Obama in Western PA cont.

Obama continued east to Latrobe, where he visited a sports bar. I didn't recognize the name--may be a new one, or one that's changed its name. The bars I knew in that area were ones that Steelers frequented when they were in training camp at St. Vincent's College in late summer. I hoisted a few with Jack Lambert once. One of my sisters lives just outside Latrobe now, and my brother-in-law has been known to drop into a bar there. He coulda been there! One of my nieces teaches grade school in Latrobe. She coulda been there! Although probably they were both working.


These photos remind me of something somebody observed recently--
maybe Marc Armbinder at the Atlantic--that on the campaign trail,
Obama is having fun, and Hillary really is not. And even though Obama
looks serious in that photo, he is holding a Slinky. It's a tour of a Johnstown specialty steel plant that makes various wire products, including the Slinky. Apparently when they gave one to Obama he carried it with him and played with it for the rest of the tour.

Then another town hall meeting in Johnstown. It was one of the first place names I learned, because one of our two and then three television channels was WJAC Johnstown, "serving millions from atop the Alleghenies."

I've only been there a couple of times, though I've driven through a few more. Way back in the 30s, when the Bonus Army of World War I vets was driven out of Washington where they were encamped to try to get some of the money the government had promised them, some of them reorganized in the only town that would host them, and that was Johnstown, PA.

Obama in Western PA: Altoona

Altoona is kind of Johnstown's little brother or sister. Doesn't get much respect. It wasn't on the schedule, and the Altoona media had been complaining that their town was always bypassed--no presidential candidate had EVER visited Altoona.

Well, Obama did. Apparently on the spur of the moment, he and Senator Casey went bowling.

Obama's got decent form, as you can see, but he hadn't bowled since Jimmy Carter was President, and he didn't do real well. He and Casey both lost to their main competitor, a local woman named Roxanne Hart.

"My economic plan's better than my bowling," Obama said at one point. Said a man in a nearby lane, "It'd have to be."

Some kids came over to bowl a frame or two, while everybody took pictures and called their friends. Obama completed a spare, and picked up the chant: "Yes, I can!"

Either before or after the bowling alley, they stopped in at a hot dog place nearby. Obama was buying.

Obama in Central PA: Penn State

Sunday morning, Obama spoke to the largest political event ever at Penn State, with a crowd estimated at 22,000. Coach Joe Paterno had snubbed Bill Clinton a day or two before (he drew about 5,000), and though Joe and Obama chatted today, he apparently wasn't at the rally--but his son and daughter-in-law were.

And one of his players gave Obama a Penn State jersey. Something was definitely happening here.

Obama in Central PA: Harrisburg

Before Obama could leave Penn State, he had to visit the diary. Penn State began as an agricultural school, and it's still a big part of the culture. You always have to visit the ice cream place, which is where Ben and Jerry got their start. Obama got the grand tour--he got to see the cows, and even feed a baby one.

The last place Margaret taught before Humboldt State was a small college about an hour south of Penn State. We went there for occasional entertainment, and the book stores. Several of my cousins went to Penn State, as did my other sister's husband--he's a dedicated Penn State football fan.


Then it was off to Harrisburg for a town meeting. An overflow crowd of 2,000 were there for that event. When I worked for a small public relations firm in Pittsburgh, I actually did some work for the governor's office when Bob Casey, Sr. was governor. I put together what was essentially the Commonwealth's annual report one year, and wrote most of it myself. I worked on a project for Harris Wofford when he was Secretary of Labor and Industry, to promote the Pennsylvania Job Centers. So I spent some time in Harrisburg. One of my best friends worked for the state government then, in the environmental agency. So to this point Obama was still in places at least somewhat familiar to me. But as he goes farther east, my connections become more tenuous.

There's a certain universality to these photos. They could be taken almost anywhere, and probably the most important thing about them, it seems to me, is the look in Obama's eyes in all these situations. The way he relates to people, his attentiveness and tenderness with children, and even with that calf.

