Last year, the unofficial Dean of the White House Press Corps,
Helen Thomas, spoke about the State of Israel on camera.
(Previously) Her
replies:
"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," and that the Jews
"can go home" to
"Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else," sparked media
outrage, prompted her to issue an apology and
retire. After months of being out of the the public spotlight, she has now given
her first long-form interview, which will appear in the April issue of Playboy Magazine. In it, she explains what she meant, tells us how she would like to be remembered and expands upon her positions regarding Israel, Jewish political influence, Presidents Bush and Obama, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
posted by zarq
on Mar 22, 2011 -
224 comments
Peace and War in the 20th Century is an ambitious, in progress, massive assemblage of posters, photographs, propaganda, ephemera, letters, diaries, paintings, sketches, stories, letters, music and related items, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The collection is international in scope. Some of the nodes lack content, and the navigation is a little confusing, so the jump I list some of my favourite case studies from their site.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Jan 2, 2009 -
4 comments
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
posted by geos
on May 28, 2007 -
126 comments
Wanna get nuked? the
Active Denial System [just say no?] was launched yesterday - its a microwave ray gun that makes people feel like they're going to catch fire. Wasn't there a ray gun at a certain point in a
book we trashed a while earlier?
posted by infini
on Jan 25, 2007 -
46 comments
Replacing Trident? Clare Short MP, former International Development Secretary for the UK Labour government, debates replacing trident and the UK's role in nuclear proliferation (and the world in general) with Michael Codner, Director of Military Science at the Royal United Services Institute. Scroll to the bottom for the mp3s.
posted by nthdegx
on Jul 24, 2006 -
7 comments
Why does the National Council of Churches hate America? The NCC -- a coalition of 36 Christian denominations -- makes a firm statement against the war in Iraq: "This year our nation is at war as we observe the 4th of July, a day that honors those founders who spoke out for independence from tyranny. Today in Iraq a cruel dictator has been deposed, yet the suffering of the Iraqi people continues. Mandated elections have been held, yet the future of Iraq remains as uncertain as ever. Day by day the cost of this war for the United States, for Iraq, for peace grows clearer. No weapons of mass destruction have been found; no link to the attacks on September 11, 2001 has been shown. It has become clear that the rationale for invasion was at best a tragic mistake, at worst a clever deception." Mainstream Christians are starting to take back Christianity from the
theocrats.
posted by digaman
on Jun 30, 2005 -
74 comments
Numbered Among the Dead The life's work of Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old American activist, had become door-to-door polling in Iraq to assess the number of civilian casualties of the war. She became one on Sunday, dying in a
suicide bomb attack. "The Marines have nicknamed me Cluster Bomb Girl because I would hear of places where they had gone off," she said in a
2003 interview, "and I would ask them to help me clear the area."
posted by rcade
on Apr 18, 2005 -
55 comments
Pre-emptive protest: Iranians for peace "No war can contribute to the establishment of liberty and democracy in our country. 'Iranians for Peace' welcomes the opinions of Iranian people around the globe who are in opposition to war."
posted by hoder
on Feb 2, 2005 -
17 comments
Peace Art Project Cambodia --turning the detrius of war into
art, in hopes of a more peaceful future. More info
here, and
here.
"You can't help but think about what this machine has done to affect so many lives."
And that is really the point. These sculptures are political art at its most powerful - relics of a violent past transformed into expressions of hope for a more peaceful future.
posted by amberglow
on Dec 25, 2004 -
6 comments
Cat Stevens on NatSec watchlist. "A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger
Yusuf Islam - formerly known as singer
Cat Stevens - was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, federal officials said... Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy identified the passenger as Islam. 'He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds,' Murphy said, and would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday."
posted by mwhybark
on Sep 21, 2004 -
79 comments
Secret Report (drudge) shows Israel has 82 nuclear weapons. With Ariel Sharon's latest [in]actions towards lasting peace, goodwill and calls of corruption, is it time to reevaluate our friends?
posted by omidius
on Feb 23, 2004 -
29 comments
How to make a protest sign
This past weekend thousands of Americans took to the street to protest or support the war - many with protest posters. Making a protest poster isn't that difficult but the web makes it even easier with sites on the web that offer protest posters for every angle on the issue.
Another Poster for Peace has a collection of posters from some of the top names in graphic design available royality free.
Insta-protest offers a collection of 80 posters printable on your laser or inkjet printer from their Flash interface.
Mike Flugennock has cartoon posters critical of the war and a number of other topics.
The Propaganda Remix Project has been mentioned here before for their WWII remixed posters. Finally
Anti-War offers a gallery of posters in color and black and white.
For those of us who are supporting the President in this war you might want to
print out one of these. There's got to be others in support of the war - but where are they?
