Robbery

Patrick Cockburn
The Horrific Stoning Death of a Yazidi Girl Sparks Waves of Revenge Killings

Corporate Crime Reporter
Snuff Politics: Democrats Escalate Attack on Single Payer

Ralph Nader
The People's Crusade of Mike Gravel

Malini Johar Schueller
Decoding Harlan Ullman: Shock and Awe as Sexual Fantasy

Juan Santos
The Hate Equation: Targeting Migrant Children in LA

Dave Zirin
Jason Whitlock, the Clarence Thomas of Sportswriters?

Joshua Frank
The Price of Fire in Latin America

Evelyn Pringle
Serotonin Syndrome

Eamonn McCann
Irish Peace Dividend for Discredited Premiers

Website of the Day
The Pagan Science Monitor

 

 

May 7, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
The Great Wall of Baghdad Rises

Monica Benderman
Land of Opportunity

Greg Moses
Hutto Prison Rebuffs UN Rapporteur

Rannie Amiri
The Sham at Sheikh: Iraq Regional Conference a Flop

Fitrakis / Wasserman
Media Silence on Kent State Revelations

Fred Wilhelms
Another Royalty Forfeiture From SoundExchange: And This Time It's Secret!

Ramzy Baroud
The Hourglass of Blood: Darfur Revisited

Bruce K. Gagnon
The Democrats Don't Own the Antiwar Movement

T. W. Croft
Home Movies from a Weekend in Paris--And Related Dreamscapes

Sonja Karkar
Prizes for Supporting Israel?

Website of the Day
Posada Carriles: the Declassified Record



May 5 / 6, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Trying to Catch Up with the Voters

William Blum
How America Has Changed Iraq

Uri Avnery
Exercise in Escapism

Franklin Lamb
Harvard's Twisted Report on Israel's Invasion of Lebanon

Fred Gardner
Elective Surgeries Kill

Lawrence R. Velvel
The American Moral Meltdown Accelerates

Missy Beattie
Lying and Dying: The Moral Sensibility of Military Recruiters

Robert Fantina
Bush's Veto: Hypocritical Words and Actions

Carla Blank
American Massacres and the Media

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Long Ordeal of Harold Wilson

Stephen F. Jackson
Taking It to Drummond: Paramilitaries and Mining Companies in Colombia

P. Sainath
The Jailing of Indian Farmers

Anthony Papa
Time to End New York's War on Itself

James T. Phillips
Blather Cancer

John Ross
Last Days of the Willie Loman of the EZLN

Stephen Lendman
Chavez's Oil Policy Sparks Panic at Wall Street Journal

Ben Terrall
Iggy Pop at 60

CounterPunch Newswire
Advice from a Geezer Assassin

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Engel and Davies

Website of the Weekend
Mountain Justice Summer

 

May 4, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
How the Surge is Failing

Col. Dan Smith
From Watergate to Gonzogate

Norman Solomon
FOX on Wall Street

Azmi Bishara
Why is Israel After Me?

Ron Jacobs
Sitting in on Senator Kohl and the War

Dave Lindorff
Clinton and Byrd are Calling for Revocation of the Wrong AUMF

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats Cave to Bush

Bob Fitrakis
Why Four Died in Ohio: Kent State, Gov. Rhodes and the FBI

Janet Kauffman
"Stop the Mudness!" Bare Earth is Scorched Earth

Website of the Day
Let Us Gather in Missouri!

 

May 3, 2007

Jeff Halper
The Livni-Rice Plan for the Middle East: a Just Peace or Apartheid?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Best and Brightest: From Dr. Keroack to Bernard Kerik

Dave Zirin
Talking Sports from Death Row: an Interview with Kevin Cooper

Corporate Crime Reporter
Big Pharma Gets Its Hooks into Seton Hall Law School

Robert Fisk
Olmert Comes Undone

Mike Ferner
Bush Veto, Right for the Wrong Reasons?