But they do mean something more when I know the places where they were taken, in at least a general way. I'm sure they mean something more to the people who live there, the kinds of voices I know. Reporters may cast this as Obama's attempt to court the blue collar white vote in particular. I'm sure people react to his celebrity, but I'll bet they've responded to his warmth and humor and ease. And I'll bet these people--with those voices that I know--will remember this for a long time.

Obama in Steelertown

Barack Obama with "The Bus" and the Immaculate
Receptor (and Sen. Bob Casey in the background)
with the new blue version of the Terrible Towel
in Pittsburgh yesterday.

An American Dream

" The reason I got into politics was not to get my name in the papers, it was because I remembered that somebody, somewhere stood up for me. I know that people fought to make sure that I have the same rights in this country that anybody else does. That is the essence of the American story. Each of us, we're not just looking out for ourselves. When we're at our best, we're working to make everybody's lives better. We're thinking about future generations. That's what we've lost, and that's what I want to restore. If you help me, we can bring about the kind of change that makes Americans proud."

Barack Obama on Friday, March 28, at a Town Hall Meeting near Greensburg, PA, at Hempfield High School, which is about a mile from where I grew up. My sisters went there, I took a summer course there. I saw my first real football game there. This is the soil where my American dreams grew. In these important ways, the same dreams.

niente senza gioia

I am not a foodie. Conversations which fixate on food and restaurants inspire a mood that swings back and forth from murderous to suicidal. But I do eat. I buy food, prepare it, and I have strong memories of food, and strong preferences. I'm just not that interested in talking or obsessing about it. Partly because my preferences generally are for the simple, and strongly for the "Mediterranean" diet of my childhood, especially at my Italian grandmother's table.

But I see what bad food is doing, and I fear it. As Michael Pollan writes in his new book: "The human animal is adapted to, and apparently can thrive on, an extraordinary range of different diets, but the Western diet, however you define it, does not seem to be one of them." He means the contemporary western diet of corporate food, that is artificial and unhealthy. In fact, it's deadly.
I also fear the trend of food coming from so far away, and being dependent on that. But there are other, newer trends that are heartening. A few were highlighted in just the past few days--in a local article about a woman in my town who grows and prepares almost all her own food. From our local university, HSU, where students are trying to commit to a sustainable healthy diet--even if the best they can do so far is breakfast. And a trio of articles (here and here and here) in the San Francisco Chronicle about using disused land to grow vegetables for food "in the shadow of buildings" in the city.

These are all great. I'm also a fan--from a distance, at least--of the Slow Food movement that began in Italy (where else?) Not only because it supports all these good things--good, healthy, real food, sustainably and locally produced. But because it's also about having a good time. Someone somewhere said it's the first leftish movement--and one could add the first ecological movement--that emphasizes joy. (That's the founder there on the left: Carlo Petrini.) That reminds me of a slogan of an arts program for Italian schoolchildren I've prized for years, even if as only an aspiration: niente senza gioia: Nothing without joy.

Nancy's Journey

An extraordinary event took place Saturday, to very little notice here, after a week or so of tragedy in Tibet: the U.S. Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency, traveled to India to meet with the Dalai Lama, to speak out on behalf of human rights, the political rights of the Tibetan people, and against oppression and violence perpetrated by the world's most successful totalitarian capitalist regime, in China.

At a time when the Chinese government is recklessly accusing the Dalai Lama of fomenting violence, Nancy Pelosi and a small congressional delegation traveled a great distance, to a fairly isolated part of India, to show their support.
At a time when the U.S. administration is selling high tech weapons to India and urging military and nuclear expansion, Nancy Pelosi visited the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi, performing the traditional tribute of throwing rose petals.

At a time when U.S. politicians and corporate leaders are afraid to criticize China for anything (including collusion in the Darfur genocide) because they essentially own our government and make everything we buy, Pelosi called for the world to condemn China for killing demonstrators as only the most recent acts of its murderous brutality in Tibet. She said this crisis is a challenge to "the conscience of the world."

At a time when the U.S. is feared and hated around the world, Tibetan exiles and others wrapped themselves in American flags because of her journey and her committment.

