November 11, 2005

Sgt. Kelly Dougherty went to Iraq in 2003, doubting that the war was just.

She returned in 2004, certain it was wrong, and co-founded Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Sgt. Kelly Dougherty joined over 3,000 at a Fayetteville, North Carolina rally to mark two years of war and occupation in Iraq, March 19, 2005. (Photo by Jeff Paterson)

"People say you are a traitor. People say you are unpatriotic," said Dougherty, 27, about her anti-war work. "We are doing this because we feel strongly about America.

"I really appreciate America, but we are capable of doing some very bad things."

Dougherty was stationed near Nazaria in southern Iraq for 10 months with the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Co. She saw action but never fired her weapon.

Dougherty said the thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed and the broken American promises about repairing water, electricity and sewage systems convinced her the troops should come home.

The faces of Iraqi civilians mirrored her growing doubts. more...

November 10, 2005

O Amy Goodman, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

First, you are the anti-Judith Miller, the discredited New York Times reporter who beat the drums for Bush and Cheney's illegal war, who embedded her journalistic integrity for a chance to play with the big boys. Were they really that big, Judy? Really?

You, Amy Goodman, sneer at the very word "embedded." You treasure journalistic independence. For twenty years, first as news director of WBAI in New York, one of Pacifica Radio's flagship stations, and since 1994 the lovely and formidable one-non-blonde eye at the center of the growing whirlwind of horrible truths that is "Democracy Now!," you have reported news free of corporate underwriting.

"The media should be like a huge kitchen table that stretches across this country, where we discuss life and death, war and peace - and anything less is a disservice to this country," you said at Keene (N.H.) State College this past weekend, to an enthusiastic crowd of over 600 people. "My mission is to make dissent commonplace in this country." more...

November 9, 2005

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Ever since the assault, which went unreported by any Western journalists, rumours have swirled that the Americans used chemical weapons on the city.

On 10 November last year, the Islam Online website wrote: "US troops are reportedly using chemical weapons and poisonous gas in its large-scale offensive on the Iraqi resistance bastion of Fallujah, a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's alleged gassing of the Kurds in 1988."

The website quoted insurgent sources as saying: "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally banned chemical weapons." more...

November 8, 2005

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE TODAY!!!

Paris Is But A Symptom
Rami G. Khouri

Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.

The pattern of young people from the Middle East and North Africa getting into trouble÷as we used to say in the 1960s÷has evolved in recent decades from isolated and episodic incidents into a veritable global phenomenon. The "trouble" these days, however, is not local gangsterism or self-inflicted problems with drugs or crime. The structural problems of young Arabs, North Africans and Asians÷economic, social and political÷have emigrated with them to other parts of the world. Many in our region and abroad have warned for three decades now of the dangers of ignoring the obvious stresses and disequilibria that plague so many young people in the Arab-Asian region. The cost of continued inaction and irresponsibility is not only higher now, it is also spreading around the world. more...

November 7, 2005

There is no more telling indictment of reporters and editors than the surprise felt by most Americans in seeing the raw poverty among New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina. In an open society, nobody who had been watching television or reading newspapers should have been surprised by what Katrina ãrevealed,ä to use the word so widely uttered in the aftermath. The fissures of race and class should be ãrevealedä every day by Americaâs free press. Why arenât they?

We used to cover poverty. Maybe my lenses are fogged with nostalgia, but I remember my years in the late 1960s and early 1970s on the metropolitan staff of The New York Times as an era of acute attention to the problems of the cityâs poor. more...

Guardsman re-enlists, Pentagon kills bonus
Officers from state try to restore $15,000 benefit
By SAM SKOLNIK

A Department of Defense decision to renege on war-time promises to pay bonuses to more than a dozen re-enlisting Washington National Guardsmen has sparked outrage from prominent elected officials and state National Guard officers working to rectify the situation.

According to a state Guard spokesman, Maj. Phil Osterli, at least 15 Washington National Guardsmen and women signed re-enlistment forms promising them a tax-free $15,000 bonus in return. Many of them were stationed in Iraq at the time, he said.

But Pentagon officials have said in published reports that the bonuses were canceled because they duplicated other programs and were prohibited. more...

November 6, 2005

Baghdad Burning
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

Iraq has been the land of dreams for everyone except Iraqis- the Persian dream of a Shia controlled Islamic state modeled upon Iran and inclusive of the holy shrines in Najaf, the pan-Arab nationalist dream of a united Arab region with Iraq acting as its protective eastern border, the American dream of controlling the region by installing permanent bases and a Puppet government in one of its wealthiest countries, the Kurdish dream of an independent Kurdish state financed by the oil wealth in Kirkuk·

The Puppets the Americans empowered are advocates of every dream except the Iraqi one: The dream of Iraqi Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen· the dream of a united, stable, prosperous Iraq which has, over the last two years, gone up in the smoke of car bombs, military raids and a foreign occupation. more...

November 5, 2005

When Manuel Rozental got home one night last month, friends told him two strange men had been asking questions about him. In this close-knit indigenous community in southwestern Colombia ringed by soldiers, right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrillas, strangers asking questions about you is never a good thing. Ê

The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, which leads a political movement that is autonomous from all those armed forces, held an emergency meeting. They decided that Rozental, their communications coordinator, who had been instrumental in campaigns for agrarian reform and against a Free Trade Agreement with the United States, had to get out of the country---fast. Ê

They were certain that those strangers had been sent to kill Rozental÷the only question was, by whom? The US-backed national government, which notoriously uses right-wing paramilitaries to do its dirty work? Or was it the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Latin Americaâs oldest Marxist guerrilla army, which does its dirty work all on its own? Oddly, both were distinct possibilities. Despite being on opposing sides of a forty-one-year civil war, the Uribe government and the FARC wholeheartedly agree that life would be infinitely simpler without Caucaâs increasingly powerful indigenous movement. more...

November 11, 2005


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November 8, 2005


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November 5, 2005

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No War in Iraq march.

Klezmatics

On April 3, 2005, Barbara and I went to see the Klezmatics, with guest Joshua Nelson, Jewish gospel singer. To quote the concert program, "Their soul-stirring Jewish roots music recreates klezmer in arrangements and compostions that combine Jewish identity and mysticism with a contemporary zeitgeist and a postmodern aesthetic. Since their founding in New York City's East Village in 1986, the Klezmatics have celebrated the ecstatic nature of Yiddish music with works by turn wild, spiritual, provocative, reflective and danceable." The concert was phenomenal.

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This site consists of original photographs and composites by Fletcher Oakes, unless otherwise credited.