Cindy Sheehan

Leadership Void
By CINDY SHEEHAN, CounterPunch

"They are advocates. We are leaders."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in regards to "Anti-war activists."

People of America, this is truly the problem with what was once a
Representative Republic and now is a country run by "elected" officials
who believe that they, individually and collectively, are above any

By Cindy Sheehan

“At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed.” Frederick Douglass

“Cindy’s campaign will prove that organized people can beat organized money” Reverend Lennox Yearwood; founder of the Hip Hop Caucus

We are a nation that was created by “the rich, white, male property owners” and specifically for “the rich, white, male property owners.” Women and blacks, (who were counted as 3/5ths a person for representation purposes), were excluded from this self-proclaimed elitist establishment.

By Cindy Sheehan

As I sit sipping my morning cup of coffee and reflect on the anti-war protests sponsored by the Oct27 coalition (where I saw some good collaboration between UFPJ and ANSWER---at least in San Francisco---yea!), I have a few thoughts.

Yesterday, tens of thousands of activists from around Northern California, Northern Nevada and some from Southern Oregon attended the rally in my new hometown, San Francisco. Despite weather in the Eastern part of the country, I hear that the rallies all over the rest of the country were extremely well attended and the energy was high.

By Cindy Sheehan

"You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement.” Pete Stark (D-Ca)

“While Members of Congress are passionate about their views what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate." Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, (D-Ca)

By David Swanson

If you haven't already, you really should read Chris Hedges' book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." The portrait of war and wartime propaganda and emotion is brilliant and deadly accurate. But the headline is misleading. War does not give us lasting solid self-assured meaning. War gives us a temporary high that is rooted in desperate self-deception. Hedges' book carries on the cover a photo of people with candles and U.S. flags, holding hands, eyes closed, mouths open. These people are smoking crack, they're taking a two-week cruise of the Caribbean, they're on stage at American Idol, they're kneeling in church, they're tapping shoes in airport men's rooms. These people are escaping from their lives, not building lives that mean something to them.

By Cindy Sheehan

There is quite a lot of interesting, but wild, speculation running around the blog-o-sphere, progressive circles and just plain dinner conversation these days about whether BushCo will allow a peaceful and constitutional transfer of Executive power in the ’08 elections.

Unless or until George Bush appears on our TV boxes one night, wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt and red tie with his hands sweatily clasped in a desperate death grip on top of his desk in the Oval Office, telling us that some catastrophic event, whether man-made or natural, has just occurred somewhere, and he must, for the good of the Homeland, declare martial law and “temporarily” suspend elections, the fears of many people are truly speculative. In my nightmare scenario, after George drops this fascist bomb and kills the rest of our Republic, he will tell us not to worry and to go about our holiday shopping, traveling and celebrating: it’s the American way, after all. God Bless America.

(Look it up)
By Cindy Sheehan

It is truly touching the way First Lady Laura Bush cares about the people of Burma and is using her officiousness (oops…I think that may be the wrong word…or is it?) to bring attention to the admittedly horrible situation there. There are very few people in the world that would not sympathize with or become outraged when monks are beaten and killed because they protested high gas prices.

By Cindy Sheehan

“They are advocates. We are leaders.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in regards to “Anti-war activists.”

People of America, this is truly the problem with what was once a Representative Republic and now is a country run by “elected” officials who believe that they, individually and collectively, are above any accountability and are not answerable to their constituents. Our public servants erroneously believe that they are the leaders!

By Cindy Sheehan

Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
John Winston Ono Lennon
October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.
Yoko Ono Lennon

On October 9th, on what would have been John Lennon’s 67th birthday, his widow, Yoko Ono is dedicating a peace tower in Reykjavik, Iceland in the memory of her husband. There will also be almost a half a million peace wishes buried in capsules around the tower which is a blue tower of light extending up to the sky above us.