I get occasional emails from an organization trying to run a more radical candidate against Pelosi because she doesn't support impeachment, or hasn't done enough to end the Iraq war. They get no support from me. She's an imperfect politician, but Nancy Pelosi did more for this country this past weekend than anybody in government I know of has for a long time.

Those who share her concern for the Tibetan people can help through organizations such as the International Campaign for Tibet and the Tibet Fund.

New Hope, PA

Monday is the last day PA citizens can register
to vote for Obama in the primary. Here's the
form, instructions and places where you can drop
it off TODAY. The Obama campaign has already
registered thousands of new voters in Pennsylvania,
through the efforts of volunteers including Caroline
Kennedy, who was calling folks in New Hope, PA.

4,000 Killed--and the Euphemisms of American Violence

On Easter Sunday in the U.S., a series of mortar attacks, suicide bombs, roadside bombs and other acts in Iraq meant to kill and maim, reportedly killed at least 50 people, including the 4,000th American soldier to be killed since the invasion of Iraq five years ago.

War cannot be looked in the face for long. That's one reason that we turn our eyes away, and allow or encourage our media to stop reporting the reality of this ongoing war. Why few paid any attention to the Winter Soldiers testimony last week, and some got angry about broadcasting these soldiers telling their stories.

It is also one reason that we lie about war. Unfortunately, the ways our leaders lie about it means that needless wars, criminal wars, can be started and continued. As long as we accept the lies, and let them continue lying.

There are lots of ways to lie, and the least obvious way (the most lying way) is with euphemism. In an essay entitled "Euphemisms and American Violence" in the current New York Review of Books, David Bromwich writes that this term--euphemism--dates back to imperial Rome. He quotes Tacitus accusing certain Romans of deception and self-deception: "they create a desolation and call it peace." Bromwich explains:

The frightening thing about such acts of renaming or euphemism, Tacitus implies, is their power to efface the memory of actual cruelties. Behind the façade of a history falsified by language, the painful particulars of war are lost. Maybe the most disturbing implication of the famous sentence "They create a desolation and call it peace" is that apologists for violence, by means of euphemism, come to believe what they hear themselves say.

Whether our leaders believe it on some level is immaterial. I'm not sure that cruelties matter to them when ideology is served, and massive profits and wealth are the products of war. The point is they use it to makes sure we believe what they say--even when we think we don't.

Bromwich quotes a passage from George Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English language," which can't be quoted too much:

" Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Bromwich then comments:

Orwell's insight was that the italicized phrases are colorless by design and not by accident. He saw a deliberate method in the imprecision of texture. The inventors of this idiom meant to suppress one kind of imagination, the kind that yields an image of things actually done or suffered; and they wanted to put in its place an imagination that trusts to the influence of larger powers behind the scenes. Totalitarianism depends on the creation of people who take satisfaction in such trust; and totalitarian minds are in part created (Orwell believed) by the ease and invisibility of euphemism."

And that's it exactly. Words that sound professional--the jargon of the military or "statesmen"--are adopted in the media. They sound precise but they are really fuzzy, and above all bloodless.

Bromwich discusses some of the Bush era's successes: the "global war on terror" which makes no literal sense, names no actual enemy, and excuses absolutely everything. He writes of their success in getting the media to adopt expressions like "contractors" for mercenary soldiers, and "abuses" for torture.

They have been very successful, and not only with the corporate media. Even the progressive blogsites have bought into calling a particular form of torture "waterboarding," as if it were a form of surfing. As Bromwich points out, "Yet 'waterboarding' itself is a euphemism for a torture that the Jap-anese in World War II, the French in Indochina, and the Khmer Rouge, who learned it from the French, knew simply as the drowning torture. Our American explanations have been as misleading as the word. The process is not "simulated drowning" but actual drowning that is interrupted.

There is another form of euphemism routinely used in discussing warfare and torture these days: the application of cliches that merge a certain unearned bravado with the latest fad expressions. Bromwich quotes California Member of Congress Jane Harman stringing two of them together when talking about the legalities of ordering torture: "I'm OK with it not being pretty."

