by Kevin Zeese

While Cindy Sheehan

http://democracyrising.us/content/view/307/151/

has deservedly gotten a lot of attention for reawakening the anti-war movement with her allies from veteran and military family organizations, the especially interesting thing about the opposition to the Iraq War is that it includes former military leaders, former national security and intelligence officials as well as foreign service officers. The Iraq War is opposed by those who generally support U.S. foreign and military affairs...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Zeese1108.htm

by Manuel Garcia, Jr.

I do not know when or if the United States of America and its globalized market empire will ever collapse and disappear, like so many other phantoms of history. If so, our relics are more likely to be large radioactive craters than stone pyramids, marbled arenas or elegant stupas. Nevertheless, I am quite certain of what our epitaph will be: “as a nation and empire they perished because as people they could not speak the truth.” A topic that would benefit greatly from bathing publicly in truth is the ending of the Iraq War. To spark public debate, William S. Lind has offered an exit strategy for the US. In brief, his plan is to announce the intention for a prompt complete withdrawal, and to secretly negotiate with the Iraqi Sunni Insurgency. The US goals for the secret negotiations would be an end to attacks by the insurgency and the liquidation of al Qaeda in Iraq by insurgent forces. In exchange, the US would guarantee its withdrawal (set a date and keep its word) and use American power to keep the Kurdish-Shia constitutional alliance from encroaching on the Sunni's fair share of power in Iraq during the interim and implicitly after the withdrawal. Lind is quite right that “the time is past for arguing whether we need an exit strategy; the discussion should be about what that strategy might be.” To complement Lind's proposal, let us speculate on how insurgency politics might speed a US decision to leave Iraq...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Garcia1108.htm

by Mitchel Cohen

As Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf States, many organizations kicked into high gear to send relief to local groups in Mississippi and Louisiana, with no help from the government or formal relief agencies. Among them was the Malcolm X Grassroots movement, with whom the Brooklyn Greens shares an office on Atlantic Avenue. Tons of donated supplies poured into the office and were trucked to Jackson Mississippi, where they were distributed through community-based efforts. I spoke daily with Les Evenchick, a Green who lives in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I was also in touch with New Orleans residents Malik Rahim and Mike Howell; the areas in which they live were dry and they were holding out as long as they could. The story they tell is shocking: U.S. and local government officials refused to allow water or food relief into New Orleans. They also turned off the drinking water. Hundreds of people died unnecessarily as a result. And yet, there was no shortage of water or food being sent -- it was just not allowed into the City! When Green Party activists tried to donate water for the people in the Superdome a few days after the levees broke, armed soldiers pointed rifles at them and prevented them from delivering supplies. Even three Wal-Mart trucks loaded with drinking water were denied entry and turned away. No water was allowed into New Orleans. Evenchick says: "this was a brazen attempt to starve people out." Attempts to starve civilians into leaving an area is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Who gave the order to block water and food from entering New Orleans? Who ordered the drinking water inside the city to be turned off? No one has yet answered those questions...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Cohen1108.htm

The Nation
by Nicholas von Hoffman

11/07/05

The Senate is getting ready to perform one of its ancient ceremonies -- the public hanging of a varlet by the ears. A Republican-controlled Senate has, surprisingly, chosen for the role of star varlet Lee Raymond, ExxonMobil's CEO. When committee hearings begin on Wednesday, Raymond will find himself under the thumbscrew, trying to explain why his company has been making money at the rate of $75,000 a minute, or nearly $10 billion from July through September. CEOs from the other big energy companies will get the same treatment, and not just from Democrats. This is a bipartisan necktie party. The senators are heated up over the price of gasoline, which has gone down a little lately, and the price of natural gas, which has not. They fear the many millions of natural gas users (voters) who are about to be socked with heating bills like they've not seen before...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051121/vonhoffman


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Boston Globe
by Victoria A. Bonney