Mike Whitney
A Stock Market Post-Mortem

Pham Binh
The Democrats and War Funding

Dave Lindorff
Kucinich's Impeachment Train: Look Who Just Stepped Aboard

Michael A. Johnson
Tenet on 60 Minutes

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde: the Interview

 

May 2, 2007

Saul Landau
Would Jesus Wear a Rolex on His TV Show?

Dr. Susan Block
Hookergate II: Madame Julia's Big Black Book of Cheesy Republican Sex Acts

Carla Blank
Historical Amnesia: Worst U.S. Massacre?

Margaret Kimberly
The Candor of Mike Gravel: "These People Frighten Me"

Kevin Zeese
Durbin Gives Edwards More to Apologize For

Carlos Villareal
How "Law and Order" Covers for Bigotry in the Immigration Debate

Michael Dickinson
Trouble in Turkey: Criminalizing Political Art

Tim Shorrock
A Raw Deal Between Washington and Seoul: Corporate Interventionism as Trade Policy

Alevtina Rea
The Myth-Makers of Estonia

William S. Lind
General Incompetence: Col. Yingling and the Military Brass

Website of the Day
Good News: Rost's "ZubeGate Exposé Prompts Congressional Inquiry


May 1, 2007

Andrew Cockburn
How Rumsfeld Micromanaged Torture

Fred Gardner
Affirmative Abstinence: Adios, Randall Tobias, the Man Who Turned His Wife's Suicide into a Sales Pitch for Prozac

Chase Madar
Are Working Class Jobs Bad for Your Health?

Ralph Nader
Cheney and the BYU 25: Faith, Accountability and Protest in Utah

John V. Walsh
Edgy Dems Snarl at Their Antiwar Base

Joshua Frank
Obama, Incorporated

Leslie Radford
The Migrant Trap and the Migrant's Way Out

Shaun Harkin
An Interview with Nativo López on Immigration Bills and Protests

Dave Lindorff
Murtha Talks Impeachment

Peter Rost, MD
Inspector General Requests Meeting with Pfizer Whistleblower

Peter Linebaugh
May Day and Magna Carta

Website of the Day
Impeachment? Why Bother?

 

 

 

 

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Weekend Edition
June 2 / 3, 2007

What Are YOU Going to Do Now?

This is Not a Story About Cindy Sheehan

By SUNSARA TAYLOR

This is not a story about a woman who raised four children, sent one off to war, and collapsed one day in a fit of screaming at the news that he was dead.

This is not a piece to describe how that woman tried to stay awake for the next three days so as not to have to scream like that again after waking and then remembering that news.

There will be no attempt in this piece to comprehend the maddening indecency of the overgrown frat-boy president who sent her son to kill and die for lies and still had the gall to call her "Mom" and sits day after day -- to this day -- as the self-appointed, unrestrained king of the world.

This is not a piece about a woman who exposed her grief and her rawest nerves, who sacrificed a twenty-nine year marriage and time with her remaining children, to a country calloused to the daily loss of life and succeeded in stirring many to their feet, into the streets, and to the tops of their lungs.

This is not a piece about how this woman parked herself in the dusty heat of a ditch in Texas and said yes to enough speaking engagements and phone calls from soldiers and late nights with grieving parents to send her own life teetering near its edge because she couldn't live with herself if she didn't give everything she could to prevent another mother from having to experience the loss that she knew.

This piece is not even about how her loss and her grief were not confined to her son, but extended each day further, to include the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, and further yet, to those cast in the impoverished margins of our planet -- including the thousands of children dying each day from starvation -- as the U.S. obscenely spends hundreds of billions on constructing and deploying the machinery of mass death.

Nor is this about the millions who learned this woman's name, whose hearts broke with hers, but whose spirits were lifted and consciences were challenged by the way she seized the moral high ground and much of the spotlight from the world's biggest liars and most pitiless killers because she was right and she was fearless -- to hell with the odds.