This is corporate-speak, TV-speak, the lazy stringing together of buzzwords and cliches into what passes for sentences and thoughts, especially for those who hear consultants and pundits talk that way constantly, and whose idea of a complete thought is something that can be text messaged while driving.

To make decisions that mean other people are going to torture and be tortured, kill and maim and be killed and mained, by saying "I'm OK with it not being pretty" is a particularly deadly form of arrogance, even if it is steeped in ignorance or self-deception. But when we let our leaders and our media get away with the euphemisms of violence, we become part of that arrogance.

If we penetrate to the truth of it all, we can make decisions based on realities. We can fight for our lives when we must, but not throw away the lives of so many in order to profit the few whose wealth is already obscene.

We have fallen for one lie after another, cushioned by one set of euphemisms after another, until this nation's economy depends on making war, and on fomenting war, so that we can supply the means of making modern war: the means of killing, maiming and destroying on a massive scale.

Last month the Guardian in England reported that the American Secretary of Defense visited New Delhi to promote a $10 billion deal for the U.S. to supply jet fighters to India. With the encouragement of the U.S. (and other arms dealing nations), India has increased its military spending to nearly 19% of its budget, while it spends 1% on public health in a vast country where public health is a severe problem, and 5% on education in a vast country with widespread and severe poverty.

This is the American Way in the world. There are those who defend it according to their views of international situations and human nature. But there are many more who are willfully blind to it, partly because they feel helpless. And part of the reason for that helplessness is there is no way to talk about it, not when we have no clear language in common. When complicated and emotional subjects are further clouded and distorted by the lies enabled by euphemism. Euphemism is the curtain, behind which the imperial wizards pull their levers, and so many lives are distorted and destroyed.

Hope, PA

An Obama HQ opens in Scranton, PA as registration
for the primary soars. The Obama campaign is
urging Independents and Republicans to register as
Dems so they can vote for Obama. One who did: the
Republican mayor of Camp Hill, PA. PA RESIDENTS
HAVE UNTIL MONDAY TO REGISTER. This page
will get you started....And here's some late/early
news: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to endorse
Obama today, calling him a "once-in-a-lifetime leader."

Obama on the other costs of Iraq

On Thursday, Barack Obama gave his second speech on the Iraq war, this time about its relationship to the American economy and needs at home. He gave it in West Virginia, and this is just a small part of what he said:

...today, I want to talk about another cost of this war – the toll it has taken on our economy. Because at a time when we’re on the brink of recession – when neighborhoods have For Sale signs outside every home, and working families are struggling to keep up with rising costs – ordinary Americans are paying a price for this war.

When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war. When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.

When a National Guard unit is over in Iraq and can’t help out during a hurricane in Louisiana or with floods here in West Virginia, our communities are paying a price for this war. And the price our families and communities are paying reflects the price America is paying. The most conservative estimates say that Iraq has now cost more than half a trillion dollars, more than any other war in our history besides World War II. Some say the true cost is even higher and that by the time it’s over, this could be a $3 trillion war....

The truth is, this is all part of the reason I opposed this war from the start. It’s why I said back in 2002 that it could lead to an occupation not just of undetermined length or undetermined consequences, but of undetermined costs. It’s why I’ve said this war should have never been authorized and never been waged. ...

Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia. For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students....

Instead of fighting this war, we could be freeing ourselves from the tyranny of oil, and saving this planet for our children. We could be investing in renewable sources of energy, and in clean coal technology, and creating up to 5 million new green jobs in the bargain, including new clean coal jobs. And we could be doing it all for the cost of less than a year and a half in Iraq...

These are the investments we could be making, all within the parameters of a more responsible and disciplined budget. This is the future we could be building. And that is why I will bring this war to an end when I’m President of the United States of America."

Winter Soldiers

Bush says the war is justified, and romantic to fight.
When a reporter tells Cheney that 3/4 of the U.S.
public is against the war, he replies, "So?" Meanwhile,
soldiers testify on the realities of war in the 2008 edition
of Winter Soldiers, ignored by the media except for a
few outlets, such as Democracy Now! When will we
ever learn.