Designing protest posters can also be part of your high school history class with this
Art as Political Protest lesson plan. So, what sign are you?
posted by DragonBoy
on Mar 24, 2003 -
10 comments
Advice for Conscientious Objectors in the Armed Forces (
html version). "A comprehensive, step-by-step guide to applying for conscientious objector status. This edition....builds upon a tradition which began in 1970 with the First Edition.
Advice has since reached over 40,000 military men and women who had decided that they could no longer in good conscience remain in the military. The 1970
Advice spoke to a generation troubled by the war in Vietnam. This generation of conscientious objectors, too, has seen war--most recently in the Persian Gulf, and before that in Panama. It has experienced the end of the Cold War and the flowering of hopes for peace; and it has watched as those hopes turned to disappointment in the chaotic, dangerous post-Cold War world." The
G.I. Rights Hotline has recently
reported they "fielded a record number of calls, mostly from military personnel and families seeking advice on conscientious-objector and other discharges."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Mar 14, 2003 -
7 comments
Wake America from Its Bloodless Trance "Unfortunately, most of you will never see my anti-war commercial. Why? Because the major network news outlets refused to accept it, claiming that the imagery was too graphic... linking death to war seems to be taboo at a time when the connection should be on the top of our minds. Few in the major media are talking about casualties in the Iraq war, and it seems our nation does not want to confront the reality that the war will result in casualties, anywhere from a few thousand dead and wounded (itself a horrific number) to tens of thousands, according to international experts. Let's be clear – that's thousands of dead or wounded people, at a minimum. "
Six anti-war commercials , featuring, among others,
Mos Def,
Russell Simmons,
Susan Sarandon and
Ben and Jerry.
posted by Espoo2
on Mar 9, 2003 -
85 comments
Poets Against the War At Sam Hamill's
Poets Against the War, the story of the recent
cancellation (link to Canada's Globe and Mail), by Laura Bush, of a Feb. 12 poetry symposium at the White House. From the G and M article:
Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate 2000-01, told reporters, "I think there was a general feeling that the current administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the centre of the poetic impulse." Hamill is gathering
contributions from poets around the world, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Yusef Komunyakaa and W.S. Merwin, National Book Award winner Marilyn Hacker, novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, and Adrienne Rich.
This post is not intended the fan the flames of 'War on Iraq: Yes or No', but to explore Kunitz's contention: Is there at the centre of the poetic impulse a particular type of humanitarianism? Is there a space for poets and poetry in political debate? Are poets the "unacknowledged legislators of the world"? [more inside]
posted by jokeefe
on Jan 31, 2003 -
35 comments
American Peace Homepage. "While most people, including most Americans, tend to believe that the United States has largely been a peaceful country until recently, in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Actually, the United States has been engaged in military operations for most of this country's history. Of all the things the United States can claim, it certainly has no claim to being a 'peace loving' country. [Visit this site to see] a table containing every year, from 1776 to the present - all of US history. Just click on the year to see who US troops were killing, or threatening to kill, in that year."
posted by Joey Michaels
on Jan 16, 2003 -
38 comments
An Anti-War Movement of One. by Philip Gold, senior national security analyst for Seattle's conservative
Discovery Institute.
"...of late, I've taken to constituting myself as an anti-war movement of one--a man of impeccable conservative credentials and long experience in the national-security field, a grumpy old Marine, who has grown infuriated with and appalled by both the conservative embrace of disaster and the enormity of the smallness of what passes for the anti-war movement today."
posted by Ty Webb
on Sep 12, 2002 -
15 comments
J. Robert Oppenheimer, watching the first mushroom cloud rise above the American nuclear test heartbreakingly codenamed Trinity, said: "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." Today, a half century after the first use of atomic weapons, in the birthland of the sacred text Oppenheimer quoted,
12 million people could die at once in a nuclear exchange.
Ah, Shiva as each of us...one hand on The Button, the other writing:
"The only way to live humanly - still - is in resistance to war. The prevention of war, in the nuclear age, must be a central purpose of every person's life."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on May 28, 2002 -
58 comments
Hamas accepts Saudi peace plan: "There has been generation after generation (of war). Now there is a generation who needs to live in peace, and not worry about their safety," said [Hamas executive Ismail Abu] Shanab. "So it is a generation that wants to practice living in peace and postpone historical issues. We speak of historical Palestine, and practical reality."
Since their official position is that "Leaving the circle of conflict with Israel is a major act of treason" (
Hamas Charter, Article 32), this is a dramatic change in policy indeed. I'm gobsmacked; this is utterly unbelievable, yet apparently real. And genuinely hopeful IMHO. What do you think?
posted by boaz
on Apr 30, 2002 -
16 comments
An Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition. "For the founders of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Coalition, there is a possible way out of the present murderous impasse in the region: a return to the agreement drawn up at Taba in January 2001. Two of those who drew it up, one Israeli and one Palestinian, propose an alternative way forward."
posted by talos
on Apr 16, 2002 -
1 comment