This piece isn't even simply about a culture that demonizes and attacks such a person, that makes their every word or slightest gesture grist for the dishonest mill of the small-minded bloggers, the jones for cruelty of the war-planners, and fascist propagandizing of the major media mouthpieces.

Nor is this about a society that props up mothers as "keepers of the flame," a counter-balance meant to excuse the war-makers, only to turn on them and call them "whores," should they dare to do more than weep silently.

This is not merely about this woman's refusal to be corralled into "realistic" and empire-bound strategies like timetables or phased-redeployment, about her righteous refusal to excuse the funding of the war, about her simple and righteous insistence that the slaughter and torture of human beings stop right now.

And, no, this is not mainly about the many questions that she herself ran up against and has put straight up in front of the movement and that all too many don't want to speak to. Like why the Democrats won't bend to the will of the people, or what kind of system only allows for two sides of the pro-war position, or what to do about an American people who are well on their way to becoming Good Germans. Those questions are crucial and agonizing and there are answers to them that can be found or forged. And there is a need for a movement that encourages the debate to rage around these questions and insists on honestly and unsparingly confronting reality. A movement that insists on getting to, and telling the people, the truth.

No, throwing up your hands is never the right response. But to be perfectly honest, this piece is not about what Cindy Sheehan should be doing. Not when really there are 300 million other people in this country who each morning wake up with profound choices to make ­ and who make them every day, whether they know it or not.

So, no, this article is not about Cindy Sheehan.

This article is about you.

Reading on your computer screen. Smudging black ink off the newsprint in your hands. Breathing in and out, your chest rising even as the chests of other human beings who happen to have been born atop huge reservoirs of oil fall still, as their breath is stolen, as their land is ravaged, as their girls learn to fear their budding breasts and widening hips under the leer of the occupier's eye, as their fathers lose their minds trying to comprehend the life-danger they've become to their own children for being of a different religion than their mother, as the psyche and politics and view of what kind of world is possible of a whole country and region is forever marked by the apparent indifference of way too many Americans to their sustained destruction as millions who are also heart-sick flirt with the devastating and impermissible comfort of throwing up their own hands and looking away from the war zone

This article is about you -- because frankly, there is not enough space and not enough time and not enough ink and not enough trees to make enough paper to hold all the ways that the roadblocks hit by a woman like Cindy are a sign of failure. Not of the failure of the possibility for change, nor the failure of those who put everything on the line to make all this stop, but the failure of a society that does not cherish and have room for a woman like her. And the failure of continuing on a course that does not fundamentally challenge the killing confines of the choices this system puts before us.

So, again, this is about you -- whether you will hide behind and resign yourself because of the faltering of another or whether you will step into the breech.

This article is about what you think about and do when you wake up each morning. About whose lives you value and prioritize. About whether it is sufficient to register disapproval or whether you are responsible for stretching your limits, risking friendships and family if you must, confronting discomforting truths about this political system, and whether you will dare to inspire and challenge and set an example of living for and impacting something bigger than yourself.

This is about whether you know enough and have seen enough of other people's sons and daughters dying in the service of empire to say without equivocation that all this must halt. This is about whether you will plunge into and confront the dead-ends that have led so many to disorientation -- whether you will look deeper, consider radical solutions, even ones you might once have dismissed.

And, yes, it can seem at times like we are hurling our soft bodies and our embattled dreams up against cold rock, and like the forces aligned against us are made of impenetrable marble. But marble has fissures and faultlines and cracks deep beneath the surface and these can be located and the marble itself can be pried apart by the determined action of millions who dare. So I am struck again with the truth and the enormity of our choices captured in the final words of the World Can't Wait Call: "History is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US."

The war is still wrong.

What are you going to do?

Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution Newspaper and sits on the Advisory Board of The World Can't Wait ­ Drive Out the Bush Regime. She can be reached at: sunsarasworld@yahoo.com




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