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Showing posts from August, 2009

Senator Kennedy from Cindy Sheehan

Senator Kennedy Cindy Sheehan “My vote against this misbegotten war (Iraq) is the best vote I have cast in the United States Senate since I was elected in 1962.” Senator Ted Kennedy I would like to extend my sincere condolences to the Kennedy family and the people of Massachusetts on the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. I was invited to visit with the Senator in September of 2005 right after my first foray into presidential vacation adventures. I walked into an office on Capitol Hill that was a mini American History Museum. The Senator displayed his own art, memorabilia from the Kennedy family and even framed child’s artwork from his children and various nieces and nephews. Gathered around a large marble fireplace (unlit in the September Washington DC heat) and surrounded by his Portuguese Water dogs, we talked about loss and war and peace. We commiserated on my tragic loss of Casey and the losses that his mother Rose had to endure in her life. No matter w

Activities on Martha's Vineyard this Week...protesting the wars and creating Peace!

---FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE--- MARTHA'S VINEYARD---CINDY SHEEHAN, Peace Activist, Gold Star Mother, Organizer of 'Camp Casey' memorials and a nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, will be arriving on Martha's Vineyard on Tuesday August 25, to confront President Obama on his engagement in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. She will issue a challenge to Obama on his escalation of troop presence in the Middle East and his continuation of war policies around the globe. Her schedule of public events is as follows: Wednesday, Aug. 26, 11am, Press Conference at Oak Bluffs Elementary School. Wednesday, Aug. 26, 8pm, Peace Vigil, Ocean Park Bandstand, Oak Bluffs. Thursday, Aug. 27, Friday, Aug. 28 and Saturday, Aug. 29: Boat trips with Cindy for peace movement leaders, press and public. These 'shipboard peace summit' meetings will leave Vineyard Haven twice daily on the 105 foot sloop 'SS Camp Casey' in the afternoons. Call for deta

Donate to help make the illusion of Peace and Hope a reality.

Here's how to donate for the peace actions on Martha's Vineyard this week. Click this link . or Donate at www.PayPal.com and put in Cindy@CindySheehansSoapbox.com or Mail a Check or Money order to: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox, LLC (make check out to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox, LLC) 55 Chumasero Dr STE 5D San Francisco, Ca 94132

International People's Declaration of Peace by Cindy Sheehan

One thing that the Obama presidency has put into even sharper focus for me, is that most of the leaders of the world do not want peace. People can try and fool themselves that unlike Bush (Or Clinton, or Bush, or Reagan, or Carter, or Ford, or Nixon.....etc), Obama truly wants peace. The reality of facts on the ground dispute this. We are deceiving ourselves if we think otherwise. Obama is fully on the trajectory of the Empire. There is no denying this. If anyone has read my book: Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution, they would know that I do not place the blame for imperial violence on any president: it is the system. Governments of most every country are in on this. What can we the people do to counteract our governments that don't have our best interests in mind? During this week, as the international community, through its media, is focused on Martha's Vineyard, a contingent of strident peace lovers will gather to demonstrate to t

"Enough Already" by Cindy Sheehan

“Enough Already” Cindy Sheehan “And you look at somebody like that (note: me) and you think here's somebody who's just trying to find some meaning in her son's death. And you have to be sympathetic to her. Anybody who has given a son to this country has made an enormous sacrifice, and you have to be sympathetic. But enough already.” ABC Nightly News Anchor, Charles Gibson August 18, 2009 “Enough already?” Hmmm…I don’t know Charlie Gibson and I don’t pay any attention to his career, but I seem to agree with him on this one: “Enough already.” Enough with the killing, torturing, wounding and profiting off of the backs of our troops and off of the lives of the people of Iraq-Af-Pak: as our brothers and sisters in Latin America say: “Basta!” Somehow, I don’t think that this is what Charlie Gibson meant, though. I am sure that he just wants me to go away like most of the rest of the anti-war movement has done under the Obama presidency. One of the things I hear quite often from p