By Cindy Sheehan

"The world is watching the people of Burma take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals," George Bush

Watching the pro-democracy marches in Burma both inspires and sickens me. I am inspired by seeing thousands of red-robed monks leading the demonstrations and sickened by the violence they are being met with by the military.

From a MySpace post forwarded by Cindy Sheehan:

As Harry (aka Harold) and I were taking the Metro from Bethseda Naval base, MD
to Washington to attend the Sep 15 march I met and spoke to the sister of SSgt
Jeremy Murphy who was also on her way to the march. Jeremy was one of the 7
soldiers who wrote the article "The War As We Saw It" that was in the NY Times
on Aug 14. He was shot in the head by a sniper before the article was in print

By Cindy Sheehan

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the president of Iran spoke at Columbia University today. I heard that he was invited there because the President of Columbia wanted to foster a “free exchange of ideas.” Even though I am not an Ahmadinejad supporter, I know he was elected in Iran in a knee-jerk and understandable response to the USA’s bloodily unnecessary invasion of Iraq, as many reactionery governments have been elected in that region and all over the world in response to the spreading US corporate and military empire.

By Cindy Sheehan
My remarks to Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Beyt Tikkun
In San Francisco on Yom Kippur

I am very excited to be here again to speak to you at your Yom Kippur services. It is such an honor to be invited and to have a chance to spend some time with you at your wonderful celebration. The Universal Creator must be well-pleased with your worship.

Atonement is something that is so foreign to our experience as Americans. We are taught by our culture, the media, our government leaders (if not by our families) that we are to attain success at whatever cost to whomever and even to our own souls.

I'm betting no. But we should praise MoveOn for having published the right advertisement.

Here's what Cindy says:

General Betray-Us and MoveOn.org
By Cindy Sheehan

I have often been critical of MoveOn.org, basically because I feel, for the most part that they support Democrats to the detriment of democracy. However, MoveOn.org was a big help to me at Camp Casey in August ‘05 and organized the thousands of candlelight vigils that occurred across the country. I will always be grateful to them for that.

By Cindy Sheehan

"We are not the first group to call for impeachment. We have decided to add our voice to the call. All the reasons given for the invasion have shown themselves to be half-truths or misleading. The conflict continues to drag on taking the lives of our soldiers and innocent Iraqis. It is clear that George Bush does not intend to change course in an effort to right this great wrong. He has had enough time in his second term to begin a shift and he has not. It is time to remove him from office." David Cline, then President of the VFP, March ‘05

By Cindy Sheehan

I am consistently amazed at things that right-wing nut jobs throw at me to justify their support of an unjustifiable war. Seriously, when you watch Generals, Ambassadors, Senators and Congress Reps and pundits who still cheerlead for a miserable, failed and murderous policy you can almost see the skepticism in their eyes, too. They know they are lying for their masters now, if they, like George and Dick didn’t always know they were lying.

Hill Says 200 Arrested

Stuff says 150 Arrested

Fred Mason: "Working People Want This War to End!"

OPEN FOR MORE

By Cindy Sheehan

On the day of the General David (“ass kissing little chickenshit”---Adm Fallon, Commander of CENTCOM) Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker did their puppet show for Congress, my daughter, Carly, felt ill so we didn’t get a chance to get there early enough to obtain one of the tickets for the miserly 37 seats that were allocated for the public in the hearing room.

Most of the people in the front of the line were good friends of mine who had arrived at about 8am and were patiently waiting to get in. I greeted everyone (including Rev. Lennox Yearwood) and went to the back of the line…I did a few interviews while waiting for the hearing to begin. Capitol Police handed out 37 “tickets” and skipped some people who had been waiting in the line. One of them was the Rev, who had gotten out of line to do an interview and had cleared it with one of the officers because he didn’t want to lose his place in line.