No Sixth Anniversary

After writing about the foolishness and tragedy of the oncoming war, both online and in print, for the months leading up to its war-feverish beginning, on March 14, 2003, I wrote this on the blog that became American Dash:

Just a matter of days... Before children die because some leader wants to convince some other leader to go away, or die.

Before our young die because the only solution our leader can fix on is to eradicate the Evil in his eyes. Before we begin paying and paying with our sweat and time for the means to begin and then continue for who knows how many years this reckless, destructive and self-destructive venture, and all that will follow from it.

Before he lets loose the dogs of war. And dogs eat dogs. A self-fullfilling prophesy, making the world the way they think it is.

But it isn't, not necessarily. It doesn't have to be. A new world is creating itself, within the skin of the old.

We, I, and even humanity, may not live long enough to see it walk the earth, if it ever gets that chance.

Are we then witnessing the partial-birth abortion of hope?

But hope is being reborn in 2008--the hope for example that there will be no sixth anniversary of an ongoing war in Iraq, with no end in sight.

Wednesday, on the fifth anniversary, Barack Obama spoke about Iraq in a national security context. Thursday he speaks on the war and how it relates to the economy and the health of the nation.

Here is some of what he said Wednesday:

" History will catalog the reasons why we waged a war that didn't need to be fought, but two stand out. In 2002, when the fateful decisions about Iraq were made, there was a President for whom ideology overrode pragmatism, and there were too many politicians in Washington who spent too little time reading the intelligence reports, and too much time reading public opinion. The lesson of Iraq is that when we are making decisions about matters as grave as war, we need a policy rooted in reason and facts, not ideology and politics.

It is time to have a debate with John McCain about the future of our national security. And the way to win that debate is not to compete with John McCain over who has more experience in Washington, because that's a contest that he'll win. The way to win a debate with John McCain is not to talk, and act, and vote like him on national security, because then we all lose. The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that's what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past.

So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden– as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer."

Obama's Moment is Our Moment

Barack Obama earlier this week.

Obama's Speech on Race: How It Plays

Note: If you haven't seen Obama's speech, you can access it through the Obama News gadget I've added to the left side column. That should also link you to the text, but if not, it's here.

The praise for Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia on the subject of race is almost universal. But the tough talking pundits on cable news channels--who are basically the ones who fed the frenzy that made the speech necessary--now say yeah, we think it's great, but what will that white working class guy in Pennsylvania think?

It happens that within the white working class (or lower middle to middle middle class) in western Pennsylvania is where I grew up. It seemed to me immediately that there were several parts of the speech that will resonate, including one I haven't seen commented on in terms of how it will play with this group: Obama condemned those selected statements of Rev. Wright but he refused to disown his former preacher, in very strong terms. He was loyal, and that resonates. Loyalty is a prized virtue, especially within families and within communities, including "faith communities."

My testimony however is not the only possible evidence that this will resonate. In another and mostly more local controversy--his relationship and dealings with Chicago real estater Tony Rezko--Obama spent hours recently with reporters of the two Chicago dailies, answering literally every one of their questions. He explained to their satisfaction that he'd done nothing wrong or illegal, although he probably should have anticipated the appearance of conflict of interest earlier. He revealed also that his relationship with Rezko was closer than previously known--that they'd been friends.

The Chicago Tribune concluded that Obama's candor set a standard by which other politicians will be judged. But the columnist for the Sun-Times had an additional thought:

The second thing that struck me Friday had to do with loyalty. This could not be a more intense time for Obama as he slugs it out with Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. And it arguably would be a fine time to throw Tony Rezko under the bus.

But Obama remains grateful that Rezko supported him in his failed congressional race against Bobby Rush when, given a relationship with Rush, it wasn’t easy. “That was loyalty that I appreciated,” the senator said.
And so Obama still calls Rezko “a friend, with the caveat that if it turns out the allegations are true, then he’s not who I thought he was, and I’d be very disappointed with that.”

So, candor — though delayed — gives us a clearer view. And friendship — tested but not abandoned — looks more like a virtue than a fault.