We Have the Moral High Ground by Cindy Sheehan

"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love...” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1958 “There comes a time when silence is betrayal…” Dr. King, 1967 I remember back in the good ol’ days of 2005 and 2006 when being against the wars was not only politically correct, but it was very popular. I remember receiving dozens of awards, uncountable accolades and even was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Those were the halcyon days of the anti-war movement before the Democrats took over the government (off of the backs of the anti-war movement) and it became anathema to be against the wars and I became unpopular on all sides. I guess at that point, I could have gone with the flow and pretended to support the violence so I could remain popular, but I think I have to fiercely hold on to my core values whether I am “liked” or not. Killing is wrong no matter if it is state-sanct

The President Exhibits Crazy Speech Patterns by Cindy Sheehan

The President Exhibits Crazy Speech Patterns Cindy Sheehan As I listened to clips of Obama's speech to the VFW on August 17th, 2009, I was wondering if his speechwriters were on vacation and they just recycled an old Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice speech. While the so-called left is focused on the health care debacle and is allowing the so-called right to define the debate when it should be: Medicare for all, and all for Medicare; Obama and his neocon foreign policy team are preparing for a decades long, bloody foray in Af-Pak. As Yael T. Abouhalkah, an editorial writer for the Kansas City Star, put it: President Barack Obama did his best imitation of former President George Bush Monday at the VFW national convention in Phoenix. Obama sounded downright hawkish -- and, yes, presidential -- when he addressed the issue of terrorism in front of the veteran-laden crowd…Dick Cheney cou

Cindy Sheehan heads to Martha's Vineyard to Confront Obama on the War

August 16, 2009 For immediate release: Next week, Cindy Sheehan will join other like-minded peace activists to have a presence near the expensive resort on Martha's Vineyard where President Obama will be vacationing the week of August 23-30. From her home in California, Ms. Sheehan released this statement: "There are several things that we wish to accomplish with this protest on Martha's Vineyard. First of all, no good social or economic change will come about with the continuation or escalation of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We simply can't afford to continue this tragically expensive foreign policy. Secondly, we as a movement need to continue calling for an immediate end to the occupations even when there is a Democrat in the Oval Office. There is still no Noble Cause no matter how we examine the policies. Thirdly, the body bags aren't taking a vacation and as the US led violence surges in Afgh

Warnography by Cindy Sheehan

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“We’ll know it when we see it.” Richard Holbrooke, Special US Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan on defining victory in Af-Pak "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it . . .” Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart defining pornography in 1964 Well, there you go…Richard Holbrooke has defined the US’s demented mission in Af-Pak as an indefinite proposition and when I say “define” I am joking, because what kind of definition is “we’ll know it when we see it?” Oh yeah, I know what kind of definition that is; it’s a Bush era definition, which is totally appropriate because it seems like in so many ways that we are still in the Bush/Cheney era…or error. In a related article, Bush/Obama Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, spells success in Af-Pak even more ephemerally than Holbrooke when he said: "Mysteries were those where there were too many variables to predict. And I think that how long U.S. f

House un-American Activities Committee by Cindy Sheehan

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The House Un-American Activities Committee Chaired by Pelosi and Hoyer Cindy Sheehan The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC or HCUA, 1938–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security". When the House abolished the committee in 1975,[2] its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. Wikipedia entry. Historically, HUAC spent a lot of precious time, energy and resources defining and investigating those that the committee found were “un-American.” It, apart from Senator Joseph McCarthy, investigated Bolsheviks and communists and many other "subversive" organizations and people. There is nothing in the Constitution, as far as I know, that prevents one from being a Communist, but people’s lives were ruined because of this committee, and the committee even went as far as shaping the movie industry, and of course

Peace, Finally: Reflections on the Fourth Anniversary of Camp Casey by Cindy Sheehan

So much has happened in the last four years since about seven dozen of us marched down Prairie Chapel Road on August 05, 2005, in Crawford, Tx to confront the now disgraced President George W. Bush! Our little protest of a few people grew to tens of thousands of people all over the world who resonated with my simple question: “What Noble Cause?” What was a little spark on a hot and dusty small road in Texas turned into a blazing inferno of peace and justice that I never even imagined would happen. From Camp Casey to Peace has been a long road, but after much toil, we have finally arrived. During that summer in August of 2005 of sweltering in constant 100+ degree-days (and nights), our country also experienced the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and with our protest on the literal doorstep of the Idiot Emperor, George Bush, his regime was killed by his inept handling of both situations. The part that Camp Casey had in bringing the Bush Regime down is particularly satisfying to me, since C