11/07/05

My fellow young Americans, the evidence is mounting that this war we are fighting in Iraq is not a 'just' war. No, this is a dirty fight, and we're in it for the long haul. But I guess that's the problem -- 'we' are not in it at all. 'We' are here in our land of iPods and cellphones, luxuriating in our apathetic comas while our soldiers are over there. I know what you're thinking. You have that magnetic yellow ribbon on your SUV, and, boy, if that is not uber-effective I do not know what is. But let me ask you, if you'd just put your Podcast on pause and cellphone on silence for a moment, is this all enough? Two wars ago, during the Vietnam disaster, there was Generation Activist. The youth of America rallied against 'the man.' How did they do it? They didn't have e-boards, or e-mail for that matter. Yet somehow, this archaic mob of longhairs and peaceniks managed to mobilize. They marched on the National Mall. They protested everywhere, even in bed. ... Their methods were not always nonviolent, but they were creative and incorrigible. Why is Generation Apathetic unable to have the same resounding roar?

http://tinyurl.com/7joup


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Future of Freedom Foundation
by Doug Bandow

11/02/05

More than a quarter century ago, Californians rebelled against an overbearing political establishment. Property assessments were climbing, state expenditures were rising, the budget surplus was expanding, and government officials were lying. Voters responded by passing Proposition 13, triggering tax revolts nationwide. The movement has waxed and waned over the years, but the stories rarely cease to inspire. Popular resistance to higher taxes almost always reprises David versus Goliath. Such is the tale spun by Phil Valentine, a Tennessee talk-radio personality who helped stop the bipartisan drive for a state income tax. Tax Revolt offers a delightful read, detailing betrayal and deceit, insider maneuvers and public protests, and big-bucks lobbying and horn-honking rallies. Particularly satisfying is the end: the people win...

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0511a.asp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Mother Jones
by Nick Turse

11/08/05

If medals are being given out, perhaps this is what should never be forgotten. It was the 'crazies' in the streets. It was kids in weird clothes with strange hair. It was a man holding a puppet and a woman with a homemade sign. They knew then what it took the majority of Americans years to figure out. That the war would be a disaster and that, in any case, it was wrong. Those people, braving a bitterly cold day in New York City in February 2003, had better intel, more foresight, and better judgment than the military, the intelligence agencies, and especially the President and Vice President of the United States and all their advisors...

http://tinyurl.com/djfyp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The Weekly Standard
by Scott Johnson

11/08/05

Joe Wilson was not, of course, the only CIA-related political opponent of the Bush administration who emerged during the run-up to the 2004 election. In July 2004, the same month that the Times published Wilson's notorious op-ed column, CIA analyst Michael Scheuer published his strange book Imperial Hubris (by 'Anonymous'), which attacked American foreign policy related to the war on terrorism. (Scheuer was identified as the 'Anonymous' author of the book by the Boston Phoenix even before the book's official publication date.) In the epilogue to the paperback edition, Scheuer stated that he 'was never told why the CIA permitted publication.' Following publication of the book, the CIA permitted Scheuer 'anonymously' to criticize the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror in media interviews until his criticisms extended beyond the administration to the intelligence community. (Scheuer left the Agency last November -- the week after the election.)...

http://tinyurl.com/am4qb


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Slate
by Daniel Benjamin

11/07/05

It has become a cliché to say that Dick Cheney is the most powerful vice president in American history. Nonetheless, here is a prediction: When the historians really get digging into the paper entrails of the Bush administration -- or possibly when Scooter Libby goes on trial -- those who have intoned that phrase will still be astonished at the extent to which the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney was the center of power inside the White House -- and at the grip it had on foreign and defense policy...

http://www.slate.com/id/2129686/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The American Spectator
by John Haskins

11/08/05

Let's drop the talking points about 'conservative,' 'constructionist' and 'originalist' nominees. Such language obscures what's going on. These nuances are a polite way of pretending that the mainstream in law and government interprets the Constitution differently than we do. No. They are oblivious to the actual content of the Constitution, or they are anti-constitutional. A polite term would be 'post-constitutional.' If Ginsburg, Souter, and friends have a 'theory' of constitutional interpretation, they're keeping it to themselves. When they shake the foundations of the earth from their bench it is neither theory, nor constitutional, nor interpretation. They are, wrote Jonah Goldberg after one heinous ruling, 'making it up as they go along'...

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8985


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp