The$e are the Thoughts That Set Fire 2 Your City (An Inspiring Message of Hope from Rage Against the Machine)

Norman Solomon on Getting Out of Iraq (November 21st, 2005)

Originally published at AlterNet. Note how nothing has changed.

If the Pentagon had been able to subdue the Iraqi population, few in Congress or on editorial pages would be denouncing the war. As in so many other respects, this is a way that the domestic U.S. political dynamics of the war on Iraq are similar to what unfolded during the Vietnam War. With the underpinnings of war prerogatives unchallenged, a predictable response is that the war must be fought more effectively.

That's what the great journalist I. F. Stone was driving at when he wrote, a few years into the Vietnam War, in mid-February 1968: "It is time to stand back and look at where we are going. And to take a good look at ourselves. A first observation is that we can easily overestimate our national conscience. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it. If it were not for the heavy cost, politicians like the Kennedys [Robert and Edward] and organizations like ADA [the liberal Americans for Democratic Action] would still be as complacent about the war as they were a few years ago."

In the United States, while the lies behind the Iraq war become evermore obvious and victory seems increasingly unreachable, much of the opposition to the war has focused on the death and suffering among U.S. soldiers. That emphasis has a sharp political edge at home, but it can also cut another way -- defining the war as primarily deplorable because of what it is doing to Americans. One danger is that a process of withdrawing some U.S. troops could be accompanied by even more use of U.S. air power that terrorizes and kills with escalating bombardment (as happened in Vietnam for several years after President Nixon announced his "Guam Doctrine" of Vietnamization in mid-1969). An effective antiwar movement must challenge the jingo-narcissism that defines the war as a problem mainly to the extent that it harms Americans.

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Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) on Eisenhower's Warning to Us All

The only rational being running for President speaks in New Hampshire. And while the corporate media would like to pretend this man does not exist they cannot stop us from learning who he is and what he’s done. This is the man who released the Pentagon Papers to the American public, giving us the until-then secret history of the Vietnam War. This is the man who’s calling for Universal Health Care, a National Initiative program and an immediate (not this September, not next September, not when the next President takes office) withdraw from Iraq. He probably won’t get past the primary season (baring an act of some god or another), yet it is unbelievable refreshing to see someone, somewhere, stumping for these issues…especially now that the corporately anointed candidates have revealed themselves to be mewling, spineless pantywaists.

A New Review and Bill Maher on Life Within the Empire (New Rules for March 15, 2007)

And You Thought It Was Safe (?) Reviews They Live. Enjoy it after Bill.

Noam Chomsky on Modern Industrial Civilization

George Carlin on the Ten Commandments