Making the Iraq War and Occupation Personal

President Bush has successfully avoided making the war in Iraq personal. Americans are denied photos of the returning caskets, the injured enter Walter Reed Medical Center in the dark of night so no one can see, the president attends no funerals but only appears in front of select audiences who are chosen to cheer him on. This summer that began to change with Cindy Sheehan – her encampment during the president's vacation began to personalize the impact of the war. Now, joined by other mothers and fathers – more faces come before Americans of families affected by the war. In the article below, Ralph Nader suggests another way to keep the 'Texas heat' on the president when he returns to work after his greater than one-month vacation – churches and other religious institutions should chime a bell each day for each of the fallen soldiers and add one for the Iraqi casualities. This will result in Americans realizing that every day there is death because of the U.S. occupation.

Four Years On

The fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11 will soon be upon us. There will be no one whose memory of that terrible blue-sky morning will rest.

Some will grieve for their personal loss, on that day or in the wars that followed. This is their day, these mourners, more so than it is ours. Someone they loved was robbed of life, far sooner than imagined possible.

The rest of us will, in our own way and time, reflect on the events of that day, and on what seems a lifetime of events since. Many will anger at how their grief was misled to war. Many others will swell with pride, for our troops, and for our president.

And in Washington D.C., our Defense Department will hold an “America Supports You Freedom Walk”, billed as “a tribute to the victims of September 11 and to the past and present military members who have defended freedom.” In “remembrance and support”, marchers will walk from the Pentagon to the National Mall, where, immediately following, country singer and songwriter Clint Black will hold a free concert, presumably performing his song “I Raq and Roll”.

Protests at the Dispatch continue over Bill Moss cartoon

Protesters stood in front of the Dispatch for the third week in a row, demanding an apology regarding a cartoon of Bill Moss printed two days after he passed away.

Monday August 22 at noon, protesters stood outside of the Dispatch offices chanting "Dispatch. Disgrace" in anger to what they perceived as disrespect to the memory of local social crusader Bill Moss. Two days after he unexpectedly passed away, the Dispatch ran a cartoon caricature of him beating a shoe demanding to get into heaven. There has been an uproar in the Columbus over what was perceived to be a very disrespectful and unfair portrayal in death of a former school board member and community leader.

Barry Edney of the Ordinary People's Movement said "This was payback for Bill Moss's telling the truth. The Dispatch spent thousands trying to get him off of School Board and the decision to run the cartoon involved Mike Curtin, an editor and the cartoonist." When he was asked what he thought about the comment on the radio by Mike Curtin that Bill Moss would have laughed at the cartoon, he said "Yeah but it would be more of a chuckle at their ignorance."

Help Stop the Drug War

Drug War Chronicle will not be able to continue much longer without your help. In a few months the grant that is paying 60% of the cost of producing it will run out, and we need your help to meet the other 40%. Each issue of Drug War Chronicle costs about $1,400 to produce – please consider a donation in that amount if you can afford it. Without your help, not only with DRCNet be less able to produce the newsletter, we will have less left to carry out our advocacy campaigns as well – ultimately DRCNet is not just a reporting organization, but an organization working to change the world – there will be less for us to work with in changing laws like the Higher Education Act drug provision, the federal ban on medical marijuana, the awful mandatory minimum sentences, laws funding student drug testing and more.

Go to this link for more information:
Stop the Drug War

Bush’s option to escalate the war in Iraq

The Bush administration may ratchet up the Iraq war.

That might seem unlikely, even farfetched. After all, the president is facing an upsurge of domestic opposition to the war. Under such circumstances, why would he escalate it?

A big ongoing factor is that George W. Bush and his top aides seem to believe in red-white-and-blue violence with a fervor akin to religiosity. For them, the Pentagon’s capacity to destroy is some kind of sacrament. And even if more troops aren’t readily available for duty in Iraq, huge supplies of aircraft and missiles are available to step up the killing from the air.

Back in the USA, while the growth of antiwar sentiment is apparent, much of the criticism -- especially what’s spotlighted in news media -- is based on distress that American casualties are continuing without any semblance of victory. In effect, many commentators see the problem as a grievous failure to kill enough of the bad guys in Iraq and sufficiently intimidate the rest.

(Bypassing the euphemisms preferred by many liberal pundits, George Will wrote in a Washington Post column on April 7, 2004, that “every

News all the time



http://mattbors.com

Lies

Stolen 2004 election a continuation of stolen 2000 elelction

I think you've done a great job in documenting the Bush election stealers theft of the 2004 election but you haven't shown it as a continuation of the theft of the 2000 election in Florida and I think this is an important point. For the record, in 2000, Al Gore got the most votes nationally as well as in Florida. I used to live in Flrida and I volunteered on many election campaigns there. I know the laws that required that the uncounted Florida votes be counted that the Bush election sealers deliberately broke and the disputed territory lke the back of my hand. It's very clear in 2000 that we the people both nationally and in Florida chose Al Gore to be our President. I think this fact makes a stronger argument for election theft than in 2004. While it looks like Kerry would've won the electoral college vote had it not been for the illegalities in Ohio, Kerry didn't get the most votes nationally and I think that makes the case for 2004 weaker.Its Al Gore who was really the choice of the people and who belogs n the White House instead of Kerry. It's clear that democracy died in Florida in 2000.

The people must demand peace: An interview with Tom Hayden

Tom Hayden is an anti-war activist who most recently was the lead author of “The Peoples Petition for Iraqi Peace.” He was a leader of the student, civil rights and anti-war movements in the Sixties, and the environmental and anti-nuclear movements in the Seventies. He served in the California Assembly from 1982-1992. He is currently a professor at Occidental College and social science adviser for Animo public schools: Venice, Inglewood, Lennox, South Central and Boyle Heights, California. He is the author of nine books, including “The Lost Gospel of the Earth,” “The Whole World Was Watching” and “Irish Hunger.” The New York Times cited his 1988 book, “Reunion,” as one of the best 200 of the year.

Sheehan breakthroughs, unbridgeable divides, and taboos unbroken

The Washington Post today wondered out loud whether Cindy Sheehan might be a "catalyst for a muscular antiwar movement."  In translation, this is an assertion that Cindy Sheehan has already become an accepted reason for the corporate media to finally acknowledge the existence of, and consequently help to build, the antiwar movement.  There has, of course, been a major anti-war movement longer than there has been a war.  And Cindy Sheehan has been speaking eloquently at anti-war events for many months.  What has changed is primarily the media.

A website called Blue Oregon noticed this yesterday and wrote: "the Oregonian appears to be using Cindy Sheehan as cover to mention the lies upon which the war was justified."  Yes, the Oregonian used the L word:

"The misty scrim that obscured our view of the war -- wishful thinking, distortions, outright lies -- is rapidly dissolving. Americans increasingly see the war as it is, and know it's going badly. Little wonder that when a gold-star mother parks herself inconsolably in Crawford, Texas, asking hard questions and spurning glib answers, she strikes a nerve."

Pages

Subscribe to ColumbusFreePress.com RSS