Today's Stories

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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Like It or Not, It Belongs to All of Us

Whose War?

By CINDY SHEEHAN

"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."

-William Tecumseh Sherman

Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the US Constitution says that Congress has the enumerated power of "declaring war" and clause 12 says that Congress has the enumerated power to "raise and support armies."

Some argue that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not wars because Congress did not declare war in either case, but calling something a "war" or an "illegal occupation" is merely an exercise in semantics, because people are dying just like it's a war.

Why, after all these years and all the proof that these military excursions were based on deliberately false information, does the US still have troops on the ground in the Middle East? Where does the responsibility lie in bringing our troops home? Which federal agency or branch of the government is now covered in the most gore? And whose war is it anyway?

Frankly, the why part of the question seems obvious. There is still money to be made by the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Cheney's company Halliburton and the Oil-garchy are realizing enormous profits while ordinary citizens are paying a heavy price at the pump and for other consumer goods that rely on petroleum to be delivered to the stores.

Oh, is that everything? I think it is.

Blood is being poured into the bank accounts of the ruling elite while it is being drained out of our soldiers, families and communities.

There is no indication from the arrogantly evil Executive Branch (that has now been co-opted by the most corrupt and criminal administration in US history) that they are seeking an end to the obscene occupations. Their buddies are profiting and that's good enough for them. While the Bush Crime Family planned a wedding for May, many families not of the Bush economic stratosphere or legendary ignominy, are planning funerals.

Instead of working overtime to see which party can exploit US troops better and harder than the other, (their pretend opposition and political playacting is exactly like watching pretend wrestling on TV where two "foes" spit epithets at each other and then fake-wrestle for a faker prize) Pelosi, et al, should be burning the midnight oil to craft a humane solution to the problem that has become the Democrats' as much as the Republicans'.

Instead of putting provisions for extended "timelines" or tying "guns and butter" (the very phrase makes me want to vomit at the sheer callousness), Pelosi must use her enumerated power to end these illegal occupations. It would be a lot less work to tell BushCo to use the money that has already been borrowed from China to start bringing our troops home (not redeploy to Iran or Pakistan) and if BushCo does not, and then it is truly a Republican conflict. Iraq and Afghanistan are Democratic and Republican mistakes.

To cater to "Blue Dog Dems" over the will of the American public, or to incredibly blame the people of Iraq for not having the guts to come to a peaceful political solution is abominable, but how does these occupations belong to "We the People?"

First of all, we allow "anti-war" groups like MoveOn.org to set the dialogue and discourse. MoveOn.org is not so much "anti-war" as they are "pro-Democrat." Tactics that MoveOn.org found outrageous under the Republican Congress, they find "frustrating" but understandable under Democratic leadership.

The "anti-war" issue is non-partisan in its scope by the very name "anti-war." The Democrats are responsible for every war in the last 108 years, excluding the two Bush wars and the Reagan Grenada farce. Democrats are responsible for dropping, not one, but two atomic bombs on the innocent citizens of Japan. Democrats deserve no slack, and should be given none.

Secondly, during elections the "anti-war" movement loses its focus and works for candidates that promise peace or change, but previous actions, votes, or rhetoric do not match the campaign rhetoric. From Obliteration to Redeployment to Hundred Years, none of the duopoly candidates are promising anything different than BushCo.

After almost eight years of two-party collaboration that has undermined freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity, one would think that the US electorate would have developed some kind of sophistication regarding the throttlehold of sameness that the Republicrats or Demopublicans offer.

We have a clear choice instead of the "lesser of two evils" politics. There are at least two candidates for President that present a clear alternative to violence and corporate oppression: Cynthia McKinney (Green Party and Power to the People Party) and Ralph Nader (Ind.).

Do you want someone who is a smidgeon less evil at the helm of our country, or do you want someone who is committed to true peace and true mastery over the corporations and true environmental integrity?

The choice is yours. Stand up courageously and cast your vote for the person that more closely matches your ideologies and beatitudes, or hold your nose with one hand and push the button for one of the corporate tools with the other.

I personally know that war is a living hell that is constantly present and my pain can only begin to touch in a small way the misery of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our nation's leaders who are misguided and led in the wrong direction of their master, the War Machine, have no idea, for the most part, of this devastation. They have no business being trusted with the public trust and 95% of them should be sent packing back to their homes if not imprisoned for war crimes.

It is up to "We the People" to exercise our sovereignty to finally bring peace and prosperity back to "We the People.

" Whose war is it?" It belongs to us all and it is up to us all to have a hand in ending it.

Cindy Sheehan is running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi.

 

 

 

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