By Cindy Sheehan

“I believe it is imperative that we never lose our voice of dissent, regardless of political pressure. As Martin Luther King, Jr said: ‘there comes a time when silence is betrayal’…However, it is unforgivable that Congress has been unwilling to examine these matters or take action to prevent these circumstances [executive branch crimes] from occurring again.”
Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) Introduction to Constitution in Crisis, 2006

By John Nichols, The Nation

In California, where Cindy Sheehan proposes to mount an independent anti-war challenge to cautious House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the political structures used to err on the side of candidates who opted for principles over partisanship. Once in the not so distant past, a Cindy Sheehan or anyone else frustrated by the failure of a Pelosi to work effectively to end the war in Iraq and to hold those responsible for it to account, would have found it much easier to take on so powerful a figure.

By Cindy Sheehan

A new book called Dead Certain by Robert Draper of GQ magazine was just published. I haven’t read it yet and I don’t know when I will have the time or the intestinal fortitude to read an account of the presidential life of the person who was responsible for the death of my oldest child, Casey, but I have seen reports and read excerpts from it. I cannot profess complete knowledge about it, but of course, one of the excerpts particularly caught my eye and imagination.

By Cindy Sheehan

I know just a little bit about Mr. William Kristol:

He is the son of one of the founders of the "neo-conservative" movement, Irving Kristol.

He is a commentator on Fox News.

He was Chief of Staff for one of the political "geniuses" of our time: VP Dan Quayle.

He is editor of another Rupert Murdoch war-propaganda rag, "The Weekly Standard."

He is a member, and signer, of the Project for the New American Century, which is a game plan for US global hegemony based on military strength and one of its goals and objectives was the over-throw of the Hussein Regime in Iraq with a next stop in Iran and Syria (because the PNAC plan is going so well, so far).

Protest of war smaller than expected
By James Hohmann | Dallas Morning News

About 250 war protesters gathered outside the Texas Republican straw poll Saturday, calling for an immediate troop withdrawal and the impeachment of President Bush.

Cindy Sheehan was among the war protesters outside the Texas Republican straw poll in Fort Worth. Organizers who promised thousands would attend the protest said the lower- than-expected turnout inside the straw poll had an effect.

Among the speakers was Cindy Sheehan, who became the face of the anti-war movement after setting up camp outside the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Ms. Sheehan, the mother of a killed-in-action soldier, plans to challenge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi next year because the California Democrat has not sought to impeach the president.

"Not only should they be impeached, they should be thrown in prison," Ms. Sheehan said. "Most of the Democrats belong in prison right next to George Bush and Dick Cheney."

Each of us were approached during the rally at the Kennebunkport event on August 25, 2007, to sign a statement calling for the immediate impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. Since then, the statement has been altered and posted on the internet, making it appear as if we have evidence that this administration will carry out a "false-flag terror operation."

None of us have such evidence, and therefore, none of us signed a statement stating that we do.

We wish the authors of the document well in continuing much needed investigations of all aspects of 9/11.

Signed:
Jamilla El-Shafei
Cindy Sheehan
Dahlia Wasfi
Ann Wright

In this article the Washington Post's William Arkin maintains that Nancy Pelosi is in the Senate and that the real threat to America is citizens who become too active. This is one of those articles that rubs up so close to the line that you almost believe it's parody, but not quite. This is actually a case of a Post reporter out of his element, observing citizen activism outside the Beltway with condescending bemusement and observing with utter amazement the fact that local media outlets pay attention to it.

By Cindy Sheehan from Amman

"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - "Chronicle of Young Satan" Mark Twain"

By Cindy Sheehan from Amman, Jordan

Last month when Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Ray McGovern and I took over 300 people and a petition with over a million signatures to Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi, Chair House Judiciary Committee) demanding impeachment, we believed we were morally correct then. Despite Rep. Conyers' long record of public service to our nation and several private meetings that went absolutely nowhere, and despite the mild to severe criticism we have received, we believed then and still believe now that impeaching BushCo is a Constitutionally mandated requirement and a necessary tool to reclaim our representative republic, end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan ("The troops aren't coming home while I'm preznit," GWB), and to hold the monsters accountable who have wreaked havoc on our planet.