By speaking of white working class grievances as well as black, by talking candidly about all of these issues in relationship to his own life, background and experiences, by being calm and direct, and with that hint of emotion when he ended his speech with the story of Ashley, the young white woman who inspired an old black man, Obama connected. But perhaps the most direct connection was this loyalty. Every working class family I know of has had to deal with the frailties or bad acts or mistakes of family members or even views or "lifestyles" they don't agree with, and whether or not to "disown." Mostly nobody gets disowned, even if things aren't ever the same again. Families can't exist otherwise. This extends beyond the family in certain cases, like churches. Even when people can't themselves live up to the ideal, they prize loyalty like this.

The message is about more than loyalty, of course. It is about coming together despite our differences. It is a profoundly Christian message, though not exclusive to that faith or philosophy. It is a profoundly American message. It is an immensely practical message. It is Obama's message, which he embodies.


The question was also raised whether Obama's speech was too complex for the non-elites. Obama talked about what people talk about around the kitchen table. It's elitist to think that non-elites can't handle complexity, especially when it affects their own lives. My last time back home last spring, I sat at the table with family and neighbors and people related in a variety of ways, gathered to celebrate the graduation of one of my nieces from college. They were talking about alternative energy, especially as it bears on the problem of high gasoline prices, with great practicality and interest--without the sort of political slant that's inevitable when such subjects are aired in the media.

Obama's speech was framed inside a very practical message: we have to confront these racial issues to get beyond them, because ultimately we must all work together to concentrate on getting done what needs to be done for everyone. That's something everyone at the kitchen table can understand these days.

Obama hinted that it is among the young that race (like gender and sexual preferences) is no longer a powerful divider. He gave today's public--and the media-- the choice of continuing to dwell on fear-mongering distractions, or getting beyond them to confronting the crucial problems of now. If we don't confront them, and solve them together, we will be destroying the future of those young people, and their children and grandchildren.

If we elect this man as our President, we have a chance to confront the consequences of our own mistakes, misunderstandings and failures. If we don't, we will compound the failures of the past by failing to take advantage of this rare opportunity. And we will have failed the future--the future of my nieces and their children.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Do I have to be 94 years old to remember these names? Are they otherwise erased from history?"

Studs Terkel, who at 94 complains that not even the recent past is remembered in what he calls the United States of Alzheimer's.

Cultural Genocide

The Dalai Lama calls for an international probe into
cultural genocide in Tibet, as China cracks down
with violence.

Big Trouble in Tibet

What's really going on in Tibet is not precisely known, but it's likely to be very, very bad. Protests against what the Dalai Lama called "cultural genocide" have resulted in threats and violence by the Chinese government. According to Tibetan exile groups in India ( who "have provided some of the only reporting" from Tibet "since last Monday" said an ABC story), many have been killed.

"People have been saying they're shooting our people like dogs," Tenzin Norgay, the spokesman for the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, told ABC News, citing his sources inside Tibet.

The Times of London is reporting close to to 1,000 Tibetans are under arrest. Now the Dalai Lama says if Tibetans engage in violence he will resign.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is accusing the Dalai Lama of ordering the rebellion, charging as well that it is an attempt to stop the Olympics from being held in China. China is also blocking YouTube so that Chinese can't see the only video coming out of Tibet. So the situation doesn't look like it's going to get better soon, and may get a great deal worse.

Over the recent past, China has been busily destroying ancient Tibetan structures, especially those associated with Buddhism, and turning cities like Lhasa into perverse imitation Tibetan shopping malls for tourists. They've apparently murdered thousands of Buddhist monks in the process.

China has proven that capitalism and totalitarian iron-fisted rule work pretty well together. They make most of what Americans buy, and they've financed the Bushite wars and tax cuts for the wealthy by buying up federal government debt. So it's no wonder that the Bushites recently removed China from the list of the world's top ten human rights violators.

Luck of the Irish

While the war goes on...

U.S. soldiers in Iraq

U.S.: End Iraq War Marches Saturday

Photos from a few of what have sorrowfully become annual marches across the U.S. against the Iraq war--from Eureka and Hollywood, California; and Washington, D.C.